Ninja Theory hellblade

Kerrie Hughes hears how game engines are being used in new and interesting ways at the studio

Last year, Ninja Theory wowed audiences at GDC and SIGGRAPH with demos of its upcoming action video game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which showcased incredible real-time motion capture technology.

The project, a collaborative effort between multiple companies including Epic Games, 3Lateral, Cubic Motion and Ikinema, blew people away. “We showed the world that game engine technology isn’t just about making pretty pictures akin to what you’d see in a modern visual effects movie, but that it gives you a wealth of creative possibilities that enable you to do live performance,” says Kim Libreri, CTO at Epic Games.

Game-changer

From a creative point of view, this real-time technology is hugely exciting. But it also presents time- and cost-saving possibilities that make it even more appealing. Whereas a traditional games workflow involves shooting and taking up to six months to get the data into a finished scene, with this technology, artists can shoot and have editable data instantly. “The whole drive behind Hellblade was to find more efficient ways to do the things that we’ve been doing in the past,” says Tameem Antoniades, Ninja Theory’s chief creative director. “With this system, the guess work and finger crossing has gone.

Kim agrees: “No longer are you constrained. I grew up in the visual effects business, and you would wait for weeks or months to be able to see a result, and now it’s totally possible to produce amazing, interesting visuals interactively. It opens up the possibilities of new types of art and reaching audiences with new types of spectacle.”

exciting experiments

Since the demos last year, Ninja Theory has continued to build on its real-time technology to both further develop its Hellblade title and delve deeper into other applications it could be used for. “The tech we showed off at GDC and SIGGRAPH is something that we’ve spun off into this Senua Studio idea within Ninja Theory, where we are particularly focused on projects around realtime performance capture,” says principal technical artist Matt Stoneham. “Taking it outside of the sphere of specifically Hellblade and looking at other interesting applications of this technology and process within live performance.

“An interesting step we’re taking next is realising the realtime performance capture within VR, which is something we’ve been experimenting with. We’re also looking at live streaming and real-time performance capture

We showed the World that Game engine technology isn’t just About making pretty pictures Kim Libreri, CTO at Epic Games