Heavy Rain creator David Cage has predicted that photo-realistic graphics will be possible within the next six years - and revealed that he is unconvinced by the long-term potential of new facial capture techniques used to make Rockstar's L.A Noire.
Speaking to CVG, Cage said that Quantic Dream is already employing new technology to capture full body performance in unannounced games. He claimed these projects were already showing "significant progress" on what the studio achieved with Heavy Rain last year.
L.A Noire benefits from DepthAnalysis' Motion Scan technology, which requires in-game actors re-record scenes whilst just their head is filmed by 32 HD cameras from various angles. This has allowed developer Team Bondi to represent subtle facial movements during gameplay. Bondi and L.A Noire co-creator Rockstar have proudly claimed that MotionScan represents a "revolution" for motion capture in games, but Cage is less convinced.
Cage revealed that Quantic Dream is using performance capture that reads both actors' body and faces in one shot - which he believes will lead to real graphical advancement.
"We are doing that now [at Quantic], and our next games will be shot with performance capture," he explained. "We see a huge difference between shooting the face and body separately and shooting everything at the same time. Suddenly you've got a real sense of acting that is consistent. You can't imagine how related what you say with your face is to what your body does.
"[Those using MotionScan] will never be able to do that. The other thing is that they can't have real time lighting. Their technique means they can't have lighting the way I think we should do it. Basically, they take pictures; they take scans several times per frame. They also have limitations on the shaders they use, they can't re-target the eyes because they eyes are captured. When you have actors in real time you like to to re-target the eyes to make sure they look at each other [convincingly] etc. etc.
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"It's a list of important problems that cannot be solved with their technology. I think L.A Noire looks good - honestly, it does - but I don't think they'll go much further than where they are. With the technology we use, we can improve; there is a lot of room for improvement and we hope to show very soon where we are now. We've made significant progress since Heavy Rain and will continue to make progress until we reach the stage of Avatar. That is probably three, four five years from now."
"Yes. Four or five years. Maybe it's going to require a new [gaming] platform, but when you look at where real-time is right now, it's probably where CG was five, six years ago. You can say there's a five-year gap between CG and real time. Avatar was released last year, so that's where we should be in five, six years from now."
Rockstar this week revealed that L.A Noire will be the first video game to ever feature at the respected Tribeca Film Festival in New York next month. The detective thriller will be released on 360 and PS3 in May.
Comments
58 comments so far...
metallicorphan on 31 Mar '11 said:
sounds a bit like sour grapes to me
slothfull9 on 31 Mar '11 said:
Never mind motion capture - it was difficult in Heavy Rain to make your character walk in a straight line! Not so good for realism...
liamboi16 on 31 Mar '11 said:
I wish he would shut up. All he seems to be doing lately is slagging off other developers and games.
lordirongut on 31 Mar '11 said:
Is this pursuit of realism really such a good thing? I don't think so. When I go into a game I want to escape into fantasy. I don't want a recreation of things that I see in the real world. Which is why Wind Waker, Final Fantasy VI, Tales of Vesperia and Okami are so endearing. In-game shaving isn't my idea of a good time.
And yes, Cage does seem to have gotten rather up himself lately.
stealth on 31 Mar '11 said:
if you want photo realistic graphics. Go outside
without artstyle games will continue to take less and less risk and games will get even more boring
gaming will die
alan666 on 31 Mar '11 said:
maybe if Quantic Dream produced a game that is original instead of just re-hashing the same old game like they did for Heavy Rain people may care what they went on about, there is nothing new in what they are doing, it's just style over substance.
TheBusterMan on 31 Mar '11 said:
Who crapped on his corn flakes?
chamony on 31 Mar '11 said:
hahaha nob
dannyhulse on 31 Mar '11 said:
2 things Mr. Cage,
1) Team Bondi have really sophisticated stuff that looks much more realistic than Heavy Rain, which despite looking kinda nice still had that old Video Game staple: weird looking faces
2) Not all games have to be ultra-realistic (even "realistic" ones) and personally I think that L.A. Noire strikes a good balance, realism that is actually important in the desgin of GAMEPLAY and not just in the interest of making things look pretty, but still enough like a game that it allows my imagination to have a foothold (unlike Heavy Rain where I felt my imagination was restricted to the context of the current scene, and never allowed free, if you see what I mean)
Spudfella on 31 Mar '11 said:
He's slowly disappearing up his own arse.
Imaduck on 31 Mar '11 said:
Dude when will he shut up?!
Rise_ofthe_Mike on 31 Mar '11 said:
I think people are being to harsh and not really understanding what he's saying. He's saying that this tech will only get them so far before they have to start using new tech. This isn't long term stuff. One day they'll need to do both body and face and they'll need to either upgrade existing technology or do something new. Something new that QD is currently working on. That's all he's saying. Personally, I loved Heavy Rain...Thought the game was amazing and the story was dark and very mature. It was a ground breaking game. Is it getting a little to his head, sounds like it...But he makes a solid point that shouldn't be ignored.
BenThomasFoster on 31 Mar '11 said:
For me new face capture thing is large hit and miss. The faces look brilliant as individuals but when they move because the actors arn't acting they over act the face and well the end result is un realistic and off putting imo from the trailers i've seen. Although when someone was shouting in one trailer it was pretty amazing to watch. so just develop the tech so actors don't over act
Budly Moore on 31 Mar '11 said:
Realism is an uninteresting dead end.
griffa94 on 31 Mar '11 said:
well he would say that no offence, it would have been more fitting to describe Hard Rain as a dead end
Budly Moore on 31 Mar '11 said:
Just to add to this, it's something video games need to get to so they can go beyond it; but then again, games have explored this area for a long time anyway. Which begs the question, once realism is achieved, what then?
equinox80 on 31 Mar '11 said:
Who rattled David's Cage??
It looks like winning at the Baftas has gone to this guys head. As a result of Heavy Rain doing well at the Baftas I gave the demo a go but won't be buying the game as it looked nice but felt really unnatural. I will be buying LA Noire though, dead-end tech or not.
agentxnofx on 31 Mar '11 said:
this is the digital equivalent of tracing.
wow, you're going to be the better tracer... good job.
Metagen on 31 Mar '11 said:
Well would you look at that. Someone in this thread actually making sense, well I never!
Very_Silver_Ownz on 31 Mar '11 said:
Why are people bashing him ? he could very well be right. could you imagine playing a GTA game which has literally the exact same graphics as real life with a huge city like America to explore or even the entire world O_O
ricflair on 31 Mar '11 said:
Exactly. Maybe when games truely do look photo realistic, and that includes animation and them not walking like they've got a plop in their pants, it will be something. But for now, but when games try to be too photo realistic, it draws my attention to how much they actually don't look realistic at all. When they try this, most characters have shiny - they can't get the light reflections on matt surfaces right for a start, although Drake in UC2 looked good in this respect.
Give me beautifully drawn and looking more like a very good drawing as opposed to a photo any day.
I can't see photorealism happening in five years. It can't be done on PC now (some amazing graphics that are very nice, but you can tell the difference between a game and film very easily), so will they be able to do it on the next gen of consoles? I very much doubt it?
Technology always progresses, what he's working on will probably be out dated in a few years, and what replaces that will be outdated after that and so on.
This way may be more realistic, but I'd place money on it being a hell of a lot less interactive and most importantly fun.
But we shall see, I'd be happy to be proved wrong!
Wakacha on 31 Mar '11 said:
I like David Cage but he really has started sounding like a complete tit as of late.
Dred0 on 31 Mar '11 said:
All of a sudden this guy is God's gift to the gaming industry. I agree with comments from both camps, but does he always have to claim that his way of doing things is best and others are wrong? Take The Neux, for example: Yes, according to him his games are all going to be brilliant, and something new and special but he doesn't make these claims at the expense of someone else.
FFS Cage is telling Activision how to make COD, Bungie how to make Halo, and Rockstar how to capture their characters. I don't think he ever played RDR.
If it matters, my Nan read this article and her first words: " He's a cheeky little upstart w*nker." And it's not often she's wrong.
El Mag on 31 Mar '11 said:
I think your nan sounds like a fantastic lady, treasure her.
Dred0 on 31 Mar '11 said:
Oh! I do, El Mag, I do.
delmariachi on 31 Mar '11 said:
He has a point but unfortunately the ego which is inflating at Charlie Sheen speeds is not helping him come across well at all.
There is a straight forward argument that creating dev tools for the future is indeed important, but as we have seen with Heavy Rain (which was very enjoyable), it doesn't neccesarily make something new and fresh, neither does it in the case of some other games always make it better overall... as the actual part that matters, the gameplay, is simply rehashed or updated from a previous incarnation and not always for the better (I don't mean Heavy Rain in this instance), depending on your opinion of said game.
The paradox between realism and escapism in games is an awkward one, I want as realistic looking as possible in say my sports or racing games but when it comes to more heavier story based games, i don't always want to play an alternate but "super real" looking world.
I think whatever rewards they have won for the game seems to be causing the majority of the gaming press to currently hang on his every word, this in itself is never always a good thing as it can unfortunately make you look, well as David Cage is looking now, a bit of an arse!
craiglackenby on 31 Mar '11 said:
I love my PS3 and was mesmerised by HR but as much as I think this guy is right in what he's saying, I just don't think an interactive Drama is comparable to an open world game that looks stunning for the size it is. Of course HR2 or whatever or even HR will look better than LA Noire it's probably a 1/10 of the size play area.
Can't wait for LA Noire though
Paranoimia on 31 Mar '11 said:
He has a valid point. If you're going to capture a performance, it has to be the WHOLE performance.
The OPM UK guys, who I believe at this point are the only people outside of the developer to have actually played the game, said in their podcast that while the facial animation is extraordinary, the rest of the graphics are not up to the same standard. This, they say, creates an unusual animation style, where the faces appear to be 'pasted on' to the bodies, so that the whole never quite seems 'right'.
Grapple on 31 Mar '11 said:
Shut it baldy. The only reason you won a Bafta is cos R* didn't want to be considered
KMakawa on 31 Mar '11 said:
Cage, dearest buddy.
Please, Shut up and get back in bed with Sony?,
Thank you.
MattyR95 on 31 Mar '11 said:
He's become quite outspoken recently. He's probably right about the facial-scanning but it's the best around so far (from the looks of it anyway). So does it really matter? I think he should shut-up before people start to hate him (if that hasn't already happened).
BOYD1981 on 31 Mar '11 said:
if developers want photo-realistic looking games that badly they should start making full HD FMV games, or 2D side scrollers using photographs.
Or they could just concentrate on making good games.
Very_Silver_Ownz on 31 Mar '11 said:
'' I think your nan sounds like a fantastic lady, treasure her. ''
'' Oh! I do, El Mag, I do. ''
ianson on 31 Mar '11 said:
He has gotten a bit big for his boots methinks. Heavy Rain was actually a spectacular failure (by Quantic Theory's own over-advertised standards)... it was good in terms of game standard story but, it set out to be "much more" than that. When judged by those standards it sucked. If I went to see a movie with a story of that quality I would walk out thinking it was spectacularly mediocre and cliche. They set off with massive hyperbole and pretentiousness and then get showered in praise after failing to deliver. Just sets him up to think he succeeded. What seriously annoys me about Cage is the way he seems to think that the only way forward is his own. I read an article in Edge- I think it was Edge-where he said he thought any game with clear cut win and lose scenarios or collection mechanics were pathetic and should disappear into obscurity. I see his argument it is his impressive rudeness and arrogance that bothers me. The guy made a game with 34 barely different endings and claimed he had created true meanings to your actions... why believe anything he has to say about what QD is capable of? He is like a rude, arrogant, self absorbed version of Peter Molyneux. Except Molyneux has created games that have completely changed the gaming world. I really want to hate Cage but, I think that is what he wants.
master warrior on 31 Mar '11 said:
The future of capturing is without green screen and we are almost there, after this we will see a massive increase in quality and usability
Bailey-AU on 31 Mar '11 said:
You may be right about that Mr Cage, but I think LA Noire still looks amazing no matter how Team Bondi captured their animation. Do us all a favour, get back to making your own game without putting down the efforts of other fellow developers. Arrogance isn't a good colour on you.
KippDynamite on 31 Mar '11 said:
I'm not sure what everyone is going on about - his statements didn't sound very arrogant to me. He is simply saying that there are multiple technologies available and he thinks that the one he has chosen will last longer. He even complemented Rockstar on the look of LA Noire. Isn't he allowed to have an opinion on a technology?
chronicwombat on 1 Apr '11 said:
i love games with all different kinds of graphical style, but it will be so cool to play a few with avatar quality graphics. bring it cage
conceptwhite_fox on 1 Apr '11 said:
#TeamDavidCage!
Metagen on 1 Apr '11 said:
No. No he isn't because it hurts insecure peoples feelings and causes them to come online and slag him off on a forum because it obviously makes him an arrogant prick.
SavageEvil on 1 Apr '11 said:
Lol, had a good laugh reading posts. People who hate him, just have nothing else to add so they just go on about him and completely miss the gist of it. Few people understand it and that is a few, doesn't bode well for the human race when hate causes you to be so blind eh?
I don't like David Cage, but he is entirely correct with the motion capture statement, how will R* work around this remains to be seen, but Naughty Dog has done the full mo-cap with lines thing and it works wonderfully well and gives you a cohesive experience that doesn't looks awkward, like characters cracking jokes and having deadpan stares or not even looking at the character they are interacting with. Everything looking disjointed and sewn together like a patchwork quilt of multiple fabrics that don't go together. As lame as Heavenly Sword was, the voice acting and motion capture was extremely well put together, facial expressions were equally impressive although a bit oversold at times. I hope LA Noire is not going to fall victim to the patchwork mesh of separate motion capture and facial capture madness, that would otherwise break what looks to be a pretty sweet game.
metallicorphan on 1 Apr '11 said:
hmm,it was a decent enough film...Christian Slater FTW
FlimFlam on 1 Apr '11 said:
I can see both sides.
What he is saying is arrogant, and does smack a bit of sour grapes, because LA Noire clearly delivers a slap to the chops of Heavy Rain in terms of facial animation, and I would imagine he is a little green at that.
Saying that, he is also correct in his assertion that the tech can only go so far. The thing he is conveniently brushing over in favour of blowing QD's tech trumpet is that it is ALL progress. Different rendering techniques, technology, all employed by different dev's to get a certain result, it is all closing the gap of the uncanny valley. Only being able to go so far with a techniques means people will always be working on something that supercedes the last 'big thing'.
Where would we be today if vector graphics hadn't been created? Polygons, texture mapping, per pixel shading etc? They are all steps towards a better visual experience, that apparent holy grail.
WHERESMYMONKEY on 1 Apr '11 said:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that L.A Noire is better than Heavy Rain. In pretty much every respect.
I'm sick of David Cage, If he was a film director he'd be a third rate one but because he's in the games biz he can get away with telling broken stories.
dragonjim on 1 Apr '11 said:
i've had enough of this guy, shut up and stop telling superior game developers what to do!
El Mag on 1 Apr '11 said:
Press X to RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!!
LordVonPS3 on 1 Apr '11 said:
I think all you whiners should shut up about David Cage. The man is talking about the motion capture technology that's being used for LA Noire and its limitations, he's not having a pop at Rock* for their game and where he mentioned LA Noire - that was most likely in response to a direct question about it... More to the point - Cage does have a valid point about the technology.
Looking at the LA Noire video in this article, the lighting is off, the textures are off, the sync between character's heads and bodies is off. That's not to say they aren't good (as Cage himself states), it's to say they don't quite look right and the reason for that is down to the approach the technology uses (image capture). If you watch the video in the article, you can see how the detective does seem a little puppet-like a la Thunderbirds at times, e.g. The part around mid-way through where the guy is talking about his men not being fully licensed. It's just a simple shortfall of the tech and if Cage doesn't see a way for the tech to get around it then you're going to need to know more about mo-cap than Cage to understand how to.
If Cage reckons Quantic are using new technology that helps get around a few of these lighting / texture / sync problems and that this technology has more scope for improvement as PC / console hardware improves (compared with the performance capture tech LA Noire are using) then what's wrong with that? It's great that tech keeps on advancing and if you don't want to play photo-realistic games - don't f***ing buy them!
The guy knows more about motion capture than any of you. If you're interested in their games or just mo-cap in general then just wait and see what Quantic put out next, buy it if you like it, otherwise shut the f*** up.
ace9846 on 1 Apr '11 said:
there is no way he could say what he felt about the la noire tech with out sounding like a cornhole so he should of just kept his mouth shut...just have a slice of some home made humble pie cage
gmcb007 on 1 Apr '11 said:
Valid points or not, i'm just sick of hearing about this guy and that angry birds prick.
Little Franklin on 1 Apr '11 said:
Yep I pretty much agree with everything he says, this new system works well for capturing all the subtleties of a real performance, but we'll never see it used in CGI movies because it just doesn't move or look that good.
eltonbird on 1 Apr '11 said:
Perhaps Mr Cage knows more than me, but from my own eyes, I would say there is no limit to the lighting and shaders that can be applied to faces captured with the LA Noire methods. There is plenty of reltime lighting going on in the video attached, so I have no clue why he would say otherwise.
There is only one thing that jumps out at me in LA Noire, and it's probably one of things you only notice because everything else looks great; Clothing. There is no motion on the collar around the neck, (and no crumple in the suits etc), and this is what makes the faces look a bit detached to me, not the lighting. If they find some way of blending neck motion during the face capture to the mo-cap performance, then that would add alot in my opinion.
EDIT: And I do think he could learn a lesson in humility.. or at least wording his opinions a little better..
shogunreaper on 1 Apr '11 said:
Dunno why people in this thread are angry at him, he's only saying that their technology isn't great and not going to be used in the future.
When you read what he says it becomes pretty obvious that he's right, i mean why use tech that only captures one body part at a time when you can use one that does multiple?
Use common sense before raging.
LordVonPS3 on 1 Apr '11 said:
The lighting definitely looks a little flat to me. Check this video out... It's as though the faces are low contrast / grey-ish and already come with some baked shadows. It's like all the characters are wearing copious amounts of foundation / make up (which they were when they were being filmed). This is down to the image capture tech and the need to get good quality captures, but the artists would need to do a lot of work to clean things up and I suspect the tech doesn't lend itself to making that easy.
Of course there is some real-time lighting employed. That's obvious, however, it doesn't look right either. e.g. 30 seconds in the guy's hat just doesn't cast the right kind of shadow at his forehead and yet his face is still picking up other light sources and reflecting shadows from what should really just be ambient daylight.
Also, in the alley-way (36 seconds), or when the guy's bending over and looking at the card (with the light panels in the ceiling behind him at 47 seconds) it just looks wrong... At 56 seconds - it's day time and yet there seems to be very low contrast... 59 seconds - the alley to the right is completely dark and yet the faces seem very light. 1m13s, dark, baked shadow in the corner, but the guy doesn't exactly have a bright spot-light on him (though maybe he should?) and yet he's fairly well lit - meaning ambient light - with the light source seemingly coming from somewhere completely different to what the shadow in the corner of the room would suggest.
Anyway, it doesn't quite look right, end of - but that's not knocking the game, it's just saying that there's room for improvement and if Cage reckons there's better tech to use for this kind of thing then let's wait and see.
What? Blending a la Athlete Kings? I think the entire head seems to be disjointed. The heads shouldn't bob around like puppet heads on sticks - independent of their bodies - if their movements were properly mapped to some kind of full body skeletal construct.
Don't try and add fuel to the flames here. Read the article for a hint. i.e.
Where's the actual question CVG posed? It's more likely Cage was just being honest in what he said and the way these articles are headlined, written and are commented on is more likely to be the problem. Just watch another video of him speaking here and you should quickly see that he doesn't seem like a humility-lacking bell-end, he seems more like the kind of guy who is especially interested in the synesthesia between tech and making things look realistic... Creating something emotive. This is his "bag" after all. It's not like he's getting all arrogant and worked up like that prat Greenawalt over at Turn 10 banging on about "passing batons".
It occurs to me that CVG were asking a question intended to be made contentious - because that's the way CVG rolls... What's LA Noire got to do with Cage? Then why ask Cage about LA Noire in the first place? Perhaps if Cage had told the interviewer to go f*** himself instead, then this would (however impolite) have been more appropriate.
eltonbird on 1 Apr '11 said:
In monments where there's a strong outdoor light, hats are casting shadowns OK, but in multiple light scenes (in doors / at night) they don't get the benefit of this. To say this is a limit of the scanning process used, I would say is false. Of course there's some ambient occlusiuon issues where accesories, such as hats, meet the rest of the body too. This is something nearly all games / technologies struggle with.
The capture room is lit well from all directions, probably to create a clean texture of the face. There's a difference between baked in shadows and a good degree of ambient occlusion on the face (such as under the chin, and around the nostrils etc) which is more than likely actually generated from the high res mesh that is generated by the capture.
The untextured phong lighting showing the pure captured mesh shows very clearly that lighting and shaders are not in any way limited by (or linked to) the capture method, so I think Mr Cage is either incorrect or mislead on that point.
alan666 on 1 Apr '11 said:
^^ this
Barca Azul on 2 Apr '11 said:
I read something similar to this before.
He may be right, this game has been in Production for about five years or more now and there may be better tech to use going forward.
It still looks great and hopefully will sell well too.
Little Franklin on 2 Apr '11 said:
But the mesh appears to be smoothed over and low resolution, only really good enough for simple low resolution shadows, nothing else. Plus there's no way of separating out detailed elements like eyes and hair to add more depth or effects or reflections in the eyes or whatever. You wouldn't see eyelashes sticking out for instance, and notice everyone we've seem so far has slick, flat hair. Flowing or straggly hair wouldn't look good with this system, it would look like a lump of hair coloured clay stuck to their heads.
procion on 2 Apr '11 said:
Maybe this Cagey fellow should take his stories and cameras and go Hollywood and make films. I've heard it said that Heavy Rain is better to watch whilst someone else plays it, which defeats the purpose of it's sum and parts. It seems we want to escape into the fictional worlds of the games we love to play, but at what cost are they taking the imagination factor away from us in a sense by making them more and more "real"? Go figure. peace...