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Whenever there was a large quantity of animation to get through, the quality would be in danger of suffering and we struggled to complete scenes on schedule.
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How important is motion capture to the narrative?īefore we had the Xsens suits, we animated everything from scratch. But using Xsens, if you plant a foot or a hand on a surface, it stays there, and is replicated properly in animation. Other motion capture solutions that we tested often led to the character’s feet floating around aimlessly.
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We’re happy with the accuracy of small movements and gestures we get from Xsens MVN Animate. What do you think of the cinematic results so far? By walking into a space similar to the one built for our characters, interactions with the environment can be copied into the game. One of the reasons we’re using motion capture for every scene is because highly interactive environments can be created in Unity. The cutscenes and simulations happen in Unity. The only exception was one of our early tests – we had a character with a hunchback lying on the ground, which made it slightly difficult to map the animation. Animation looks great for the majority of Iron Harvest characters, with only minor adjustments even for different body types. We map all the animations onto the character in Maya, going through a range of different poses and positions. We process everything in the Xsens MVN Animate suite, then use Maya to clean up the model and generate effects. It’s important to pin down the actor’s height and other relevant measurements first, ensuring their body type is synchronised with the Xsens MVN Animate system.Īre you using any other applications to create Iron Harvest?
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We go through special poses to test whether the motion data is accurate, stretching certain ligaments and looking at the full range of limb movement. Initial data captured with the Xsens suit is pretty clean right from the start. What’s the quality of resulting motion data like? We could just go outside and find a normal wall, rather than having to create an artificial one in the studio. For instance, one scene required the actor to jump over a wall. Most of our performances are captured right there in-house with the Xsens MVN system, but we can adapt to new locations as needed too.īeing that the Xsens suit is so versatile and doesn't require an optical setup, we can record anywhere. The animation department at KING Art Games now has its own office, which gives us the freedom to move around and act out scenes whenever we like. Most characters are played by the animators here, so we can quickly put on Xsens’ MVN suit and collect data as needed.ĭo motion capture sessions take place in-house? We're not a large triple-A game studio and lack a designated room for motion capture. It’s also the most affordable solution for us. Xsens is the best solution we’ve found to deliver on quality. Iron Harvest has around one hour’s worth of cutscenes, which would be an arduous process if animated by hand. Most of the games we make are narrative-driven, so it would take a lot of time to create all of the animations we need without motion capture. What made you decide to use Xsens technology? We’re still in the development process so I can’t say for sure how long it’s going to take. People seem to love the concept behind the world that we've expanded from Jakub’s creations. We’ve had success with Kickstarter before, but Iron Harvest has been by far our most anticipated project, mainly due to the industry-wide demand for a solid real-time strategy (RTS) game. Over 16,000 backers pledged more than $1,500,000 to help bring this game to life. We got in contact with Jakub and he was interested – this began our project!Īs Kickstarter project, Iron Harvest quickly gained a lot of fans.
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At KING Art Games, we then had the idea to turn his world into a PC game. We became huge fans of his after we saw the artwork, which was later turned into a popular board game.
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It began when we discovered an artist called Jakub Rozalski, who created a series of pieces called “1920+”. What inspired the creation of Iron Harvest? Missed our recent FMX presentation featuring KING Art Games? This is your chance to catch up. We sat down with Technical Artist, Thomas Paul, to discuss how KING Art Games will bring this alternate reality of 1920+ to life – and how Xsens motion capture contributed to the game’s strong, narrative-driven campaigns. Responding to demand for a solid real-time strategy game, and with a Kickstarter budget of over one and a half million dollars in the bank, KING Art Games is midway through development of the highly anticipated PC title, Iron Harvest.
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