pretty obvious that they dont use it, npcs move in weird, unnatural ways and it pulls me out of the story they’re telling. Not sure why they’re not investing in this, but would be nice to see it.
I’m pretty sure that the tools that they use to do cutscenes are basically just machinima tools, they can only use preset emotes and limited puppeting. At least they’ve gone in to fine-tune the lip synch in some of them, NPCs have been MAWP-MAWP-MAWWWP-/handchop-/wave hands-ing their way through cutscenes since forever.
2 Likes
I’m just glad some cutscenes have actual lip sync and expressions instead of default animations.
5 Likes
I wonder if there would be a major uncanny valley effect trying to mix WoW’s art style to proper motion capture?
1 Like
now that would be an experiment worth seeing lol
1 Like
Mocap is usually used for realistic games. In games like WoW and Overwatch and even Pixar and disney movies, the animations are made by hand.
I actually think they use motion capture at least for reference in some fully-rendered cinematics, not the cutscenes using the in-game engine. I’m thinking about Brad Pitt Anduin and some of the Sylvanas stuff in late BFA/early Shadowlands that definitely has an “Act-IIIIIIIIING” vibe about it with little squints and microexpressions.
1 Like
Probably. Ngl I know mocap is hella useful. And sometimes animators use mocap then tweak it with an animator moving the model certain ways. Kinda like the mocap being reference then they do something toony with it.
But there’s also a charm of someone just taking a model and moving it around without mocap.
i also like how the dragons move their faces when they talk but not their mouths lolol