Part 2
World of Gothic:
Last year on the cgsociety-message board, André Hotz mentioned you had considered using the “Gypsy4” system of «animazoo» for motioncapturing purposes. What exactly was the reason you needed to buy a motioncapturing system and why in particular did you decide on “GypsyGyro-18”? What were the defining properties that set this system apart from the others?
Kai:
I don´t know exactly what led to the purchase of precisely this system. Our animations programmer, André Hotz probably took a look at a variety of different systems along with Horst Dworczak, the man who pulls the strings behind many visual aspects of the game.
Since every situation needed to be portrayed in a sensible fashion, we needed an enormous quantity of very realistic "human" animations. Hence, we had a choice between working through the entire volume of animations in an external motioncapturing studio, the drawback of this being a high organisational and monetary commitment, or using our own system. The former choice would have had the advantage of having somebody there with us to help maintain and guarantee a certain standard of quality. Studios always have some kind of recording supervisor along with tech support, should questions arise or something go awry.
You don´t have that kind of service with your own system. Despite that, we decided on the latter scenario because we plan to use it excessively in future products. Thus it is an investment which will definitely prove its worth in future projects we plan to do with Piranha Bytes.
Gypsy-Gyro is a magnetic motioncapturing system. You don´t need a big room with infrared cameras to use it, but simply a laptop and this suit here. A small room is sufficient for the process. We did most of the motioncapturing in our homely rec room. Everything from battle animations through interaction with objects right up to random animations and, naturally, the cutscene animations, since those are especially easy to integrate, due to the cinematic surroundings in which you know exactly what is supposed to happen in a particular moment and the animations, which follow a strict, linear choreography.
In short: We used this system in almost every part of the animations process; the exceptions being, of course, four-legged animals and certain animations which we couldn´t recreate in our rec room such as swimming, sliding down slopes etc.. Our animations programmer André had to do those on his own in the end.
World of Gothic:
There are a lot of weapons many of us may have grown fond of (e.g. Uriziel or Beliars Claw). Will we come across them again in Gothic 3?
Kai:
Again there will againbe many special weapons with unique names and a particular meaning in the world of Gothic. But we won't meet Urziel and the like again from former Gothic games. We have a completely new world with new people and quests. You can reasonably expect that our hero took some of his former weapons with him but you won't be able to find Uriziel in any chest.
World of Gothic:
In most clips creatures/monsters express no "warning signs". Aren't we going to hear the familiar clucking sound of Scavengers again in Gothic 3?
Kai:
Not all animals have them. In Gothic 2, all animals had the same AI. In Gothic 3 this is a bit more sophisticated. Some animals will always warn before they attack, others will warn only when they feel like it and yet other animals will never warn you but attack immediately.
Therefore, it's not true there are no "warning cries"; there won't be a standardized behaviour either that one can expect from every creature. In G3, it's more customized and distinct and depends also on the given situation that changes from game to game.
Postoje i neki screenovi uz intervju!
http://www.worldofgothic.com/gothic3/?go=gc06
