Enhancing gameplay with horse mocap in Age of Empires
An Interview with Brent Breedveld, Animation Director at Relic Entertainment for Age of Empires IV
Brent’s extensive experience spans feature film and television to video games and has lead roles as both animator and VFX artist for many different titles and projects, including films like X-Men and G.I. Joe as well as games like Space Marine and Company of Heroes 2. In his current role, Brent is connected to a variety of disciplines on the team, working with many areas of development that impact motion in the game and art. We sat down with Brent to discuss the mocap work for Age of Empires, his experience with Animatrik, and how it fits into the game development process.
How important are horses in this game? And why was it necessary to capture the real movement of horses for the animation?
BRENT Motion capture was the main choice for our human characters, so we explored the potential of motion capture horses early to see if we could better match the movement style of our humans as opposed to a keyframe animation approach. Since Age of Empires IV has a significant amount of unit types across many civilizations and ages, we had the added challenge of creating animation variety across the game. By using motion capture for horse and rider we were able to achieve high standards in source animation as well as provide the variety and amount of animation that helps create more believable-feeling characters.
What are horses used for in the game? And is this in-game or cinematic animation?
BRENT We used the motion capture footage for both gameplay and cinematic animation.
Is this the first time your studio has completed a motion capture shoot with horses?
BRENT Yes, Relic Entertainment had never developed a game before that paired motion capture on human characters with animal animation. Capturing this foundation on both rider and horse at the same time gave us some great looking source animation.
How authentic was the horse motion capture data? Did it significantly improve the final animation?
BRENT The data is beautiful. There is so much life to the source animation. I especially love that the differences in each horse can be seen as we intentionally had horses of different sizes and weight to help create the perception of cavalry in formation. In the end our greatest difficulties in animation were connecting the source animation with our simulation, which was incredibly challenging. The source data however would easily rival the best horse animation out there.
Did the motion capture data enhance the historical accuracy of the final animation?
BRENT I think the motion capture helps provide a general consistency to the movement. It aligns well with the motion capture for all human animation and creates variety that we require to eliminate twinning and other inauthentic motions. Those things can break immersion and it’s something Relic has worked hard to give players in our games.
How is the motion capture data used? Is the horse asset built first?
BRENT I think you can do this a couple different ways depending on your needs, but we built our horse and skeleton first. Making sure it was the correct read for our game camera. We worked with Animatrik to get the right rig and geometry ready to be displayed during the shoot. This helped give us a good idea of how the data was going to turn out in the end. From there Relic built a rig in motion builder and remapped all the horse animations onto that one.
What software do you use to build the final asset? And what game engine is used?
BRENT We used Motion Builder to create the final animation source. We had additional motion capture sessions with riders (not on horses) to create animation layers for combat and other abilities. We combined all of this into the game using Relic’s Essence Engine.
What was your experience on-set? How did the horses behave?
BRENT I have to say that this was a great week. The horses seemed happy to do whatever we needed them to do. The riders and wranglers had no trouble taking direction. I think the reason the week went so smoothly is the preparation time that the Animatrik team spent with us. We had aligned on what was needed and everything went smoothly. I’d only expect the process to become even more refined as Animatrik continues to perfect and evolve their horse motion capture process.
How did you find Animatrik’s services during this project?
BRENT One of the most memorable experiences from my years on Age of Empires IV is working with the talented team at Animatrik on this horse motion capture. Not only was the team hardworking and professional but also down-to-earth and enjoyable to work with. The people were amazing, the horses were incredible and the animation we received was beautiful.
Thank you Brent for your time and insights! Learn more about Age of Empires IV at www.ageofempires.com!