codemasters Archives

VFX Futures Podcast: Facial capture, CG and cut scenes on Codemasters’ ‘F1 2021’

How do cut scenes in games get made? For the story mode ‘Braking Point’ cinematics in Codemasters’ F1 2021, our team took motion captured performances and delivered final shots with Unreal Engine, the first time we’d employed the game engine like this. It was also the first time we used DI4D’s new digital double animation pipeline, PURE4D, for facial capture.

To get a handle on how this worked for the cut scenes, befores & afters’ Ian Failes chatted with our CG director Ian Jones and DI4D co-founder Dug Green in his latest VFX Futures podcast.

REALTIME delivers cinematics in record time on Codemasters’ new F1 2021 game

Working on media for a major sports game franchise poses a complicated set of challenges. Not least of these is the weight of expectations from the fans. From soccer aficionados to race car enthusiasts, devotees expect the content around sports games to be as up-to-date as possible with the current season’s players, kits, and sponsors.

We spoke to Unreal Engine about our recent project for Codemasters‘ ‘Braking Point’ story mode as part of their new F1® 2021 game. Tasked with crafting five variations of cut-scenes, each version showed a different team, with different branding, colors, and uniforms for the players to select from. Ian Jones, CG Director, explains how our team tackled the challenge of turning over two and a half hours of cinematics in just a few weeks, using UE4. Read the full article here.

REALTIME team up with Codemasters for F1 2021 ‘Braking Point’

F1® 2021 is a new next-generation racing experience launching on Friday July 16, featuring the teams, drivers and circuits for the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship™.

In Braking Point, the brand-new story mode, players take on an epic journey, as they rise from the ranks of Formula 2™ to a shot at stardom in the world of Formula 1®. It immerses players into the glamorous world of F1®, giving a taste of the lifestyle both on and off the track: the rivalries, emotion and dedication needed to compete at the highest level.

REALTIME was tasked with creating the dramatic cinematics for the ‘Braking Point’ story mode, from emotive performances with the protagonists to edge-of-your-seat track action. The game allows the player to select a team, with distinct branding, colours and uniforms.

“F1® 2021 was our first major cinematic project where UE4 was used to replace a CPU renderer… the image quality is incredible. Even though it’s a game, the sky was the limit as to how good Codemasters wanted it to look.” Says Ian Jones, CG Director.