Rock Band 2 cinematic TV spot presents CG facial and driving gymnastics – Don’t try this at home!
CGSociety :: Production Focus
29 October 2008, Paul Hellard
Motion capture actors were suspended from aerial rigs, bounced on trampolines, stood on boards balanced on piles of tyres.
These were the special tricks devised by Passion Pictures in London for this gymnastic performance of the digital characters in the latest Rock Band cinematic. CGSociety talked to Passion's producer Anna Lord and visual effects supervisor Neil Riley.
The same actor, Ben Davies, was used in the creation of the first Rock Band cinematic Ad in 2007. "We shot video of him doing some extreme facial expressions while singing the track," says Neil Riley, Passion's VFX Supervisor. "These formed the basis for Image Metrics to convert the video to the 3D character."
Passion Pictures took their lead from the success of the original Rock Band cinematic, and designed the high-energy spot to look like an animated music video of a band racing through the desert on various vehicles while performing the original Cheap Trick song, “Hello There.” Image Metrics used its proprietary facial animation technology to create about 60 seconds of complex facial animation for two characters in the spot.
"The system analyzes the actor’s facial movements and maps that analysis data onto the two facial rigs," explains David Barton, head of production at Image Metrics, who oversaw the use of IM's proprietary computer vision software. "The facial rigs were designed using a FACS (Facial Action Coding System) based blendshape set and an animation control interface was designed within Softimage’s XSI. The Director, Pete Candeland, is a fan of Ben Davies' extreme movements, and he wanted the capture crew to match the actor as closely as they could."
The facial expressions were quite extreme, which made the production pretty exciting for the crew. "IM’s technology is capable of replicating any facial movement, however we did need to push the 3D model to its limit by creating a facial rig that could match the actor’s key poses," explains Barton.
"The client wanted significant input on the modeling," explains Anna Lord. "Our crew were required to base the face shapes, hairstyles, clothing and instruments, on assets that were available in the game. But Harmonix allowed two excellent modelers to come up with some great characters and push the details to more realistic levels. There was even significant research done on ginger beards and belly hair!"
