Kojima Productions, the studio now hard at work on, Death Stranding, has unveiled a behind the scenes look at how they made the cinematic trailer for E3 2016.
Norman Reedus, the star of the game, partnered with Director Hideo Kojima to act out the sequence at the Sony Interactive Entertainment Visual Arts Service Group (VASG) in San Diego. The team used the California studio to produce reference data through motion capture technology, which was then sent back to the Japanese studio in order to be recreated in the game’s engine.
In order to provide the photo-realistic quality of the final video, more than just the actors movements were needed to bring a computer generated character to the screen. The process begins with a series of pictures being taken of the actor’s face and body from a complete 360 degree angle. This information provides the animators with a wealth of reference for skin textures and the way they interact with the surrounding light.
Moving on to the physical acting, the Sony studio is outfitted with a series of infrared sensors that register the movement of the actor. Measuring everything from limbs and joints, down to individual fingers. Painted dots on Norman Reedus’s face also detail the movement of skin across the actor’s various facial expressions. The process is guided by Hideo Kojima as he works alongside the actor while using a virtual camera rig that allows him to recreate the visual angles that he wants from the final video.
The complete process took 2 days for the actor to complete and was filmed between March 22 and 23. Giving the animators just enough time to get the final product ready for Sony’s E3 press conference. While very little is still known about Kojima’s strange new title, the game has been confirmed to be in-development exclusively for the PlayStation 4.
