Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Zhu Siqi

A start-up industry, an active actor who is willing to communicate, and stride to the top.

In her spare time, Bertie would go to the street, find a place to sit down and observe the passers-by. Even if it's just a simple thing of walking, different people have different habits: some people take a bigger step on their left foot than on their right foot, some people shake their bodies inadvertently, and their size and posture may also indicate a person's character and background. Bertie captured all this with her eyes and used it as a reserve of knowledge for her.

Bertie often shares the results of using this knowledge on video sites. In a popular video submission, she changed from a Chinese chivalrous girl with a knife and a gun to a delicate two-dimensional beautiful girl in just a few minutes, and then into a Korean imperial sister with a full air, performing vividly, and some small moves were also full of the charm of the characters in video games, including the breathing and shaking of the characters while waiting for the opportunity, and even standing still when they encountered the air wall. Players feel very kind to see these, it is hard to imagine that real people can so accurately imitate the changeable characteristics and subtle rigidity of the characters in the game.

Bertie can switch between different styles of characters in a very short period of time. In reality, Bertie is an action capture actress. Motion capture can use a variety of technical means to record the motion trajectories of objects (people, objects or other animals) in three-dimensional space, and reconstruct these tracks in virtual space. This technology originated from the research in the medical field after World War II, in which the more mainstream optical dynamic capture technology began to be used in the film and television industry in the 1970s, and has been widely used in the production of film and television and electronic games.

Bertie is not the only active actress on the Internet, but she is happy to communicate with the audience, and the video is natural, daily and fun, so it has aroused many people's interest in catching actors. Compared with film and television actors and dubbing actors, this profession is particularly minority, seems to be separated from the audience with a mysterious veil.

More importantly, Bertie doesn't just want more people to know about capturing and catching actors. Her profile says "want to be a domestic Top". In this domestic industry which is still in its infancy, she has shown enthusiasm, curiosity and expectation.

From dancing to capturing Bertie, 26 years old, she has been an actor for nearly two years, and her main work is focused on games. For the sake of confidentiality, she could not disclose the name of the project she had participated in. But she also admitted that she didn't know much about the profession of catching actors before entering the profession.

Before the arrest, Bertie was a dancer and worked in a professional dance troupe for a few years after graduation. That job is not ideal for her.

"the dancers have a lot of work. I have to get up at 5: 00 in the morning to prepare, and then take the bus to perform. Finally, the performance ends in the evening. The dance troupe may also have social activities such as dinners, and the actors may also be asked to participate, which is somewhat compulsory, which makes me feel uncomfortable. And compared with the intensity of work, our pay is really low." "I don't see any point in spending time in that place," Bertie said. I don't want to be a dancer and I don't want to be a dance teacher. "

However, being a dancer is a very professional job, and it's not that easy to change careers. After leaving the dance company, Bertie stayed at home for two or three months and could not find a suitable job. At this time, she suddenly remembered some of the games she played when she was a child, and she seemed to have filmed the performance of overactive actors in the tidbits.

Can you also be an active actor? The idea suddenly came to Bertie's mind. "I want to know if there is a job in China, but as soon as I search for it, there is. I sent my resume and soon received the interview notice."

Bertie went through two rounds of interviews. In the first round, she was asked to imitate the movements of other actors, mainly to see whether the limbs were coordinated and whether the movements were accurate. The second round involves more understanding of the character. "the company will give me a character introduction, or a model, so that I can design the action of the character on the spot and show my understanding of the character as much as possible."

It can be said that understanding and expressing characters is the core skill of catching actors. After all, there are no lines for catching actors, and everything depends on physical movements. Bertie once discussed with colleagues how to create a "western farmer in an American realistic game": a skinny farmer may be good at calculating, more sophisticated, think a lot about things, and actors tend to add small moves to it; a strong farmer needs to highlight a sense of strength, and actors will be more open and close in their movements.

In the video, Bertie summarizes the performance features needed by the types of works in an interesting way. Some jokes are jokingly called "releasing the Soul of Middle School II" by the audience. Not every game manufacturer or animation director will put forward very detailed requirements. The freedom of interpretation of each character given to the actors is also different. In many cases, the actors need to understand and design the action characteristics of the characters according to the world outlook, figure and character of the game.

"our company devolves more power to actors, so I usually design more." Bertie said. After the user sends the request, she and her colleagues will design two or three different plans for each action and record it into a video for the client to choose from. It is only when the client is selected that they officially start the arrest work.

"when making a formal capture, there is a high demand for the reduction of the design. even if you accidentally tremble and shake when you record a video, you must restore the wobble as much as possible. Sometimes the client may want you to shake like this."

The process of dynamic arrest is similar to that in the film and television tidbits. Bertie needs to put on a motion suit first, and then make a T-action, first locate the reflective spots on the clothes, and then perform various required movements. After the action data is entered, other staff begin to clean up the data and finally give it to the animator to make the actions and CG that can be used in the game.

In March 2021, Bertie officially became an active actor. Talking about her life in the past two years, she was very happy: "I'm so happy!" In her opinion, the job is from nine to six, has a regular life, basically does not work overtime and earns more than being a dancer. The atmosphere of the recording scene is relatively relaxed and the pressure is not too great. The company and customers are also more tolerant, giving her a lot of time to design actions and try a lot of things.

In fact, when it is quite hard to catch actors, people will be more tired when they have not yet adapted to the working state. In spite of this, Bertie posted the video to express the hard work in an optimistic way.

At its simplest point, it is very troublesome to wear a detached trap suit. Some mobile capture clothing is shared by many people, and can not be washed often, it is difficult for people who love cleanliness to accept. The characteristics of the clothes themselves will also consume more energy and energy of the actors. "the moving suit is very tight, very tight... although the clothes are not heavy, but when you move hard, people are more likely to get tired. some bent movements may block the reflective spots on the clothes and need to be deliberately avoided." Bertie said, "and after putting on clothes, generally can not use the mobile phone, also can not casually go to the toilet, wear and take off is not convenient, more troublesome."

Wearing a mobile capture suit for a long time to make all kinds of actions is a hard part of the work, which is different from what many people think. as an actor, the more basic and simpler the action is, the more difficult it is to record it. For example, the game characters look left and right while walking or waiting for an opportunity. In order to meet the requirements, it is often necessary to record the same action over and over again, which once made Bertie feel very distressed.

"for actors who are especially good at it, they can record an action once or twice. But if you are not skilled, or when you encounter customers who are more tangled, it is normal to record a dozen or twenty times, and there are more." Bertie remembers that shortly after she joined the profession, a character was recording the action of looking left and right for two hours. "the director has been telling me that your this is not natural enough, your character is not in line with your character, and your state is not good enough." just keep stingy. "

At this time, Bertie's heart has been a little broken: "an action repeated every time is about the same, is very boring." your mood should be kept in that state of action all the time, but your energy has been drained all the time.... so when you do it more than 20 times, the mood becomes very unstable and the whole person begins to get irritable. "

In addition to repetition, the technical problems in the performance are also distressing. The simpler the action, the more confused Bertie was about where she was wrong and had to fine-tune all the time. Ordinary people always have some small habitual movements, such as shaking their heads and gently shaking their bodies, which they are not aware of at ordinary times, but they must not appear in the course of capture. "so people in the industry will say that actors and actresses themselves cannot have any habits, and they must thoroughly integrate themselves into the role."

There are no shortcuts to overcome these problems except to practice acting. Bertie says she became proficient only after a year or so in the profession. Now, she spends about half her time in the studio every month, belonging to the "very efficient" type of actress.

The industry that is still in its infancy is abroad, and the application of dynamic capture and CG technology in the film and television industry has been quite common. With the emergence of films such as "Terminator", "the fifth element", "Matrix", "final Fantasy: the depths of the Soul" and "the Lord of the Rings" trilogy, it is known to people that it has aroused further strong discussion among domestic audiences when Avatar was released. Similar technology has long been applied in large-scale games, so the domestic game industry has seen a broad prospect of motion capture.

But on the whole, the domestic dynamic capture industry is still in its infancy. This depends in part on the cost: imported dynamic capture equipment is quite expensive, and the cost varies depending on the number of people, the range of the site and the accuracy of the capture. Take the optical equipment with the highest precision as an example. Vicon, the most mature brand in the world, costs about $12000 for dynamic capture software license alone, and the price of software needed for post-production is often more than $4000. A set of hardware that captures only one person often costs more than $20,000. There are not many enterprises that will pay such a cost to buy imported equipment.

The performance-to-price ratio of domestic dynamic capture equipment is higher, and the price of a system may only cost more than one hundred thousand yuan. However, domestic equipment has only more than ten years of research and development process, compared with more than 30 years of foreign technology accumulation, there is still a gap in stability. For example, if the occlusion point appears in the optical dynamic capture, or the reflection point is at the edge of the picture, the data may jitter and affect the final effect. At present, the algorithms of some domestic software can not solve these problems well.

Domestic arrest companies are generally small in scale and small in the number of actors. Bertie estimated based on the situation around her: "there may not be more than 500 people in this industry all over the country."

People do not know enough about the industry, and there is not so much demand for actors and actresses in the industry. "behind the scenes, unlike acting in movies or TV dramas, it takes an actor to devote himself to a particular role for a long time. There are actually a lot of things we can play, and there are even many roles that are not human." The video with the highest number of videos played in bilibili shows the "ever-changing" ability of catching actors, which can quickly switch between characters of different backgrounds and personalities. In extreme cases, 90% of the capture work in a game can be done with the same group of actors.

Under the premise of secrecy to participate in the project, Bodi is happy to share the fun and troubles of her work with the audience. in fact, domestic games have begun to widely use dynamic capture, including RPG such as "Moonlight Blade" and "against the cold", as well as some two-dimensional games and B-woman games. According to Bertie, the movements of Q-version characters or small animals in some games may also be involved in catching actors.

"players may not be able to see the difference, thinking that most of the character's movements are made by animation software. but in fact, the more daily movements, the more need to capture to show. For example, breathing, natural breathing and manual breathing by animators, the effect is completely different." Bertie said.

However, there are many unfamiliar things about domestic actors and actresses. Like Bertie, almost everyone got into the business by accident. Originally, most of them were engaged in dancing and performing, or they practiced martial arts. People from these professional backgrounds have strong ability to coordinate their limbs and often have certain performance experience, which is precisely the basic skills needed to catch actors.

However, in addition to these abilities, people's initial knowledge of motion capture is still a blank, and the way of growth basically depends on "the old with the new".

"in the field of dynamic capture, it can be said that there is no systematic teaching and methodology, and there are no people who specialize in research. Everyone comes from those three industries, and most of them have no understanding of animation and CG. They can only be brought by old people who have worked in the industry for a period of time." Bertie said.

In the past two years, Bodi's main way to gain experience is to communicate with her peers, her own observation of life, and the study of some animation products. These experiences were kept in her notes. "in the end, you will find that the things you need to learn to catch actors are really very complicated. In addition to acting, you also need to know something related to animation and the logic of all kinds of action design." Bertie has learned some of the basics of captors, such as incorporating real-time dynamic bones into the animation software MotionBuilder, as well as data cleaning and refinement later. Now she can not only be an actress, but also basically take care of all the chores in the starting shed.

In some daily practice videos, Bertie is happy, but it can also be seen that it is not easy for Bertie to be one of the top mobile actors in the country. The idea stems in part from the niche nature of the industry. At first, she didn't want to make any achievements, but occasionally chatted with her colleagues to know whether she had done a good job as an actor.

"We haven't seen many other actors and actresses, without comparison, and without any judgment on their own abilities." Bertie said, "I really want to know what other people are acting like. I don't know if we are better, or whether they are better." it was this kind of curiosity in the first place. "

Later, the colleagues I knew went to work in other places and met more people. When we get together and chat again, we find that these existing peers are already a group of more experienced people in the industry. The video she posted on bilibili also received some feedback, including praise from animators.

"perhaps it is because of this relatively positive perception and feedback that I slowly develop expectations for the future." According to Boti observation, although the game industry as a whole is not very good in the past two years, but the overall business volume of dynamic capture is still rising, which is a good phenomenon. She also very much wants to play more different roles. "I want to expand my performance style, and I also want to cooperate with more manufacturers in more games."... maybe the whole development direction is not so clear, I don't know, it's right to practice frequently. "

Opportunities for communication today, Bodi has 61000 fans on bilibili, and some of the most popular videos have been on bilibili's home page, with a maximum of more than 1 million views. This was a bit of a surprise to her-at first, she sent videos just because there was not much content on the video sites she used to visit, and she wanted to communicate with more people.

She will read the comments carefully. A large proportion of bilibili's users are gamers, who are naturally curious about her work. Most of the time, audiences pay more attention to details that look fresh, and the feedback actually conflicts with the idea of catching actors. "what people find interesting may be the 'sense of model' I show, such as walking against the air wall, dull and stiff when waiting …... but when we do perform, we definitely want to make the characters as real and delicate as possible."

It is true that peers and professionals will come to her. "I have met several animators, or other professionals, who will give me advice in the comments section and private letters." "some suggestions are useful to fill the gaps in my knowledge, such as the problem that a long gun can't stand on the ground," Bertie said. " In life, to be able to meet peers and communicate some professional topics is a rare but unsought opportunity for Bertie. She is trying to seize these opportunities. Some people are interested in catching actors and intend to pursue this career in the future. She also tries her best to answer some professional questions, just like her "old and new" when she entered the profession.

In addition to the performance, Bodi also gradually began to try gossiping videos to have more communication and interaction with the audience. In any case, "communication" is still one of her most important things. As an actress who has been an actress for less than two years, she knows that her career will be closely linked to the future of the industry. Whether it is the audience on bilibili, or colleagues and friends in life, Bertie is an indispensable partner to the ideal future.

"I will try my best to live up to everyone's expectations of me."

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