The company hidden behind Wukong is coming to the forefront along with motion capture technology.

Text | Lan Jie

Editor | Liu Shiwu

Lifelike game characters moving nimbly in a virtual scene. How is all this achieved?

With the explosion of "Black Myth: Wukong", more and more game technologies have begun to surface. For netizens, "motion capture" is no longer a strange term, and more motion capture actors have also emerged from behind the scenes to the forefront.

In the real world, there are still people who can perform those handsome and anti-gravity actions in the game, such as "motion capture actor Kyle". In the videos on his various social platforms, Kyle uses a stick as a fulcrum to perform a 360-degree rotation in the air, and finally swings down a heavy stick, almost making Newton's coffin lid unable to hold.

And Kyle is the professional motion capture actor behind "The Chosen One". Currently, his cumulative fans on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Kuaishou have reached nearly 100,000.

Unlike the extensive application of motion capture and CG technology in film, television, and games abroad, the domestic motion capture industry is still in its infancy. However, with the increase of major game titles, this industry has become more and more concerned, and some problems have also emerged - What are the differences between motion capture actors and ordinary actors? What are the differences between body motion capture and facial expression capture? What processes are needed from motion capture to the final presentation, etc.?

For these questions, Shanghai Jiangshi, which undertook 2/3 of the motion capture tasks of "Black Myth: Wukong", may have more say.

Shanghai Jiangshi was established in 2017 and received an investment from Century Huatong in 2020. It is a service company specializing in 3D motion capture and post-data processing for games and film and television. Li Yang, the founder of Shanghai Jiangshi, told 36Kr Games, "Motion capture actors are a relatively special existence, and their comprehensive requirements will be relatively high. For example, some actors need to have a foundation in martial arts, dance, or have the ability to imitate in the secondary dimension, etc."

Therefore, there are not many actors who can meet the needs of motion capture, and the domestic demand for motion capture actors is still increasing, all along with the maturity of the domestic motion capture technology application. In order to better ensure the supply of talents, Shanghai Jiangshi has also established cooperation with Shanghai Theatre Academy and others to provide internship opportunities and training bases for college students.

Motion capture refers to a technology that captures the actor's movements and combines data processing to finally present as a character image. Compared with the traditional "hand-keyed animation" (referring to the process in which animators create animations by manually adjusting the keyframes of each frame), motion capture has higher efficiency and is widely used in film, television, games, and advertising and other fields.

Therefore, in order to ensure the presentation of the final game character, the expressiveness of the motion capture actor alone is not enough. Li Yangyi said, "Motion capture data can only meet the product-level standards after processing. For example, sometimes when the actor is performing, in order to make the movements smooth, they will not really hold a very heavy Ruyi Jingu Bang or Nine-Tooth Nail Rake to demonstrate, but the game needs to highlight the weight of the weapon, which requires us to carry out particularly fine post-processing."

Many core members of Shanghai Jiangshi were once employees of Electronic Arts (referred to as "EA"), an internationally renowned interactive entertainment software company, and have accumulated a lot of experience related to motion capture and applied it to the current work.

For example, in motion capture, there are body capture and facial capture. Compared with the former, facial capture has a higher demand for emotional transmission, so the requirements for the precision of motion capture and data processing are also higher. Li Yangyi said that due to the lack of professional talents, the domestic facial capture is still relatively weak. When in EA, Li Yangyi took a systematic "making expressions" class.

Combining the experience at that time, Shanghai Jiangshi has formed a set of its own complete motion and facial capture process. For example, the 3D animation of Bajie's cutscene in "Black Myth: Wukong" was completed by Shanghai Jiangshi.

In addition to Game Science, Shanghai Jiangshi has also successively cooperated with many top game companies such as Tencent Games, NetEase Games, and Zhongshouyou, and participated in the motion capture production of many popular games such as "Honor of Kings: World", "Naraka: Bladepoint", "Moonlight Blade", "Justice Online", "Infinite Nikki", and "Peace Elite".

In fact, after years of exploration and technological iteration, the overseas 3A game development pipeline has been relatively mature, and motion capture has become an indispensable and crucial part of many 3A game production processes. Judging from the development of the domestic market, in the past, many games only used motion capture as a supplement to the production of materials, but this situation may change with the increasing demand for 3A production in China.

Nowadays, with the development of the domestic motion capture industry and the huge popularity of "Black Myth: Wukong", the popularity of Shanghai Jiangshi has increased, and the team size has also continued to expand.

At the same time, it is not satisfied with being just an animation outsourcing company. Li Yangyi said that in the future, some shifts will be made on the basis of the existing business, including expanding the business of special effects and rendering, as well as the development of art research and development capabilities, so that motion capture can better support the production of high-quality games.