What makes Injustice 2 special is not only its storyline coupled with all of our favorite characters from the DC Universe and beyond, but also the amount of detail that has gone into bringing the heroes and villains to life.
The facial animations are a particular highlight, with plenty of credit going to the likes of character art lead Brendan George and senior technical artist for cinematics Andy Senesac. A major factor in bringing such impressive features lies behind a new custom photogrammetry facial scanner, boasting 44 DSLR cameras with 50mm fixed lenses.
George explained: “To create a single character, we capture 16 facial expressions. These 16 scans take two to three days to process on our workstations.”
From there, the data from the scanner gave the team the opportunity to make a more advanced facial rig, which is “based on the scientific research on human facial expressions.” This was all done in-house at NetherRealm Studios in Chicago, where the animation team used four head-mounted camera systems during motion capture shoots.
Senesac added: Each camera system comes equipped with a choice of three different 4mm, 5mm or wide-angled lenses that are used depending on the actor’s head shape.”
Injustice 2 is now available on Xbox One and PS4.
