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Stuntman talks about motion capture for Demon's Souls remake

 According to the actor, it took a year and a half to record all the animations, and to work he had to get acquainted with the peculiarities of Japanese choreography.

Stuntman talks about motion capture for Demon's Souls remake

Stunt performer and stunt coordinator Eric Jacobas spoke and showed how the motion capture work for the Demon's Souls remake went. The man noted that he is far from a beginner, but to work on the game he had to learn again. Game director Gavin Moore and animation director Chris Torres wanted to see spectacular animations, so they demanded that the stuntman transfer the features of Japanese choreography.


“We had to record animations for each of the 20 weapon classes, including walking, running, sprinting, moving sideways, turning and rotating, starting and stopping, all with the rhythmic clicks of a metronome. These movements were subsequently combined into complex combinations, which we called "dance figures", - said Jacobas.

The man also admitted that it took a whole day to capture the first dance figure, but gradually, having entered the rhythm, the team reduced this time to 70 minutes.



The combat animation consists of five stages: initial pose, preparation, attack, recovery, and final pose. The preparation must match the attacks so that other players can prepare for them. Fast strikes have a short recovery, while powerful ones have a long recovery. Demon's Souls is a Japanese-style game with a lot of emphasis on character poses.

The director also wanted to convey the weight of the weapon, so the actor had to play with a weighty fake sword. In total, the creators of the game took more than a year and a half. And for the scene in which the character is fighting off eight enemies and which had to be filmed in one shot, they purchased two sets of equipment and hired stuntmen from Hollywood.



Demon's Souls isn't the first stunt job in the gaming industry. He previously worked on motion capture in other games like Mortal Kombat 11 , Mafia 3 , Marvel's Spider-Man and God of War (2018).

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