DETAIL QUESTION

[starvenger]

I think I'm going to use one of my charcters as myself,
             -take photos of me walking and crop them to suit, are there any examples of this in other games? I imagine unless there was a rarther large loop of animation it may look rubbish.

[AGA]

Yes, Duzz Quest did it.

Please refrain from describing your bowel movements in detail in future.

[Krazy]

I tried this once with my friend, it's really hard to take photos of you walking and make it look like the characters aren't slidding accross the floor, I think you'll need video capture and a treadmill or something to make it look good.

[sedriss]

I think the game Toonstruck did that aswell.
Christopher Lloyd played the main character.

[Gilbert]

Also, don't forget the old access games, some that I can recall:
- Mean Street
- Mean Street 2: Martian Memorandum
- Crime Wave (well this is not an adventure game...)
- Coutndown

[AGA]

Under a Killing Moon and Pandora Directive, too, Gilbert. Pretty much all the Tex Murphy games were motion-captures.

[Gilbert]

Well, I didn't coutn mean street 3 and mean street 4 purely because they're sorta changed to a 1st person "3d" engine, while they used motion capture for the movies and such, they did't utilize the old 3rd person character travelling representation most of the time like those old games did.

[James Kay]

I don't think you'd need a treadmill but a video camera defenitely helps (as opposed to still photography). Just make sure you're filming from straight on and there is room enough in the frame for one whole walk cycle (from foot to foot). Then you can just cut out the frames and realign them. Oh, and it's porbably best done outside on a cloudy day to avoid strange light issues, though some (not all) of those could be fixed in Photoshop anyway.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Riddle of Master Lu, Harvester, Gabriel Knight 2 (only in a few screens, though), Darkseed 2 and The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes 2 also used this method. Personally, I think it's very tricky to make it look "just right". Master Lu and Harvester look too artificial, and those few screens in GK2 as well. Countdown and Martian Memorandum, ditto, although MM does look better. Only Toonstruck managed to really pull it off, I think - Darkseed 2 and Sherlock Holmes 2 do better than the others, but not by much.

Personal opinion, accourse.

[Pesty]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Phantasmagoria. I haven't played Phantasmagoria 2, but I think it does this as well.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

It's not the same. The games we're talking about use regular 3rd person movement, only with pfotos of actors. In Phantasmagoria 1 and 2, what you have is an actor in a certain pose for each room. He doesn't move freely about the room.

[Bigryan]

I just gotta say in terms of games that use live people you should look at open mortal.  It even has tutorials on making animated characters from live actors.  And the game is just plane fun/funny.

[TerranRich]

Quest for Glory IV and Space Quest IV used motion-captured actors (as did the cutscenes for King's Quest VI), then painted over. MIght not be the exact same idea, but close.

[Pesty]

It's not the same. The games we're talking about use regular 3rd person movement, only with pfotos of actors. In Phantasmagoria 1 and 2, what you have is an actor in a certain pose for each room. He doesn't move freely about the room.

I thought that they did have walking animations of the actors, but is has been a while since I played. 

[simulacra]

I am planning to have some very simple motion capture in the intro sequence of a game I am working on. I'll have a go with my digital camera.

[James Kay]

[pedantic]
I doubt you mean "motion capture". You'll probably mean taking footage for "rotoscoping", which is the practise of drawing over prerecorded footage.
[/pedantic]

Sorry.Ã, 

[simulacra]

[pedantic]
I doubt you mean "motion capture". You'll probably mean taking footage for "rotoscoping", which is the practise of drawing over prerecorded footage.
[/pedantic]

Sorry.Ã, 

That's alright. I am the pedantic type too. But no, there will be no redraws of these photos except for changing the background.