Turkey's mocap industry is in its infancy, so Motion Blur needed to come up with a creative solution to deliver animations for its AAA game.
Software such as Unreal Engine is enabling the democratization of the game industry and has helped the team at Motion Blur build outstanding levels for their gameplay. Xsens enabled accurate, humanlike animations without the need for a cumbersome motion capture set-up.
Motion Blur is a game development studio based in Turkey. It’s championing motion capture within the country, becoming the first Turkish studio to use the technology to a large scale. Motion capture was used to create realistic animations for their game, Black State, whether fighting, walking, or running.
Official Reveal Trailer - Black State
In Black State, players take on a mission from a secret organization named the Architects. They must uncover the secrets behind this operation by entering doors that lead to different environments – each of which acts as a clue to the overarching storyline.
For a game studio consisting of just 36 developers, creating a project of this size was no mean feat. “Before even starting to produce the game, we had years of previsualization to find the correct tools we needed,” explains Ömer Faruk, Motion Blur’s studio director. “The democratization of game development thanks to tools like Unreal Engine and Metahuman Animator was crucial for us.”
The team built multiple environments including subways, science labs, and high streets to act as different game levels. That’s not to mention the sheer realism of the visuals, which easily compete with notable AAA games such as Portal and Detroit: Become Human.
Not many game studios can say they’ve used real fighters to animate their combat sequences, but Motion Blur can. And it’s thanks to the studio’s Head Game Designer and CEO, Kadir Demirden, whose idea became integral to the game’s animation.
“We used Turkish MMA cage fighters, Murat Kazgan and Kaan Kazgan,” explains Kadir. “It was a pretty hard watch, but the results we got were outstanding.” After hours of motion capture, Motion Blur had over 110 fight animations to use within the game.
“Not a single piece of Xsens equipment was damaged in this process,” Ömer mentions. “It was a brutal fight, but the technology remained in one piece.” The nature of the Xsens setup meant that the fighters could perform naturally without any obstruction. Thanks to inertial technology, the fighters could perform without a traditional set-up of cameras or a suit that limits flexibility.
“Xsens technology allows for precise and efficient data recording without the use of a motion capture stage,” Ömer adds. It provided the studio with the flexibility to quickly capture any movements they needed for in-game animations. “If a developer needed a specific movement, they could put the trackers on, perform the actions, and have the data instantly received on their computer,” Ömer says.
Realism in Black State's gameplay
With a game set in differing scenery, visuals were at the forefront of Motion Blur’s priorities. The studio used Unreal Engine to achieve this goal, noting the tool’s accessibility and ease of use paired with the Xsens live link as crucial features for smaller game development teams. The studio continues to pioneer high-quality gaming in Turkey, with Black State in the late stages of development.
In terms of the animations, Ömer and the team wanted to give the game a realistic edge. Using MMA fighters did just that, resulting in gritty combat scenes and a whole library of motions to be used during gameplay.
“We needed accuracy for our animations, and Xsens provided that,” Ömer explains. “We needed a lot of combat animations, and using a mix of MMA fighters and inertial motion capture helped us achieve this.”
Take a look at Xsens motion capture products.