Animation for games: stylized or real, PC and console characters offer sophisticated actions, looks and stories

Post, March, 2005 by Ann Fisher, Claudia Kienzle

HALF LIFE 2

An action game released in November '04 for PC, Half Life 2 is a Valve Software brand (www.valvesoftware.com). It is a single-player experience, differing from the developer's other big brand, Counter Strike. In Half Life 2, the research scientist, who unleashed the alien invasion, is joined by a colleague's daughter to fight their nemesis G-Man. The main characters have normal proportions, blemishes, five-o-clock shadows and other realistic imperfections.

Story, characters and context are Valve title trademarks. "We're the guys that bring story to the genre, create characters that are able to deliver emotion and messages without having to say a word by developing a really advanced facial animation system," says Lombardi. "When Half Life was put into production [in 1996], it was macho man twitchfest everywhere. The idea was if the shotgun's cool, a double-barrel shotgun's cooler, and a quad-barrel shotgun is the ultimate. We were like, 'Ok, that space is getting crowded, so maybe if we go the other way there would be some value and appeal to people.'"

Valve spent several years producing Half Life 2 with a $40 million budget, investing in technology that included a physics simulation system to run the game. Players are never taken out of the action--there are no cinematics. Character performances are done on the fly by a combination of different animated objects that are controlled by the AI (Artificial Intelligence), broad level commands given by animators and scene designers. Facial acting is blended in. The game was hand animated.

Valve's facial animation system uses 35 key muscle movements authored for each character, with particular focus on the eyes. "One of the fundamental things of our character performances is being able to sell the eyes," says producer Bill van Buren. "In a lot of games, characters look like dolls or plastic puppets, especially if they get more realistic. If they don't get the eyes right it's very off-putting. One of our engineers, Ken Birdwell, did a lot of research on eyes. They actually reflect the lights that are in the room, they change their focal lengths as they're looking at things, like how close or far away they are. And then we also had to model behaviors for when you change your gaze, like if you're going to turn and look at something else, how does it move? Do the eyes lead and the head follow, and the shoulders and body follow that?"

Valve's tools include the proprietary engine with a level editor called Hammer and the facial animation/scene construction program called Face Poser. All basic animation is done in Softimage|XSI; they worked in many versions including betas, says van Buren. Hardware was a mix because it provided compatibility testing for the game.

WARHAMMER 40,000

Released end of '04 for PC, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, was developed by Relic Entertainment (www.relic.com) and published by THQ. It's a realtime strategy game, part of the Warhammer series.

Of the many different races in its universe, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War features four, each with its own hierarchy of leader, vehicle and builder units. The Orcs are animalistic, gorilla-like green creatures. Space Marines are military units, armored, human and high-tech. The Eldar are humanoid and nearly weightless. Chaos are Space Marines gone bad. Gamers can play any race. All are constantly under attack.