McNamara: Framerate biggest barrier to motion capture's evolution

**RCM** · 11-10-2011, 08:53 AM

I'll second the part about making 60 FPS standard on the next round of consoles. I was a bit disappointed that "dream" didn't happen with 360/PS3. I'll always take frame rate over detail, but that's me.

"30 frames-per-second not high enough for realistic animations, LA Noire�s director tells us.
LA Noire

Most of the data acquired by motion capture technology can�t be used in today�s games because framerates are too low, Brendan McNamara tells us.

�The biggest problem I think we have is that games generally run at 30 frames per second,� the co-founder of Depth Analysis, which created the MotionScan technology used for LA Noire's facial animation, told us yesterday during an interview at the Bradford Animation Festival 2011. �You capture all this amazing stuff and you end up throwing most of it away because people want it to be really responsive.

�If you look at stuff in Uncharted or Gears Of War, the animation�s great, but when you flick from cover to cover, it�s like a two frame animation. People love that because it�s really responsive, but the animation looks like shit. So it�s this big trade off.

�If you remember back to the early Street Fighters, they were one frame animations - from nothing to punch.�

McNamara doesn�t think there�s much distance left to run in terms of increasing screen resolutions, and instead hopes that the next generation of consoles establish a 60 frames-per-second standard.

�All cloth in games looks like a flag or a piece of silk right now! And that�s just down to how much time you have within a frame to simulate it," he says.

�I think the nice thing that you�ll be able to do with full-body capture is that when someone moves across the room you�ll get all the movements of their clothes. If you can capture that and then turn that into a walk cycle it will look amazing. You could spend a lot of cycles actually simulating that in Havok, but we�re probably a long way away from the point where it would look real.

McNamara points to Rockstar�s work: �If you look at how they animated the muscles in Red Dead Redemption, they look absolutely amazing right? They�re animated between two normal maps. If you could capture that in a walk cycle that would look pretty amazing. Some of the stuff in the new game we want to do includes long women�s dresses, and I doubt you could simulate that properly at 30 frames-per-second.�

Our full interview with McNamara, in which he discusses the future of motion capture technology and being labelled a "bully", will be published later today."

SOURCE: http://www.next-gen.biz/news/mcnamar...ures-evolution

**crazyjackcsa** · 11-10-2011, 09:31 AM

Another frame rate conversation? It happens every generation, games start at 60 fps at the start of the cycle and then dip as the generation ages. Games get prettier at the expense of speed.

**Darkman2K5** · 11-10-2011, 10:27 AM

The Call of Duty series has managed to maintain a 60fps standard as they gone along which is pretty impressive considering that each game does have better graphics than the last. Granted, this is only one case, but I think its an attainable goal with the next generation.

**Graham Mitchell** · 11-10-2011, 01:09 PM

My pc (which, admittedly is very expensive) runs any game I play on it at 60fps at LEAST. It's just too bad that pretty much all games now are developed for consoles. We could have this today but the pc market is too niche. Nobody would invest in it because they couldn't recoup their funds until the next console generation comes along.