Animation Bootcamp: Animating Cameras for Games

[Music] all right get this uh so cameras whoa that's loud um historically that now it's off no is that all right all right uh historically cameras in games have sort of been an afterthought for a lot of game teams um game plays and cinematic uh usually it's sort of a last minute thing to assign it to somebody give somebody ownership over the cameras and and uh often times that person doesn't have a lot of real world camera experience um it's getting better but we still have a ways to go to catch up to film and television so uh what I'm hoping to do uh in this pretty brief talk is give a basic understanding of how cameras work and function um move on to uh how that applies to composition and then wrap that up with uh how that ties into games

excuse me uh first a little bit of info about me uh I'm uh I've been animating for games for just about 14 years now um these are some of the games I've worked on many of which you can find in the uh oh people are supposed to move in towards the center if you can it's getting crowded thank you um yeah so these are the games I worked on uh a lot of them you can find in Jay's Bargain Bin that he talked about um uh 14 years I spent about 9 years at ea uh a lot of sports games uh I then moved to Square Enix uh was animation director on Hitman uh and I am now in La at a company called robotki where we're working on uh human element right now uh it's a firstperson survival game uh much of my career has been spent in cinematics uh focused on a lot of Storytelling through characters through cameras and and a lot of those fun

things so let's jump right into it uh as animators when we begin animating a character we're looking at a lot of reference We Gather a lot of our our photos and videos and stuff like that thumbnailing even running around the studio doing our own moves acting like Goofs uh thanks Zach for the video um but how often do we do this when we're about to animate a camera is it still going oh let's watch the whole thing okay um how cameras work and how they function the language of cinematography it's remained largely unchanged for for decades and we've grown up seeing our stories told Through The Eyes of these physical cameras so because of this CG camera can often fall victim to the same thing that characters can and that's the uncanny valley um you can see this a lot in films like uh the bullet time sequences in The Matrix films Matrix films

sometimes it's maybe a little more subtle like a Michael Bay film um uh so but I think if we can we can understand the basic physiology of how cameras do function and work then we can apply that to our CG which will help us create some more believable movements some more believable uh compositions uh at first cameras can seem really daunting there's a lot of moving Parts a lot of controls even CG cameras have tons of things to key frame but really when you break it down into its simplest Parts you only have a few things to control you've got the lens the aperture the shutter speed and where you position it and how you move these cameras so for lenses it uh it doesn't sorry let me move this uh when it comes to lenses choosing a longer or shorter focal length isn't just about how far the camera happens to be from the subject every lens distorts the image in a slightly different way uh shorter focal

lengths give you a wider field of view uh but also creates greater depth and separation between your focal focal points um a longer focal length gives a much narrower field of view but it also flattens the image as you can see here um this is something to keep in mind especially when you're shooting characters uh as your lens can distort the the facial features and sometimes take the character off model before you've even animated it uh this is the difference between a 300 mil and a 25 mil lens uh and you can see how you can easily break your character without uh being careful about how you choose your lenses uh when it comes to aperture uh it refers to the little diaphragm that controls how much light enters the camera uh what it also does is it changes the depth of field um the area considered in focus is called the circle of confusion that's that little place between the two brackets there the focal point in the middle um if you change uh

the amount of light coming in you adjust the circle of confusion there um and you can see how letting in more light moving the focal point closer or further away from the camera can also affect this um unfortunately in a lot of games um this is what our depth of field ends up looking like uh we've got a very distinct range that's perfectly in Focus then a sharp drop off and then a place that's evenly out of focus um you see this used a lot in games especially as a tool to highlight something or separate it from its background um if our goal is immersion in the universe anything that sort of reminds us that we're looking through the eyes of a CG or simulated environment kind of breaks that immersion um another unfortunate side effect is this miniaturizes your characters or your environment a little bit they look like like little toy figures instead of

something that was shot through a physical camera sorry if anybody hears from Rise I just called you guys up um uh instead of relying solely on depth of field to focus the viewers attention we could be using a lot of the other tools we have on hand we've got you know lighting uh use of negative space leading lines contrast of tone and value uh limbo here for example was a great uh use of negative space and contrast of uh of tone um this next one from Rise uh is actually a really great shot they framed the character in the doorway um used sort of a contrast of detail the character in The foreground is highly detailed where the background is starting to use more abstract shapes and and uh and leading lines and uh contrast of tone sort of draws you to the character uh this last one's another really great example but on the opposite side of the scale it's quite evenly detailed there's saturation of detail across it but what they' done is they've

used a lot of tonal contrast and leading lines you can see the branches leading in the brightest point in this image is where they want you to look even the characters driving in towards it is those two guys on the upper right um another really cool thing uh how they've used contrast of uh tone is if you look down sort of the center bottom there's a guy there who's also an enemy wearing red in a green forest so he stands out clearly doesn't belong there he's not part of that uh something to pay attention to um sorry so the third thing we have control over is uh shutter speed so typically in games this isn't something that's as Illustrated as often as it could be we're starting to get there now with our newer engines uh this can be represented a number of ways uh exposure motion blur even frame rate um as I said we're not using them so much now but modern engines are starting to take motion blurry into uh into account and it is

helping um smooth movement out and uh and again create a more believable experience um the last main area we have over the control over this is where we position the camera and how we move it uh as I mentioned before uh cinematography and camera work hasn't really changed much that language we're we're very used to seeing and we're very used to getting our stories through this when something breaks really sharply from this uh we can run into that issue of The Uncanny Valley again this is never more evident uh than at the start of the CGI craze uh flying cameras and and crazy slow-mo sequences and I'm not really selling their uh creative use short but just because we can do something in CG doesn't mean we should always uh so the tools that we use for film are are fairly basic there's jib crane uh tripod steady cam Dolly uh these are constraints we're

accustomed to viewing these through but how often do we rig them like this we do this with our characters we study their physiology where all the bones are in a in a lion a giraffe or anything but we don't typically do this with cameras um I wanted to show this uh short clip from an Assassin's Creed trailer uh if you could pay really close attention they've they've really added a lot of subtle organic um dirt basically onto the camera and it feels like there's a physical cameraman in the scene filming this um adding just a little bit of that it goes a long long way to creating a believable experience just let this play out but it's really nice the subtle movements the the little imperfections

cuz at the end of the day when we watch these regardless of how smooth they try to move the jib crane how smooth the dolly tracks are there's still human operating that camera and there's still little imperfections that go into that movement um so taking these basic mechanics how camera functions uh let's just move on to composition um by now most everybody's heard of thirds use the the rule of thirds it's a pretty safe bet that just placing your focal point your character's eyes or something along any of those intersection points is going to create a sort of a pleasing composition but I want us to start thinking about why we're choosing to put that character there what is the purpose of that um I got a couple more to show for this but what what are you trying to elicit from the audience what is uh what are you trying to communicate so example for this shot um feels a lot different than this

one I've used the same shot um same expression same rule same rule of thirds but in the first one I'm up against the edge of the frame and uh there's not a lot of movement nowhere to go it actually has a sort of a sense of of Wonder there's something fantastic in front of me uh whereas this one there's sort of a sense of impending danger or there's something about to crush me really it's just using the same thing but just choosing to use different uh scale and different position on the frame um I love this shot this sequence if you haven't seen everybody's seen Forest Gump right um it's a very very deliberate use of thirds Forest has been running he's been running for over a year I can't remember exactly how long and he gets to the end of his run and he's run out of frame metaphorically visually everything his return home is behind him and it's it's a great representation of how he's just hit the end of his willpower his whatever Journey he was on um what also sort of

emphasizes this in the movie is that almost the entire movie and I encourage you to go back and watch it uh Forest is frame dead center in the frame for most of the film uh anytime there's a big sort of changing moment for him in his character Arc or anything like that then he starts to be put on a third or there's movement in the frame but for the rest of it he's a very neutral character in his Universe it's the external characters that are the sort of extremes in his life that come in and out and this is such a great sort of illustration of that being very deliberate with how you choose the thirds um one of my favorite charact uh directors who most notably uses composition in a very deliberate manner is Wes Anderson um any of his films are absolutely just a a course on how to use uh composition to tell a story should probably left the volume on

so uh one common issue that we do run into uh is the unintentional use of tangents um tangent the dictionary definition of a tangent is a a straight line or plane that touches a curved or curved surface but sort of for our purposes it's more of a general thing that anytime two lines touch but don't cross over uh you can see this a lot in film and TV and when used deliberately it's great because it draws your eyes exactly to where you want to but a lot of times this is done unintentionally and it can take the viewer's eyes away from what you wanted to them um some common sort of uses you can see

this like heads touching the top of the frame this is a very very common one you can either crop in or pull back to uh to get rid of this but your eyes are sort of drawn to these intersections um a couple more shots of heads touching the top um how much control converging lines have over the viewer's attention is something that's actually been measured uh there's several companies that test all sorts of things with ey tracking software and they can see what uh visual stimuli uh draw people's attention and they've created heat maps to show this and you can see on here there's a vanishing point at the end of the tracks they were drawn to that immediately but now there's a point of contrast where there's movement and a darker object in the scene and they're drawn to that you can see as this camera pans through this shot when there's ambiguous space and there's not a lot of focal points you see them darting all over darting all over the size of these is relative to how long they stayed on that area um but you can see they're searching searching searching searching they're finding

contrast points finding contrast points then there's movement and they're on it and it's really telling how people sort of see your stories and to be very deliberate about what choices you're giving them to focus on is is super super important I'll let this finish out but you can see as it goes behind the building now they're looking around looking around uh um a while back Chris Roman uh storyboard notes from The Simpsons was circulated a lot and this became sort of I think a little bit taken too literally a lot of their notes were that um to always switch from a two- plane Focus to more of a three plane always show three planes to create a more Dynamic angle I think uh using this you can usually get pleasing shots but you're ignoring the use of a lot of other uses of space so you've got limited flat deep or even

ambiguous space um flat space uh in its most basic definition is a two-dimensional uh thing there's no there's not a lot of perspective or Vanishing points uh the opposite side of that is deep space um one or more Vanishing points uh spacing in scale of objects or focal points creating the feeling of depth um limited space is sort of a combination of the two you can kind of think of it as a a diarama you've got got multiple planes of two-dimensional space playing on different layers from the camera um Wes Anderson again uses this quite a bit uh Hitchcock did a lot as well um the last one is ambiguous space this removes any cues of depth or or and places the viewer in a much more uncertain State about where they are and and this can be a very very useful tool for creating unease in your viewer um a lot of these can be used to sort of

elicit specific reactions like I said uh using too much of any in a sequence can do the opposite you can start to devalue what you're trying to accomplish um but CH deposing them next to each other creating strong contrast then you can maintain that um you could use this in a game say you were making a game where half of it was spent inside a Mech or inside of a base but the other half was spent in a large open world contrasting that with sort of a limited or flat space but then when you're out in the world it's much stronger if there's Dynamic angles wide angle lenses and things like that instead of always shooting like Michael Bay and everything's a beer commercial um so uh flat space deep space are often used to uh plus story moments flat space is also used in a lot of Comedy you'll notice um to punctuate the comedic moments uh d space is very dramatic um very emotional uh other tools you can use uh negative

space and contrast of toner value uh negative space is a low detailed or sort of Blank Space uh next to a high detail or strong silhouette um another tool contrast of tone or value uh using light and dark contrasting colors uh draw the viewer ey viewer's eye to where you want them to look um another example uh this also employs uh Vanishing points and leading lines to just suck you right into where uh he wanted you to look the opposite uh this is a good example of ambiguous space sometimes it's you don't want to create a sharp sharp thing you want more of a ambiguity in your shot you want to show that your character is in a safe place if there's um continuity of tone and pattern like you can see here uh this is a great shot uh Zack Ra's character is in sort of a very ambiguous place in this point in the story uh he's returned home for a funeral uh it really conveys perfectly

the feeling that he wanted to give the viewer at this point even the choice to play some sort of dead center in the frame uh was very deliberate and effective at this point he sort of you know just toose with his expression it's perfect such an awkward shot and it's really really memorable alternatively if you reverse this uh you can make the character feel a bit more tense and uh this is such a great shot that sort of Echoes who these characters are and what split sides of his personality you see Edward Norton framed it's all Grays it's very linear everything's perpendicular you see uh Brad Pitt's silhouette everything's jaggy it's bright saturated colors you even got the brown doorways not quite framed properly so you can see it's it's a visual representation of who these guys are as characters um so moving the camera during the shot should also be a very deliberate Choice uh if done without consideration Maybe too frequently you could again you'd be

diluting the value and the effectiveness of the tool that you have uh for example it's become really really popular to do firstperson cameras um this sort of POV style movement says to the viewer that they're looking through the eyes of somebody that's in the scene and if this is not what you're trying to convey uh then you're sort of you're diluting your currency uh battl Star Galactica was I think a big reason why we've got a lot of these crazy rack focuses and stuff like that these days um again if you use this too much Michael Bay um you're just it's it's confusing it's tiring to watch and you're sort of like what did I do Michael Bay right all right um so all this is fine for cinematics but what about gameplay um first person gamely the camera camera

is the character the limits on what we can get away with are are quite limiting fov and depth of field anytime you take controller away from the uh the user you run the risk of breaking immersion um any changes you make need to be done subtly uh in a very natural way it's very easy to pull the character out uh small changes going from stationary to faster movement to uh illustrate speed um going from indoors to Outdoors cuz sometimes it's actually serves gameplay as well to have a greater field of view uh and sometimes you can get away with a little bit of control taking control away from the user to um interact with objects in the scene but it does need to be done in a very subtle way and this is just about done

one more as you can see here during the roll or during yeah interacting with this electrical box you can see that took control but it was a very fluid control um and third person uh you can have a little more control over the camera and where you place it you can see some differences here when um entering and exiting cover situations or uh actually there's a good spot here where as he goes indoors uh in this Watchdog clip you can see we push in a little bit more um creating more of a confined feeling is a very deliberate Choice uh you can also to communicate objectives or things like that you can take some slight control away from uh from the user they do this in the combat sequences here

um so regarding field of view it's um a common misconception that fov size is uh directly related to motion sickness um like this this is basically I just took a camera and I constrained it directly to the head of a character running uh wider fov sort of reduces this but it's just movement relative to what's in frame um we were looking into this a little bit at robotki and one of the teammates sort of realized that if you stabilize the Horizon you don't need to eliminate movement but it actually does reduce well he was getting violently sick one day because somebody changed the value in a camera during our play test and he couldn't play it for more than 2 minutes um this is the exact same thing uh just with the Horizon stable there's no difference in the camera movement at all but it's a much more stable experience all I did was uh stabilize the rotation relative to the Horizon why this is I think is because as humans we've evolved a number of stabilizing mechanisms to maintain sort of visual stability on objects whether it's a predator or prey or anything like

that uh there's some really complex things that do this we've got the vestibular ocular vestibular colic and vestibular spinal and that all works sort of in tandem to maintain still head movement still eyes um and if anything breaks that we start jittering around and rotating the camera wildly it's counter to that and it feels unnatural we feel queasy and you again you're watching a Michael Bay movie um it's it's again it's an evolutionary thing and uh it's hard to run away from a bear if you can't see straight so um I think that is just about it I'm going to leave you guys with some uh reading material this was very light coverage this is something that could take forever to cover all the little bits but I cannot recommend these two books enough um barebones camera course by uh Tim schel uh which was actually one of the first books ever given to me when started animating uh it's a literally is

a barebones book there's like stick figures to illustrate how to frame things but it's great short read uh the next one which is a bit more advanced is a visual story from Bruce block uh I had the chance to see him speak at a sigraph once and completely changed how I uh look at composing shots so I definitely suggest reading that um as far as uh websites check out the uh seven golden camels um Mark Kennedy who writes this is a story artist at uh Disney and he was the lead story artist for Tangled and he is uh it's just so full of amazing information um definitely go check that out and that is about it I think I have about five minutes for questions and as always is that not showing up there it is yeah you can I love talking about this stuff so feel free to contact me or come grab me afterwards yeah maybe four minutes for questions if

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] anybody no questions all right it was perfectly clear thanks