How NBA 2K17 used motion capture to get the real Kyrie Irving, Shaq, and LeBron in the game

The studio talk the lengths they went to in order to bring basketball’s biggest stars to life
Advanced techniques: 2K went all-out to get basketball's biggest stars, like Kyrie Irving, in NBA 2K17 for real
2K Games
Talal Musa16 September 2016

Whether it's guiding in a free kick as Lionel Messi, tapping in a Birdie putt with Tiger Woods, or slam dunking as Kobe Bryant, sports video games turn the everyday person into the world's greatest athletes.

But until recently, this happened in a literal sense. In the case of NBA2K, all the in-game players – from Michael Jordan to seven-foot colossus Shaquille O'Neal – were modelled on normal, everyday people instead of the muscled superstars emblazoned on the game's covers.

"There was a time when NBA2K was made entirely of animators and producers," 2K's Anthony Tominia told Standard.co.uk during a visit to the 2K MOCAP Studio in San Francisco.

"It was fun for those guys as they were like, 'I'm going to be Mike [Jordan] today'. They put in their best [effort] but in the end you would be like, 'You only got two inches off the ground, there!' In around 2010 we decided 2K employees would not be in [motion capture] suits any more - mainly due to injuries that were occurring."

Although the means of transporting a real-life person into a video game has fundamentally stayed the same over the years, the process remains incredibly complex.

"The very first stage is planning - figuring out what we're doing with that person," Tominia says. "If it's a basketball player where we only need the body motion capture, then we're going to bring them in. It's about getting them in a suit that fits - it has to be skin tight so there's no sliding. Once they're in the suit, we place the markers on their joints."

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The markers resemble tiny golf balls and are made from foam rubber. They are coated with retro reflective tape - the same material used in street signs – to reflect infrared light from 148 cameras inside the MOCAP studio, which take pictures at 128 frames per second.

"When the camera sees that light back, they're seeing it at as a 2D image," said Tominia. "Then we take a combination of camera's 2D images and say, 'Where are you seeing this coordinate space?'. Any time three cameras see the same dot in the same coordinate space, that's triangulation, the same as GPS. That's how we determine where the marker is in space."

Next-gen really gave NBA a chance to feel more alive

&#13; <p>Anthony Tominia, 2K Games</p>&#13;

Physical reference video cameras are also used, which shoot actual video. This allows the teams to compare and overlay videos post production to ensure the most accurate movement possible in-game.

But if the technique has remained constant, why has it taken this long to see truly life-like animation? Tominia points to one crucial factor – game engines.

"When we went next gen, all of a sudden we could have more bones in your scene," he explained. "So, back in NBA2K8 / NBA2K9, when you looked at a mascot, those guys were really bare bones - they hardly had anything underneath them driving them so there was a complete lack of detail in their movements. As things went next gen, you could just flood the scene with more bones. Next-gen really gave NBA a chance to feel more alive."

Still, there's one problem Tominia says they still haven't been able to solve, despite it staring them in the face: the eyes.

Whilst character models in NBA2K17 boast incredible realism, they're still guilty of staring gormlessly into space. Analyst Shaquille O'Neal looked like he'd had a personality bypass, while Lebron James talked for minutes without blinking – during our play-through, an interview went on with both characters looking in different directions.

"That's a constant battle," said Tominia when quizzed about the eyes. It seems that’s the next frontier to conquer – and 2K are already working on it.

"There's a certain amount of eye animation being driven by the game itself. The game is saying, 'What is the target?' Well, the target's usually the ball - so it's doing everything it can to keep the head and the eye centred on the ball. But at the same time we've realised there's this throwback to like Polar Express or something, where there's those dead MOCAP eyes.”

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“So we're trying to supplement that, and dedicating parts of years to just doing facial capture. So, we'll put helmets on people and have them play basketball in real-life, getting the expressions, and then that becomes an engineering task of figuring out how much of this animation can we show without destroying the target of where the ball needs to be.

“That's a huge undertaking that's currently taking place, and hopefully in the next couple of years it's battled out."

Still, whether the eyes are right or not, there’s no denying that the motion capture in NBA 2K17 is an incredible technical achievement. By the looks of it, there’s never been a better time to branch out from the likes of FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer.

NBA 2K17 arrives on PS4 and Xbox One on September 16

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