Kara Breaks Ground In Motion Capture, Robot Nudity

The 2012 Game Developers Conference is happening now, and French game company Quantic Dream of Heavy Rain fame have released a demo of their new motion capture engine. The short film, Kara, dramatically follows the creation and testing of an android who isn’t what the factory ordered. It stars the voice and digital likeness of Valorie Curry (Twilight, Veronica Mars) as Kara.

Amazingly, Curry’s performance was rendered in real-time on a PlayStation 3 using a new 3D engine Quantic Dream built from scratch. The new engine uses 64 motion capture cameras instead of the 28 used for Heavy Rain.

At the heart of the video though is Quantic’s new motion capture technology, that seeks to record an actor’s entire performance in one go. Even recent titles that touted their motion capture, like LA Noire, still required separate acting sessions: one for body motion and another for facial and voice acting. Having an actor pantomime their facial expressions for actions that they aren’t actually performing isn’t always going to look quite right once it’s matched to a body. [Gizmag]

This motion capture is going to be used in an upcoming PlayStation 3 game. Quantic hasn’t released details of the game but says it’s unrelated to this short film’s plot. On the other hand, Quantic’s previous short film, “The Casting“, led directly to Heavy Rain. But enough gushing about how great technology is; we have robot nudity to gawk at:

[Sources: Eurogamer, Gizmag, io9, LaughingSquid; inset picture via Shutterstock]