robot onimusha 3

The animations that introduce and narrate to us the story of the videogames of the present time are more spectacular every day. Between so many videogames and so many animations true jewels arise, once in a while.

The most spectacular of the animations that we have been able to see lately is, no doubt, the introduction of 'Onimusha 3', of Capcom. Robot is the responsible studio for an introduction animation that clears the perfection.

We have spoken with Ikuo Nishii, Technical Supervisor at Robot for the 'Onimusha 3' cinematics, on the studio, the videogame cinematics, and the software and techniques used to create it.

El Portal del 3D y la Animación - We know that the CG cinematics of 'Onimusha 3', the Capcom's videogame, they have been made in your studio, Robot. What can you tell to us on the studio? In which other projects have you been involved?

Ikuo Nishi - At Robot, we have different divisions to produce commercial films, motion pictures, web sites, graphic designs, 2D animations, character merchandise and music.

Our CG division has produced several game cinematics for Capcom titles like 'Resident Evil 0', 'Clock Tower 3' and 'Onimusha 2', or Namco's 'Baten Kaitos'.

Ikuo - Discreet 3ds max for modeling, animation and texturing. Chaos software's V-Ray was used for rendering.

Other plug-ins we used were Shag:HAIR for hair, cloth FX (ex- stitch) for cloth simulation, Afterburn for explosions, phoenix tools for flames and also we used Adobe AfterEffects for composition.

3DA - The level of detail in characters is amazing. What techniques have you used for modeling ?

Ikuo - We made some reference clay models for some creatures. Referring them, we modeled in 3D space and we photographed their textures to use for texture maps. Some characters were modeled directly from design drawings.

3DA - Unlike the two first 'Onimusha' games, for this one two popular actors they have been used to give life to characters, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Jean Reno. Were the actors scanned anyway or you only used them as reference to model the main characters?

Ikuo - We had used no scan. As for Kaneshiro, we could shoot many pictures of his face before modeling. But as Jean Reno, as you know, we were far from him and had no time to fly to him! So we modeled and draw textures referring some magazines.

3DA - The level of detail of the faces is highest, and there the textures play an important role. How they were created? What can you tell to us on those textures?

Ikuo - We unified many picutres shooted Kaneshiro himself into a texture. We have almost hand-drawn Jean Reno's face textures.

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