GT Legends, GTR2, RACE
Simbin Studios AB | 2004-2006
Between 2004-2006, whilst running my own one-man animation company, ‘Dan McGeoch Animation, or DMA’, I contracted to work in the role of an external animation consultant to ‘Simbin Studios AB’ of Sweden to introduce characters to their GT Racing simulation titles ‘GTR Legends’, ‘GTR2’ and subsequently ‘RACE, The Official WTCC Game’.
The work involved initial design and planning of the motion data, character rigging, blocking and key-framing of proofs, the organising and directing of motion capture shoots at ‘Simula’, the University of Bradford’s commercial Motion Capture facility , data clean-up and motion editing, pretty much the entire pipeline from design to implementation of the final motion via the ‘Renderware’ middle-ware platform.
During this time I’d teamed up with my old friend Roger Bacon, ex Warthog, who provided all of the character modelling for the projects. Between us we provided a solution to Simbin’s character requirements.
Pit Crew
A golden rule of motion capture is to hire performers that are talented at the type of motion you are targeting. Simbin AB, who were formed by an ex professional FIA GT champion, Henrik Roos, required absolute authenticity with the pit-crew motion and so hired a professional FIA GT Team Engineer to perform all of the mocap for us on this shoot.
It’s also very important that props used during mocap are the correct size, shape and weight in order to achieve accurate natural motion. We used actual FIA GT props in the form of huge GT wheels, a ‘very’ heavy pneumatic wheel gun and also had a custom wheel mount built to act as a sturdy hub.
A great deal of work is of course required in preparation for going to mocap. Below is an early proof render of a generic stand-in character performing a wheel change. The motion was all blocked out from key-framed sequences as part of a series of tests/proofs.
Here’s another early blocking showing the bigger picture of how the overall sequencing might play out. We had very good reference from professionals within the GT racing field so the general choreography and timings were as close as could be to the real thing.
The next step was to choreograph all of the other characters that make up a full pit crew and finalise all static and dynamic props prior to creating a shot list for subsequent motion capture. The timings and choreography throughout were critical and needed also to be flexible for fast or slow pitstops.
The below, early mocap preview, shows a partially populated scene (the wheel men) which would make up part of the final scene.
NB: All of the issues seen in this clip, such as hyper-extension, loosely blended transitioning, etc, were all of course ironed out for the final motion.
The Drivers
With the driver motion we wanted to be as authentic as possible and because we were targeting this data at historic GT racing as well as modern day, I decided to play with the idea of implementing the Heel/toe action as can be seen in the video below. (again this was all early test/proof stuff so the character is yet again Rogers ‘Dude’ character; the final drivers would of course wear overalls and helmets)