Game Development Community

Acting and Torque (sorta rant because I have been fighting with this)

by Ron Kapaun · in Torque 3D Beginner · 06/08/2012 (8:12 pm) · 1 replies

I have been looking at a number of game trailers lately. (I do this to keep up with common trends) Something kinda popped in my simple little mind. There has been a HUGE injection of actual acting in games lately. (IE Beyond: Two Souls, LA Noir and many others.) I would love to see something like facial morphing supported or some equivalent. I understand that I could probably alter the code to make this happen but, since it is a serious trend, it should be something that is included in the engine. The render engine is finally up to par (at least with a decent 'artist'), the script engine is good. AI and whatnot is nearly complete (with given engine alterations). My problem is hooking the player with avatar emotions. For that, I need real facial control. Humans take many social cues from facial expressions. In 'classic' torque I could pull it off in low rez and a barely functional cheat. In Torque3D it seems the 'morph' animations have been removed. (at least in T3D). Now I could cheat this out with an animation cheat but that seems a little dumb. (Seriously, why should I cheat when something like this should be stock?) Let the artists allow the players to act, emote and appear to feel.

Oh yeah...still working on the new pack! Taking my time because I want this next one to be REALLY Great!

Just a suggestion.

Ron

#1
06/11/2012 (2:22 pm)
I have not even remotely reached this point yet but I always thought that these would be done by making separate animations for facial expressions, and import this character exclusively for the cutscenes. Is there a separate type of animation sequence that is used for facial expressions?
I never ran across anyone doing it yet on the forums. Sounds like it would make things a heck of a lot easier though, and wouldn't require naming facial animations for this separate cutscene character after the stock definitions.