Once the sole domain of flight simultations, outdoor landscaping is now finding its way into 3D action gaming. Cloth animation is tricky, and even in the world of high-end computer graphics, it s difficult to get right. Jeff Lander wanted to create realistic cloth in his environments and on his characters, so with his hardware accelerated graphics rasterization freeing enough processor power necessary to make it possible, he set set about creating a real-time cloth simulation. Sergei Boginski is the lead animator at Creat Studio in St. Petersburg, Russia. Inc. He was the second artist hired on for Riven and spent a good two years in overtime making textured objects, creating lit environments, and dabbling a little with designs.
Motion capture is a great tool for creating animation for certain types of games.
Like any tool or piece of software, if you learn how to use it properly, it can make your life easier and produce great results, but if you try to wing it, chances are you'll end up wasting time and money and may come away with nothing useful. Melianthe Kines discusses motion capture in depth. Despite the rich colors, intricate textures, and dazzling effects in today's games, the human brain still notices that something is missing, and that something might just be shadows . Running with this idea, Jason Bestimt and Bryant Freitag discuss real-time dynamic shadowing using shadow volumes, presenting techniques and code listings for creating accurate shadows in 3D environments. Jeff Hayes focuses on some of the techniques he has used over the last ten years for creating motion assets efficiently.