The 2020 Billboard Woman of the Year and Grammy-winning artist – Cardi B teamed up with Facebook for a series that featured Cardi in a number of experiences which were all caught on camera. Cardi B was joined by her husband – Offset, to experience motion capture, create a game character and get themselves into the game as they go through the motions at a rapid pace to see what it takes to build a game featuring custom animated characters from Character Creator, animations from Reallusion’s ActorCore, mocap with Xsens motion tracking, iClone motion editing, all into the Unreal Engine. This is “Cardi Tries… Gaming”.
The reality TV series features custom animated characters, motion capture and animation from the Reallusion pipeline wielded by Atlanta, GA based crew from Actor Capture featuring James Martin (master of ceremonies and TD), Joel Mack (Unreal Engine, Xsens MVN, iClone), Max Thomas (Unreal Engine, LED wall), and John Martin (Reallusion Character Creator).
Cardi Tries Gaming – Facebook Watch – 2021 – Episode 7
Episode 7 was filmed December 2020 in Pacoima, CA near Burbank on the XRStage. The team from Actor Capture worked with Jesse Collins Productions, Director Brenden Carter and Facebook’s production team to plan the shoot, find the location at XR Stage and develop the experience of the characters, mocap, and game levels from start to finish. Actor Capture utilized Xsens, iPhone, Character Creator, iClone with Unreal Engine to bring everything together for the two games.
The motion capture was made possible through the Reallusion pipeline, Xsens and the iPhone powered by iClone Motion Live to animate the Character Creator characters of Cardi and Offset.
James Martin welcomed Cardi and Offset to the stage after they were briefed on the events of the day and suited up in their Xsens Link motion capture suits. The motion capture led Cardi and Offset through sword fighting, melee combat and special finishing moves. James directed the combat scenarios while Joel Mack and Max Thomas were engineering the stage and capture workstations. A camera and production crew of over 40 people were surrounding everyone to shoot the show during the capture.
The character building process for the game characters included feedback from Cardi and Offset during the shooting as they directed their design in realtime. We started with four characters prepared in different game genres using Character Creator.
Cardi even got in on the creation and took the controls to customize her digital human double’s body, face and hair. Character Creator enabled fast creation, on set collaboration in real-time and quick export to the Unreal Engine projects.
Cardi and Offset selected items from the Character Creator library to customize their characters during the production filming. The entire episode was filmed in one take with the duo truly sharing their reactions of each step of the process.
The character creation process was displayed on the XRstage LED wall while John worked with Cardi B and Offset to design their game characters. The couple enjoyed making some tweaks to their characters and experienced the speed of building digital humans in real-time with Character Creator.
Behind-The-Scenes iClone Animation Cardi B and Offset for Cardi Tries Gaming
After Cardi and Offset finished their motion capture session with James, and they each worked with John to design a character with Character Creator, we captured some impromptu dialog with iClone.
Facial animation captured during the shoot was simple with iClone Motion Live, iPhone and LiveFace. The end result was provided by Actor Capture and used by Facebook Watch as a cut-scene throughout the episode. The full animation was given to production as 4K video renders from iClone and the producers at Facebook selected clips to add in the episode. The final edit added animated shots from Cardi and Offset using the iClone capture. This was a great example of Reallusion Character Creator and iClone going from concept to production and approval, for inclusion of multiple shots in the final edit.
Unreal Engine game characters and scenes were created with Character Creator and the assets from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Cardi Quest and Cardi Combat featured 3rd person fighting in two different styles that allowed Cardi B and Offset to face off in head to head combat or try and clear all the levels while fighting enemies to win. These vertical slices were made to provide an end to our story and finally get Cardi and Offset into the game. With the massive help of Reallusion tools, Actor Capture was able to make it all happen. The games created for the show are featured in a reel below with some clips for each game level.
The full production took place over the course of one day of shooting and since airing on Facebook Watch the “Cardi Tries Gaming,” episode has reached 3.9 million views.
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3 comments
I always get shocked with these technologies… damn it!
good post!
It’s amazing what they do with a simple damn computer!
LOL can I do this in my living room? Nice techs!