Gamebryo: The Emerging Face of Game Graphics

An Evolving Landscape
With next-generation consoles and multi-core gaming PCs, game players the world over are now able to experience a whole new level of graphic detail. To deliver that detail, game studios are relying more and more on advanced game engines such as Gamebryo from Los Angeles-based Emergent Game Technologies.

Gamebryo has long been recognized as one of the most trusted and powerful game engines on the market. The enhanced design and power of Emergent’s Gamebryo engine maximizes the throughput of game graphics on multiple next-generation platforms, including Sony PlayStation 3®, Microsoft Xbox 360 TM and Nintendo Wii®.

To showcase that power to game developers, Emergent created and unveiled a series of new demos at the 2008 Game Developers’ Conference in San Francisco.

The Next Step in Graphics
Emergent’s 2008 GDC demos were ambitious projects. Emergent needed to develop multi-faceted demos showcasing the power of the Gamebryo’s multi-platform power, as well as the latest version of the product – Gamebryo 2.5 - and its ability to deliver triple-A, next-generation quality visuals in real-time on the Xbox360, Sony PlayStation 3 and multi-core PCs. Emergent also wanted to highlight Gamebryo’s pipeline flexibility by integrating other middleware and content creation game technologies into it, such as Scaleform® GFx™ and Audiokinetic® Wwise ®.

“Platforms and PCs are getting more powerful, but they are still incapable of pushing the data required to deliver photo-realistic graphics in-game. Given those limitations, one of the greatest challenges developers face is delivering believable animations that immerse game players in the game world. So we put a lot of effort into creating some beautiful environments and characters for this demo to showcase Gamebryo 2.5’s ability to do just that,” said Ben Hoyt, producer on the project.

To that end, Emergent spent a lot of time considering their demo characters and the attributes that were needed to bring those characters to life. One area they felt was critical was facial animation. To ensure the characters’ faces displayed realistic -- and hence believable -- emotions, Emergent turned to Image Metrics, a company specializing in performance-driven facial animation.

High Quality at High Speed
As a first step, Image Metrics and Emergent worked together to define the technical specifications for the characters’ faces, particularly the bones and blend shapes of the facial rigs. Once those issues were defined, Image Metrics organized a markerless, makeup-free video shoot of the facial actors. The Image Metrics capture process is unique in this regard. Using standard or HD cameras, or a head-mounted camera, Image Metrics captures an actor's facial performance while he or she is being directed by the client. Since there are no time-consuming markers or makeup to apply, the capture process is less costly.

“The thing that really amazed me about working with Image Metrics was how quickly they could turn around high-quality facial animations. Just about a week after capturing videos of the actor’s faces and the voice-over, Image Metrics dropped 40 seconds of cleaned up, finished facial animation on our FTP server. And to top it off, the quality of the lip sync in the facial animation was fantastic.”

In addition to the speed and quality of the facial animation developed by Image Metrics, the studio acted as an extension of Emergent’s talented demo team to ensure the best possible results on the project. From creating the rigs to supervising the video capture, Image Metrics made the outsourcing process as simple as possible for Emergent. Moreover, the markerless and makeup-free process provided Emergent with the flexibility to direct the actors as they needed.

“The whole process felt much more natural and comfortable from an actor/director perspective,” said Hoyt. “It also meant we could do a session really quickly with a minimal amount of setup, cost and work associated with getting things ready to go.”

Since Image Metrics works in whichever 3D package its clients prefer, the final animations could be easily integrated back into Autodesk® Maya®, Emergent’s 3D animation tool of choice for the project. Moreover, Image Metrics supplies the animations with all the associated data, giving Emergent the freedom to make the final tweaks needed to showcase their technology to its fullest.

A Look Ahead
For all of its complexity, Emergent’s GDC 2008 demo met with extremely positive feedback. Not only did the demo draw large crowds; it clearly showcased Gamebryo 2.5’s power and technological flexibility in delivering complex graphics. And it proved without a doubt that game technologies are continuing to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Image Metrics was proud of its role in contributing to the success of the demo. “Renowned for its innovation in game development, Emergent Game Technologies has set the standard for technical flexibility and power for game engines,” said Image Metrics Executive Vice President Kelvin Duckett. “We were glad to play a part in helping Emergent showcase its technology.”