The Godfather Game : Procedural Awareness

When I was part of EA's World Wide Visualization Group, I developed the idea of "Procedural Awareness". It was a system by which emulation of emotions and interests were procedurally added on top of animating characters. This is a split-sceen of left(before) and right(after) preliminary integration in one setting. Everything additional that you see on the right-hand clip: eyelines, head motions/poses were done procedurally - no keyframing. Programmed by Eu-Ming Lee, this was the first time it went past prototype, and got into a game. EA later integrated an implementation into their proprietary animation tool and kicked off a talk with it about "EA's animation tech" at E3.

I *think* this is in a whole bunch of EA's games now.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Jason Osipa
• WWVG
• EA
• Electronic Arts
• Godfather
• Eu-ming lee

[fpsmanager]

@euming HAHa! Awesome quote!

[euming]

Thanks for posting this, Jason. Sometimes when people ask what I did at EA, I say "I don't know. I just do eyes. Just eyes."

In the first animation, nervousness makes him change his look-at target more frequently. He's actually looking at things going on in the background scenery, cars driving by, pretty girls walking around, suspicious characters lingering, etc.

If we had a mood for "lecherousness" I could have made his eyes follow the hips of the women walking by.