As we locked all animation work on Stranglehold, I transferred to the Midway Austin studio over a weekend in late June 2007. My first game at the Austin studio was Blacksite Area 51. I jumped onboard to help finish the cinemas. Two weeks before I transferred, I assisted the lead animator with all the cinema motions in the Chicago motion studio. I started applying the motion data as soon as I arrived. Working on these scenes was a little different than the previous cinematics I had worked on. In Blacksite, the cinemas were more interactive similar to Valve's Half Life. This was interesting because of the additional variables that had to sync and manage in engine run-time; as opposed to having a pre-rendered movie or a static pre-determined camera at run-time. Please take a look below at some of my contributions to this game.
Here is an example of a four person motion capture session. The injured character appears in the game in civilian clothing. In order to keep production fluid, I used the soldier character model instead. The civilian model was not complete at the time and the soldier was the same skeleton. I completed the animations including the weapons and hand animation in about four days.
Here is another four person motion capture I edited. I animated the camera just to present the animation better. In the game, the player has control of the camera.
This is another cinema scene I completed. This scene was cut near the end of production.