Martial artistry

Cinematics are an essential part of most great games, so it’s with bated breath that we await the next generation of consoles, which promise to deliver stunning gameplay experiences. This tutorial will guide you through the creation of a martial arts action scene that wouldn’t look out of place as such a game cinematic. The potential to store and display many more megabytes of animation data means that these sorts of scenes will also begin to find their way into core gameplay, blurring the boundaries between the interactive and the pre-rendered.

For this process, we will use MotionBuilder. The application is regarded as an industry-standard package for creating and editing animation data, whether keyframed or derived from motion capture. In the course of the tutorial, we will explore some of its new features, such as Character Extensions, as well as powerful, familiar favourites, such as the Story Editor. All of the supporting data for the tutorial is provided below, including rigged characters, motion from MotionBuilder’s sample file vaults, some more mocap moves provided by the Centroid 3D Group, and a Japanese house set that we had lots of fun designing. In terms of style, we’re heavily influenced by traditional anime, which is not only evident in the visuals but also in the action, as will become clear later on in the tutorial.

Be aware that there are some complex sections along the way, so it’s probably best if you feel yourself to be an ‘intermediate’ user. If not, it may be a good idea to work your way through some of the software’s built-in tutorials first. The help files are a great source of information, so if you need clarification along the way, check them out. If you don’t mind spoiling surprises, it may also be useful to take a look at the final rendered movie to get an idea of what we’re setting out to achieve. Keep it to hand as we progress.

Click here to download the support files (~20MB)

To get your free Personal Learning Edition of MotionBuilder 7, click here