True but motion capture is only a tiny part of it. The much more significant factor, IMO, is the engine and its capabilities: animation blending, attaching stuff to joints, ragdoll and other physics, and being able to manipulate bones/joints in code among other things. IMO, DX is already mocap quality animation, the animations just appear awkward because of the engine... and they couldn't find anyone who knew how to dance . One of the problems is that the models are extremely low poly count, hence the mittens instead of fingers, and because of that you never see anyone pull a trigger. Another problem is that without skeletal animation, there's very little you can do in code to make the animation look more realistic. In DX they literally have a strafe-shooting animation in addition to running forward and shooting animation whereas in an game with skeletal animation (CS for example) the torso moves independently of the lower body, so you get the toon looking at what they are shooting in addition to their feeting moving in the direction of motion. In DX, someone is either running toward you or perpendicular to you. And in DXMP it just looks like they are running toward you no matter what. The death animations look as good as they could possibly be in UE1, I mean, if you shoot someone from the back, they fall forward, if you shoot them from the front, they fall backward. Maybe they could have made a few different animations for each scenario and randomized it, but that's hardly an improvement. It's certainly not worth the effort at any rate.Phasmatis wrote:BTW you realise most games nower days have good animation because it's motion captured not animated by hand.
So really the problem isn't just mocap, it's the engine. Assassins Creed is a prime example of what an engine can do, think about how much AC's animation is due to code vs just motion capture.