New interview with McNamara by IGN

[CDTOE]

IGN has made a new interview with the director of L.A. Noire, Brendan McNamara. Most of the questions revolve around the research process that the team has gone through.

Click here to read

Some new pics (click on them to get full resolution):

[Bigdon23]

Good find and good read, thanks

[The New Blueguy]

Arrrrrgh!! Ya beat me to it, man!! Great read though. Also Hilary commented in the comments section and he said that they'll be going to Rpckstar to see the game next week but they'll have an article embargo until early March. So he wants questions to ask them.

[Canoxa]

Good read. I wonder if his back shriveled when the interviewer compared the game to GTA.

[Duxfever]

Haha oh shit hella realistic graphics

[Niall]

Is this the first look at the map?

[KrankyKid]

nah, there was an older pic where cole was in the same room i think.

[Dave]

(02-08-2011 12:28 PM)Niall Wrote:  

Is this the first look at the map?

That map is based off of this 1947 freeway master plan:



Both maps only show major roads, the area is vast, too vast for the game if we believe the scale shown. The game is said to be huge, but that huge? I'm not sure.

[australia]

Thanks for posting the link dude.

[None]

thats nice to read, i hope they will release new trailer soon. (not "very soon" like R* dudes always says)

[Bleichert]

I found another interview, and looks like more interesting.
Part I: http://www.ifc.com/news/2011/02/intervie...rendan.php
Part II: http://www.ifc.com/news/2011/02/intervie...ndan-1.php
Part III: http://www.ifc.com/news/2011/02/intervie...ndan-2.php
Part IV: http://www.ifc.com/news/2011/02/intervie...ndan-3.php

Interesting fact!

Quote:Q: Right. That's an interesting point. Because you are using actual talent for visuals and not just voice, you're dependent on their whole performance in a much more important way than traditional mo-cap.

A: Yeah. You could have a scene because we screwed up on QA'ing the dialogue. And we go in and shoot the scene again, and his sideburns are like a couple centimeters shorter. And when you're talking to him you see that part of his hair go up and down. That's the price of the fidelity we achieve with MotionScan.

Q: That's pretty awesome. But you of course can fix some of that stuff in post-production, I imagine?

A: No, it's really difficult to fix. Because you'd have to go in there and change lots and lots of frames. There was a sequence which we were trying to find for ages, where he sneezed in the rig, Aaron Staton. I mean, it's not the kind of thing you'll use over and over again in the game, where he's sneezing constantly. Where are we going to put that? But when he does sneeze, you can actually see his face go red for a few frames as his skin goes red. Then you can see it calm back down again. It's pretty amazing, but that kind of thing makes it so we have to nail specific takes on the initial performance capture.

[CDTOE]

Thanks Bleichert.

Interesting quotes:

Quote:And speaking of trailers, in the second one from a few weeks ago, you guys teased the serial killer. Do you feel that's giving away too much at this point, with a couple of months to go before the game comes out?

In some ways, yes, but in other ways, no. It's funny, looking at the Web, and everyone's saying the game's all about a serial killer. But that's just the homicide desk. The traffic desk has a different kind of plot that runs through it. And the arson desk has different things. And the vice desk has different threads that run through those cases. That's definitely not what the overarching game is about. But there's actually more unsolved murders than we had time to cover, which are real and from the period.

Quote:So, to wrap up, is there another genre of film or literature that you would love to kind of play around in the way you have in noir?

Yeah, there is. And [Rockstar exec] Sam [Houser] and I talk about this all the time because we see the last 10 years in games (or even before that, really) as kind of a journey to what sort of entertainment we actually want to make. And this is another step along that route. Because now we're saying that human interactions and humanity is going to be part of video games.

So instead of punching people here, you can actually talk to them and you can read what they're saying and decide whether you're going to emphathize with them in someway or another. So it's just another thing you add to the tool kit of people making games. It just means that you can have a chance to get it to a bigger audience, and take it to completely new places. Yeah, I have some new ideas. Sam and I are kicking those around at the moment.

[Bleichert]

@CDTOE
I still don't understand this part "And when you're talking to him you see that part of his hair go up and down." and the part where Cole got sneezed. What does it mean?

[CDTOE]

The hair thing is a technical problem caused by Motionscan when the actor doesn't adjust his face properly while he's on the chair. If I remember good, in one of the interviews with McNamara, he said that for an actor's face to be captured within the frames properly, he shouldn't move his face forward or backward for a couple of centimeters.

The part about sneezing is about Cole sneezed in one of the scenes. McNamara described how Cole's face skin goes red during the scene in which he sneezes, and then the redness starts to disappear. It's not something you will constantly see during the game, but it could be a way to show how amazing Motionscan is.

[Bleichert]

(02-13-2011 07:11 PM)CDTOE Wrote:  The hair thing is a technical problem caused by Motionscan when the actor doesn't adjust his face properly while he's on the chair. If I remember good, in one of the interviews with McNamara, he said that for an actor's face to be captured within the frames properly, he shouldn't move his face forward or backward for a couple of centimeters.

The part about sneezing is about Cole sneezed in one of the scenes. McNamara described how Cole's face skin goes red during the scene in which he sneezes, and then the redness starts to disappear. It's not something you will constantly see during the game, but it could be a way to show how amazing Motionscan is.

I see, thx for the explanation. I'm curious to see how 'their hair go up & down'
Maybe any detail explanation on this? Like what or how the hair is go up & down?

[CDTOE]

Well, to be more detailed, he meant that when they want to re-capture a scene by Motionscan, they face difficulties such as the changes that occur on Aaron staton's hair for example. His hair's style needs to be done in a certain way, but the problem when they want to re-capture a scene but his hair changes a little bit. Let's take another example, would it be normal to capture his face when his weight was 70kg and it when increases to 80kg? would he look the same in all the scenes?

That what McNamara meant by his hair goes up and down. If you watched behind the scenes trailer, you will see that each morning before going into the capturing process, each actor should visit a hair saloon inside he studio to shave his hair in a certain fixed way so that he looks the same in all the scenes.

[Bleichert]

(02-13-2011 08:26 PM)CDTOE Wrote:  Well, to be more detailed, he meant that when they want to re-capture a scene by Motionscan, they face difficulties such as the changes that occur on Aaron staton's hair for example. His hair's style needs to be done in a certain way, but the problem when they want to re-capture a scene but his hair changes a little bit. Let's take another example, would it be normal to capture his face when his weight was 70kg and it when increases to 80kg? would he look the same in all the scenes?

That what McNamara meant by his hair goes up and down. If you watched behind the scenes trailer, you will see that each morning before going into the capturing process, each actor should visit a hair saloon inside he studio to shave his hair in a certain fixed way so that he looks the same in all the scenes.

I see. Too bad Brendan McNamara and his team can't fix that problem. He says it's really difficult to fix. Because you'd have to go in there and change lots and lots of frames

[The New Blueguy]

Honestly, I think it's a small thing. They more than likely tried their best to make sure that those things just about never happen. We probably won't even notice until we specifically start poking around for those things. Especially, something as big as the sneezing part. They probably specifically went in and removed that.

[Dave]

There seems to be some confusion about what he meant. All he's talking about is continuity. If scenes in a film aren't shot in chronological order or on the same day there may be slight differences from one scene to the next. The only way to solve the problem once scenes have been filmed would be to digitally alter every frame. This is exactly the same with L.A. Noire.

The exact styling of a person's hair is something that's almost impossible to recreate so there will often inevitably be slight continuity errors. Phelps's hair going 'up and down' would be because they are mixing recordings from different days in the same in-game conversation. Imagine Aaron Staton painted his face blue for one day of filming and Team Bondi mixed that footage with the rest. In some coversations Phelps's face would turn blue and back to normal again. It's the same with hair or anything else on a person's head that MotionScan records.

As for the sneeze thing, McNamara wasn't saying that the sneeze was something that needed to be edited out, he was saying that during a recording session Staton sneezed and it was captured like anything else would be. He was saying that if the sneeze was used you'd have to use footage that was recorded before and after to keep continuity as Staton's face went a little red and there would be an obvious and unacceptable jump as Phelps's face changed colour if you didn't.

[CDTOE]

Two new interviews:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1724050/la-no...motionscan

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/20...la-no.html

The most interesting quotes which contain new information and more insight into Motionscan:

Quote:Will some crimes simply be unsolvable if you can’t break the suspect or get a confession?

McNamara: The main thrust of the narrative dictates that Phelps solves cases and moves through the ranks of the LAPD. Every case has their own fail conditions, of course, but as I mentioned earlier, we don’t want a player’s inability to correctly analyze suspects to prevent them from proceeding on in the case. Obviously you can fail because a game by its nature is a contest. One of the nice things about the game is that many of the cases have alternative routes throughout that different players will experience differently.

Quote:Will there be some cases that can be solved exclusively without violence and vice versa?

McNamara: The level of action varies greatly from case to case. Many cases are solvable without the need for violence. For example, instead of pulling out his gun and shooting a fleeing suspect, Phelps can fire a warning shot that stops the person in their tracks. Other times, Phelps has little choice but to roll up his sleeves and pursue justice using deadly force. It becomes a balancing act between introducing players to a radically different type of gameplay and also maintaining a level of comfort and familiarity.

Quote:When does the Black Dahlia storyline start appearing, and how prevalent is it in non-dahlia episodes?

McNamara: One of the reasons we chose the year 1947 was because the Black Dahlia case happened in January that year. Having said that the Black Dahlia murder like Jack the Ripper is an unsolved case and will never be solved conclusively. As incredibly tragic as that case was it provides more of a backdrop and sets the tone for that year instead of being a case that Phelps gets involved directly in. Phelps begins the game as a beat cop in the LAPD in January so his chances of being involved in such a high profile case would have been minimal. The Black Dahlia case will definitely have a bearing on the cases Phelps must solve during his stint on Homicide. We can’t get into too much detail about its effect on the overall narrative, but Phelps and everyone else at the LAPD will certainly feel the pressure to put an end to a string of gruesome murders all of which are based on real murders that happened that year.

Quote:How has using MotionScan changed the way you write a game, direct a game?

MotionScan has made the post-production process become much more streamlined and efficient. The technology directly transfers the actor's performance into the game engine, so very little post-processing work is needed. That means we can free up artists and designers to focus on other aspects of the game, as well as pay more attention to fine-tuning things from a storytelling standpoint.

Quote:After the camera rig puts all of the footage into the software, what happens then? What kind of compositing is done? And how much work is needed after that to get it into the game?

For a game there is no compositing as such. Once capture is complete a frame range is selected for processing. Then a resolution is defined. For games this is a lot lower than the native 2K x 2K resolution that the system captures. Once the frame range and resolution is selected the data is sent to a blade cluster and processed into a 3-D file. This file can either be in the Motionscan native format for game engines or for an art package such as Maya or Max. The data file for the head is then parented to the neck joint of the character in the game or rendering package.

The data is resolution independent--it can be played back at any resolution from 2K x 2K downwards. This is up to the design of the game and how much RAM the game needs to allocate to this task. In L.A. Noire its 30MB for three people talking on screen. The playback of the data can also be varied based on the distance from the camera so less triangles and texture samples can be used when the face is smaller on screen.

Quote:And what are the plans for MotionScan beyond L.A. Noire? Will it be used in other Rockstar games or TakeTwo games? Licensed out to other companies?

We have a number of other customers who are either currently using Motionscan in new games or are evaluating the technology for upcoming projects. There has obviously been a lot of interest from the film business as well. We are certainly excited about MotionScan and its future potential. For now, however, the focus is on completing L.A. Noire and getting it into players hands on May 17.