The Initiative’s Perfect Dark will take advantage of Unreal Engine 5’s MetaHuman to deliver realistic-looking character faces.
According to the LinkedIn profile of the Principal Technical Animator at The Initiative, Tyler Thornock, the studio will utilize Unreal Engine 5’s MetaHuman technology to create realistic-looking character faces in its forthcoming title, Perfect Dark.
Thornock is involved in the development of the Maya tool pipeline for animation, rigging, and character art. He has worked to integrated MetaHuman faces into the pipeline and push the main body deformation with extra focus given to hands. He has also collaborated with the engineering team from Humain on the development of a streamlined and a properly interpolating RBF for Unreal Engine.
Besides Perfect Dark, the Technical Animator’s portfolio includes work on games like Dragon Age 4, Anthem, The Last of Us Part 2, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, The Last of Us, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, and Conan.
For the uninitiated, MetaHuman is a complete framework that gives creators the ability to create highly realistic human characters. It includes MetaHuman Creator, a free cloud-based app that enables the user to create fully rigged photo-realistic digital humans within minutes.
Previously, Perfect Dark was rumored to have been facing development issues, and the game is now expected to be released after the next Tomb Raider. It is the first project by The Initiative, a Microsoft studio founded in 2018 and headed by Darrell Gallagher. After receiving a couple job offers from Microsoft, Gallagher, who had previously worked on the 2013 Tomb Raider remake, decided to work on a Perfect Dark reboot.
Prior to Gallagher joining The Initiative, plans for the game had already been discussed at the studio. Xbox chief Phil Spencer stated that the game is considered as a chance for the heroine Joanna Dark to expand the Xbox family. The game is reportedly being developed in Unreal Engine, and includes a variety of weaponry, devices, as well as a camera surveillance system.
