GDC 2007: Machinima in the house - Pt. 1

I'm finally back in NYC after an extended trip between Australia and San Francisco. It was not only an extremely rewarding trip, but I had a chance to catch up with some really close friends as well.

The GDC, as always, was a blast. This was the second year in San Francisco (first there in 2005) and I had the chance to see friends and acquaintances who I hadn't seen in a year's time. SF still has some catching up to do in terms of San Jose as a location. Specifically, San Jose had the Fairmont - a hotel whose lobby was the impromptu meeting place for anyone and everyone. SF still has yet to find this space, but I'm sure it will over the next few years (GDC is in SF for the next six years from what I understand).

Machinima awareness
This year, more than any other, Machinima had its place around the GDC. While there wasn't a Machinima showcase like the presentations at the Austin Game Conference, speaking to game devs about Machinima as nearly as accessible as speaking to them about art pipelines or project milestones. While this probably doesn's surprise readers of this blog, this is a huge difference between GDC 2003 and GDC 2007. In 2003, I gained lots of mileage with my Machinima schpiel to various folks. Four years later, I'm approached by people as "that Machinima guy." While the moniker brings a smile, it's rewarding to know there's a more general awareness about the medium.

Interface happy
One of the great things coming out of this year's GDC was the attention to interface. No doubt driven by the masses purchasing interface innovation over graphics (Wii, please), quite a few of the booths on the expo floor were demonstrating desktop motion capture hardware/software.

This device by Emotiv, allows you to control motion though a brain's electrical activity. While still crude in terms of actual control (as compared to the conventional joystick), it will be very interesting to see its impact in say 3-4 years time. However, one area very interesting to Machinima is its ability to capture facial expressions in real-time (not shown in the sample vid). When asked about price and availability, their spokesperson said that "it would be out before the end of the year, and at a price less than the PS3." Ouch! -- and cool all at the same time.

Other takes at performance capture were applications such as Organic Motion (markerless motion capture) and Mova's Contour Reality "painted" facial capture system. We also saw another interesting application called Motion Portrait which captured a person's face (from a front view) and then laid it over a 3D mesh in real-time. (sorry, only a PDF is available to show in detail). The application also had hooks into using it for real-time performance capture as well.

In all, it was a very interesting shift in focus for the GDC. There are several Machinima folks who are also considering interface issues (Friedrich Kirschner, Andrew Young, Mark Riedl, and The ILL Clan), which I will cover a bit more in later posting.

I have some additional post-GDC thoughts to follow up - particularly with Sony's new virtual space, Home, and Jerry O'Flaherty's UE3-powered session on Digital Cinematography for Gears of War.