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Visiting Cygames, the Home of Uma Musume
On the 21st, Cygames held a media tour event for their new title in development, 'Granblue Fantasy: Relink'. The media tour took place at the headquarters of Cygames Co., Ltd. in Shibuya, Tokyo. After completing the scheduled new game demo and developer interviews, we had the opportunity to tour a portion of the Cygames headquarters.
On this day, photography was only allowed at the entrance of Cygames, the merchandise exhibition hall, and the 'Motion Capture Studio' separately located within the headquarters. Among these, the Motion Capture Studio was a facility where we could get a glimpse of Cygames' technology and development know-how. We captured photos of the scenes where Cygames' representative works, from the Granblue Fantasy series to Idolmaster Cinderella Girls, Princess Connect! Re:Dive, and Uma Musume, were born.
After touring the space where various goods utilizing Cygames game IPs were displayed, we moved to the 'Motion Capture Studio' separately located in the same building. The Motion Capture Studio is a facility dedicated to motion capture work in various games made by Cygames. In a large space with a width of 16m, a length of 9m, and a height of 3m, 72 cameras are installed to surround the entire space, and the floor is checkered like a chessboard so that motion capture actors can stand and act in the necessary positions.
We were able to see various props used for motion capture work on site. Clothing and shoes with markers of various sizes are prepared to respond to each situation according to the actor's gender and body size, and tools such as swords, shields, and bows used for weapon production were also introduced. The person in charge of the Motion Capture Studio, who introduced the site, said that each actor wears about 57 markers and acts, and that the weapon motion of the new title 'Granblue Fantasy: Relink' currently in development also reflects the results of the work done in the Motion Capture Studio.
A brief Q&A session was also held. The first work done in the motion capture studio was the dance motion in 'Idolmaster Cinderella Girls', and 60 to 100 consecutive shots were taken to create a few seconds of work, and the most memorable work was the dance work in Uma Musume's 'Uma Pyoi Legend'. In addition, motion capture shooting is newly performed every time according to the direction of each title. In fact, the motion capture shooting of Uma Pyoi Legend is not about reusing the same motion capture several times, but the results of all the actors newly filming for each Uma Musume.
Next, we moved to a motion capture room where more precise shooting was possible. The body data shooting device with visuals that look like they came from a sci-fi movie consists of a total of 224 cameras, and the feature is that 224 photo results are produced per shot.
The facility manager said that it sometimes takes more than five hours to shoot one piece of body data, and since 1.5TB of results are produced at once, capture work is in progress with equipment consisting of 300TB of storage space and five high-performance PCs with two graphics cards each. In fact, Cygames' studio is scanning not only the precise capture of people's bodies, faces, and expressions, but also props such as leaves, large furniture over 2m, and even spaces.
The tour of Cygames headquarters ended here. The person in charge of introducing the entire facility said that the motion capture studio is only used when working on Cygames or its partners' works. I hope that Cygames, which is facing its first challenge to become a console game developer, will continue to show many games with higher perfection.
Webzine Inven박광석 기자
2023-12-22