Motion Capture Or Animation For Games?

Thanks to TotalGames.net for their article discussing whether videogames should use traditional animation or motion capture to capture the movements of in-game characters. The piece points out: "One of the major problems with motion capture is the way that moves can sometimes appear disjointed and separated, as a character goes from one set of moves to another", but an advocate for motion capture comments that the process is "..a lot faster, as long as you can retain the subtleties from the point of motion capture to the raw data to the point where it reaches the engine." Can you tell the difference?

Comments

Animation v motion capture

[Xerxes of Zealot]

It depends on the game, am I right?

I dont want to play Mario and watch some actor whos been digitally captured, I wanna see some goddamn animation.

Likewise, I don't want to play Manhunt and see animation, then I want motion capture...

Re:Motion capture

[neostorm]

If the animator is any good, the sense of gravity and weight is much better in models animated by hand, rather than motion capture.
Motion capture will always look more realistic, but so far there is a severe lack of animation skills in the industry. Mark of Kri and Jak and Daxter (both for PS2) are the only games I can think of off the top of my head that have well done character animation by hand.

In the end it comes down the type of game you're creating. You would never give a colorfully animated character a motion captured animation set, and giving realistic people exaggerated animations would give the game an entirely different tone.