5 Lives Studio – the developer of Kickstarted Syndicate-’em-up Satellite Reign – is not a giant, multi-million dollar studio. They do not have the money for professional mocap facilities. Equally, they do not have the money for seven million trained animators to hand-animate absolutely everything. Having spent a lot of time talking to a game animator, I can reliably say that animation is tricky and time-consuming, so I guess this is a bit of a bottleneck for a smaller studio that’s trying to make something look lovely.
So what have they done to make sure Satellite Reign doesn’t look like I drew it in MSPaint? Well, they’ve got four PlayStation Eye cameras, arranged them in a semi-circle, and are using them for motion capture. I’m not even going to pretend to understand it in my current ill, mind-drained state, but you might!
Have a gander at the video below.
