Computer gaming fans can expect to see one of the most realistic games to date when Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) releases THE GETAWAY on December 6, 2002. The long-awaited Playstation 2 game has been in the works for over three years, and promises realistic high-speed chases, explosions and gun battles similar to an action film. In the game, the player is a retired bank robber that must return to his life of crime in an effort to save his son from an evil mob boss. The setting is a 30-mile section of London and the game features more than 100 life-like characters. According to the creators, the characters - from the main actors to pedestrians, drivers and work crews on the street - are one of the most important aspects of THE GETAWAY. Each character's face and actions appear as in real life, complete with blinking, breathing and emotional expressions. SCEE developers achieved that accuracy by digitally recreating real actors and their clothing using the ShapeSnatcher Suite 3D scanning and modeling system from Eyetronics. SCEE scanned and modeled the actors' faces, and then used real-time motion capture to put the finishing touches on the characters' movements. Actors' motions were captured with an Ascension motion tracker and brought into Kaydara Filmbox, a software program that integrates the motion data with the 3D characters for real-time display. Sony also used Eyetronics' Liquid Faces to morph scanned faces to a custom template automatically. Character files were then transferred to Alias|Wavefront's Maya 3D animation software for final rendering.
