Mixamo’s newest board advisor says animation tools will rule, but not at the cost of animators' livelihoods
Today’s common approach to game animation will become a rarity in just five years, a key industry exec has said.
Ed Fries, Mixamo's newest advisory board member and the co-founder of Xbox and Microsoft Game Studios, believes that animation tool use will ultimately be as widespread as engine use today.
“Animation is probably the last field in game development that largely doesn’t use tools,” Fries told Develop.
“It’s almost silly; with have teams perpetually recreating the wheel – working on the same walking animations with every new project. Maybe they don’t need to do that any more.
“It took time for game engines to become an established part of the game development business. And you can’t help but look the animation field of game design and know that, yep, it is inevitable that these tools will be widely adopted.”
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Fries has today been announced as one of the two new advisory board members for Mixamo, a leading 3D animation tech provider. He is joins the table along with industry pro Mark DeLoura – another experienced exec who’s worked for some of the industry’s biggest firms.
The two join Mixamo with the aim to leverage business from the development industry’s increasing need to save production time, and costs, while keeping standards high.
Mixamo offers an online catalogue of stock animations, allowing developers to browse through numerous 3D character motions and, using a slider-based control system, can tweak and customise accordingly. When finished, the motion can be downloaded as a package that can integrate into a variety of game engines.
This process has yet to win mass industry adoption, but Fries believes the picture will be different in a few years time.
“I think it’ll be one of those things that, when you see it, it’s obvious, it’s going to happen,” he said.
“It’s going to take time – and they’ll probably be some Mixamo competitors along the way – but in five years time it will be the norm, not the exception. The exception will be studios using animators for every portion of the game.”
Drawn out
But Fries insists that animation tools will not bring an end to the livelihood of game animators – a concern often cited as the key reason why there’s an hesitance to adopt services such as Mixamo’s.
“I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time meeting with animators, and thing is; there’s definitely still a place for animators. Just like there’s still a place for programmers! If you think about 20, or even 30 years ago, games were only made by programmers,” he said.
“Because of game engines, these days programmers have become specialised at creating unique aspects of games, so there’s still about ten in a team of 200. That won’t go away. There needs to be the same policy in other fields of development, I think.
“I’ve heard the [job threat] concerns from animators so many times. I’m seeing the Bungie guys this week, but I remember when working with them on Halo 1, they insisted on building their own physics tools. They were adamant. But as soon as they got to grips with Havok they haven’t turned back.
“That’s what developers are like, they don’t want to lose control. And these tools are not going to replace core animation teams, just like outsourcing hasn’t, and just like engines haven’t killed off programmers.
“I just don’t understand why animators waste so much time doing the same stuff over and over and over again. Why would you do that? Why did you not spend your money on making your game better instead? It’s a just not that interesting. They should be challenged by doing the complex, creative stuff. And you can have ten to twenty animators on a big, big project. That’s a massive saving.”
Sweet spot
Fries added that studios shouldn’t necessarily rely just on tools for all their animation duties. On the contrary; he believes tools can give teams more time to focus on the challenging and rewarding elements of the craft.
“There’s huge libraries of data that we can draw from, but what artists can then do is draw in their own unique designs – I think that’s the middle ground that the industry is heading towards.
“Hopefully, every game that’s being made has unique and special art – that’s the sort of thing animators are going to focus on, not slaving over how to properly make an NPC walk.
“I think eventually we’ll end up in a happy medium, with development teams using stock animations and art for the basics, and at the same time apply their own craft to making the more complex stuff. That’s what we’re trying to do at Mixamo.”
Fries adds that Mixamo’s business goal now is to make a bigger impact on the industry by talking to its biggest studios; to turn their attitudes towards animation tools and watch the industry follow the trend.
What a surprise - bloke who runs animation tools studio says animation tools are the way to go.
"It’s almost silly; with have teams perpetually recreating the wheel – working on the same walking animations with every new project. Maybe they don’t need to do that any more."
They don't. They never have. Ever heard of scripting? Any decently set up biped rig can be transferred to another model in Maya or Max. With a bit more work you can retarget animations to other more complex rigs.
By making comments like this Ed shows his complete ignorance of the process.
Audio tools are here to stay and just being blind to them will only marginalise you further
Audio tools?
Besides, has Fries been involved in anything successful since he left MGS?
As much as I agree with the need for more tools in animation to make a better workflow (i.e. Havok behaviour), how does buying stock animation improve the look and feel of your game? There goes the personality and characterisation of your character....these are the specific and special things that an animator can do for a game. Tools are great to help improve the ENGINE, the animation should be kept in house and responsibility of breathing life into game characters should be left to the animators. We don't want a bunch of robots walking around our games, do we? (unless of course it's a robot based game you're making ;) )
It seems like they give full keyframe data based on their download options...so it's not just stock motion. And they auto-retarget too no? Call me lazy but if I have to make another standard hit reaction motion I might just hit myself. I'd rather get a motion that's well done and put my own style and timing into it. I'm too old for walk cycles. Sounds like Mixamo's my newest little animation intern. Good idea guys.
I think Ed has a great point about the evolution of the character animation pipeline. it will go through the same "democratization" process as many other parts of the game development process have already done. I think the point is not on new tools but rather in easily accessible content that can be customized enough to meet developers' needs. I like what Chris said: "Mixamo is my newest little animation intern".
I think a lot of good points were made in the interview with Ed as well as in these comments. As an animator, I totally see maybe losing the "character" if I were to use stock animation. I like having my hands on the creation process, making that character a part of me. But I've played with Mixamo, and I think it really helps get that process started. Being able to customize a motion first off gets me a different motion than someone else. Then, I can retarget that straight to my character from their website and download it onto my 3DS Max biped. From there, I tweak and add more character and make it more my own than stock motion. I just see this as saving a lot of time and money and still getting good results.
I believe there is definitely a place in the industry for this kind of service. It seems like a good way to increase the productivity of studios by supplying fast options. It could be great for indie devs too.
Coming from an animation background, in mostly cinematics and tv series, content. I completely agree, with Ed Fries, that having a system or a vast collection of motions to draw from can only help in production. That being said having the tools to have non destructive retargetting is a must, and that's what Mixamo does. I worked on numerous projects where the time and budget constrainst were so tight that all the animators instead of pushing the envelop where just getting it done. I believe that Mixamo helps in that regard as giving a base and then the animators can either build upon it or have time to focus on the creative moves that can't and shouldn't be mocapped.
Mixamo can be a blessing especially when faced with a short turnaround time and a modest budget. As an animator, we can focus on the creating awesome character actions for game specific motions instead of spending valuable time on animating various walks and jumps. Mixamo motions can also provide a solid foundation on which animators provide character specific details quickly with a few layers. Great article, insightful and thought provoking.
It's pointless recreating the same dull warehouses and forest levels....why not just use the same ones in each game? And characters, why not just use stock characters? They are all usually just big muscular meatheads or females with oversized comedy boobs. Stick a shield and a sword on them or some kevlar and a bazooka, bob's your uncle...And music! it all sounds the same doesn't it? Another thing..why bother having coders reinvent the wheel? Everyone should just use the unreal engine. In fact what's the point in creating all these diverse games? We should all just make the same game. Even better have mixamo just make a game that we can all license off them and then we can 'tweak' it and add some character.
Here's the rub- if I decide that I don't want to model a new character, I could make one in Poser.
But I hate that. Every time I see some kid on Deviant Art get a million hits for some Poser model he "created in 3D," it drives me up the wall!
Stock is only useful for people who don't care about art. In other words, it's the CG version of B-Roll. If you don't care about what you're doing, I say go for it.
