Mom's Minute

Kara High Tech Performance Capture

Have you ever noticed how some video game characters show the physical actions sometimes required for gameplay, but their facial expressions seem to be bland, or non-existent?  That may be about to change.

At the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco on March 7, 2012, David Cage of Quantic Dream, Heavy Rain's video game creator, announced there is a new way to capture a character's face, voice and body actions.  He demonstrated his innovative idea during a 7-minute demonstration called "Kara."

Kara

The technology is called full performance capture where all aspects of a portrayal are recorded at once -- instead of being performed separately -- as commonly done. The method is different from that utilized for the movie "Avatar" in that Quantic Dream used about 90 sensors placed on an actor's face, instead of a front loaded camera which was used in the movie. This innovative technology is purported to be faster and less expensive since both audio and movement are captured together. 

During the demonstration, the android Kara was portrayed by actress Valorie Curry. Kara speaks in English, French and German and sings in Japanese.

David Cage voiced that even more interesting than digitizing character's actions, would be to add meaningful content to video games that could use this technology.

Cage stated that Kara is a demo and is not the next project for Quantic Dream.