HellBlade: Senua’s Sacrifice Takes Real-Time, Real-Life, Motion Capture To The Next Level

The new and more exciting HellBlade: Senua's Sacrifice video game live motion capture demo was recently shown by Ninja Theory at the Games Developer Conference (GDC) 2016. Those who saw the demo were blasted by the almost life-like graphics of the video game.

Formerly known only as Hellblade, the video game's graphics have been dramatically enhanced which make differentiation between real life and animation even more difficult.

Tameem Antoniades, the chief creative director at Ninja Theory boasted that the demo of the real-time animation performance is historic. The positive reactions of the scores of people who watched the demo appeared to validate his sentiment.

Formerly named HellBlade, the video game has added the name of its main character Senua to the title to reflect its upgrading and probably its new innovative method of creating life-like animation.

Senua is a female Celtic warrior who was traumatized after her village was invaded by the Vikings. The attack left her with psychosis and she later hears voices in her head. The video game explores her mental issues and its consequences.

In the middle of the GDC demo, a picture-in-picture window popped up on the screen. Those who were watching discovered that they weren't viewing a trailer at all. The sensations on the face of Senua were being generated in real time by Melina Juergens, an actress. Her facial and body movements were being captured in real time and then streamed into Unreal Engine 4.

UE 4 is a complete package of game development tools for game developers made by a dedicated team at Epic Games. It provides everything game developer needs, from 2D mobile games to console blockbusters and Virtual Reality.

Epic Games and Ninja Theory collaborated with Cubic Motion to develop the new and exciting HellBlade: Sensua's Sacrifice.

"The robustness and quality we showed today is the result of serious technical breakthroughs that will transform production," Dr. Gareth Edwards, CEO of Cubic Motion said.

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