EA Sports scans Seahawks for 'Madden' franchise

[MrBill]

Interesting article on the technology behind improving the quality of the 3D scanning of players faces within the game. Some of you might remember Michael Young as being a several time guest on the VSN Arcade Radio podcast to talk about Madden.

EA Sports scans Seahawks for 'Madden' franchise

The popular video game 'Madden' stopped by Virginia Mason Athletic Center on Friday to secure headshots of the Super Bowl XLVIII champion Seattle Seahawks.

Seahawks players saw first-hand how far one of their favorite video games has come when EA Sports paid a visit to team headquarters on Friday afternoon.

'Madden' Creative Director Michael Young and his crew were on hand to capture player headshot images for future installments of the franchise, but the process was quite a bit different from your typical glamour photo shoot. The group's intimidating photo-capturing contraption features 16 cameras fastened together and positioned at different levels in a semi-circle around their target. The device was built entirely from scratch, using products Young says, "anyone can buy."

"It takes 16 shots simultaneously of different angles of your face and that allows us to stitch it together in 3-D and make a 3-D model and texture for all the players in the League," Young said. "And why this rig is especially cool, is that it's portable. It all folds into that one box. It's all powered out of that box."

Young said he and the 'Madden' team used to show up at the Pro Bowl each year with a far more elaborate - and cumbersome - device. Friday's visit with the Seahawks marked the handy design's third run through an NFL roster, with EA Sports visiting the Pittsburgh Steelers for a test run last season and stopping by the home of the Cleveland Browns just last week.

"This is the first time we've actually been able to come to teams and get 50-70 players on the roster scanned," Young added.

The technology behind 'Madden' - a game that has been around since the late 80s and early 90s - has advanced from producing grainy 8-bit images to the frighteningly-realistic virtual models you've likely mistaken for live action football when walking into a room today.

"The ability to store bigger textures, denser mesh - 3-D faces, allows us to get the likenesses really close, uncannily close," said Young. "A process likes this allows us to get really great details that we can now actually store in the game. Before, even if we got these details, we wouldn't have the memory to store textures that big."

Friday's stop at Renton's Virginia Mason Athletic Center signaled the start of a busy time for Young and his crew, who plan to visit five or more teams as Organized Team Activities (OTAs) kick off over the next couple of months.

 

[PP]

Never got this.... their helmets are always on... makes more sense for other sports.

 

[buckeye]

Never got this.... their helmets are always on... makes more sense for other sports.

Agreed... but tell that to the guys screaming about how the faces dont look exactly like their real life counterparts.

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[krulmichael]

*Awaits the, "How about fixing the gameplay?" posts*

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[PP]

*Awaits the, "How about fixing the gameplay?" posts*

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I would agree that the $/time could be spent doing other stuff...

 

[PP]

Agreed... but tell that to the guys screaming about how the faces dont look exactly like their real life counterparts.

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Who cares about their face. Just get hand towels right.

 

[Anthony]

They already do this in FIFA.

 

[buckeye]

They already do this in FIFA.

Yes but the difference is that now the Tech is portable and they are traveling across the country with it

We won't see every player get scanned (would take years) but hopefully 10-15 per team.

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[Pitty]

Yes but the difference is that now the Tech is portable and they are traveling across the country with it

We won't see every player get scanned (would take years) but hopefully 10-15 per team.

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"Would take years"

No, it shouldn't. EA is the largest sports gaming corporation in the world, if they want to be progressive, they'd have doezens of these set ups to send out and get most of the players. Instead we'll get another shit product as we have every year since 2006. Half-assed because they've bought out the competition.

 

[ThomasTomasz]

"Would take years"

No, it shouldn't. EA is the largest sports gaming corporation in the world, if they want to be progressive, they'd have doezens of these set ups to send out and get most of the players. Instead we'll get another shit product as we have every year since 2006. Half-assed because they've bought out the competition.

So if you were magically put in charge of EA Sports, how would you go about fixing Madden? I'd like to see something more involved than "not put a game out every year" but I'll take that answer if that's truly what you think.

 

[buckeye]

"Would take years"

No, it shouldn't. EA is the largest sports gaming corporation in the world, if they want to be progressive, they'd have doezens of these set ups to send out and get most of the players. Instead we'll get another shit product as we have every year since 2006. Half-assed because they've bought out the competition.

Individually scanning over a 1000 players and having art put those faces into the game.... yes that would take years for it to be complete.

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[jms493]

I wish this was one of the things the said they didnt have time to complete. We were too busy working on the in game engine and the game atmosphere.

 

[Garrett67]

Okay, since we are at the level of deleting posts, I'd like to hear a 'Gamechanger' list 10 bad things about Madden. Okay, I'll be fair, list 5 things that need to be improved.

I know as a Gamechanger, its all about siding with EA and pointing out the positive but I'd like to see someone actually man up and point out the bad as opposed to defending all of the time.


How many times as EA earned the award for worst company?


Me posting about APF 2k8 wasn't saying that its a great game because its really not but Madden still doesn't do many of the great things that 2k did 7 years ago. How many 3 year game 'cycles' do we need to go through before they get it right and stop wasting time on things that don't matter. I don't need a perfectly scanned face when they player is wearing a helmet and most of the time, facing away from me.

 

[PP]

Yes but the difference is that now the Tech is portable and they are traveling across the country with it

We won't see every player get scanned (would take years) but hopefully 10-15 per team.

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Did you even read the article? They are able to take shots of 50-70 of the players per team and stitch together a 3D face. So even though they are being scanned the pictures won't be used (you say 10-15 players per team?) Technology is plenty capable.. shit even EA's game face was solid.

 

[Pitty]

So if you were magically put in charge of EA Sports, how would you go about fixing Madden? I'd like to see something more involved than "not put a game out every year" but I'll take that answer if that's truly what you think.

It's not a matter of putting a game out every year. The problem is putting the same game out. I don't want them to stop producing every year, although under the current model they might as well and charge 15.99 for downloadable roster up dates in 2-3 year chunks. What I want to see, if you're producing a new software every year, other than simply updating a soundtrack, is to take a damn chance on something revolutionary. It's really disheartening to see that the company who makes tens of millions of dollars annually on Madden alone can only afford one shoddy scanning rig, when in reality they could finance a hundred. Complete facial scanning would be awesome, even better would be realistic motion tracking. Why is it that 2k can make player specific shot animations body movement in NBA 2k, SCA can make realistic batting, fielding, and pitching animations, but 95% of Madden animations are still can opened generic? Sure it's improved pretty starkly in the past 2-3 years, but when playing with someone like LeSean McCoy there's nothing standout about the experience when the guy has the same running animation as the third string regen.

 

[Golden Taters]

Did you even read the article? They are able to take shots of 50-70 of the players per team and stitch together a 3D face. So even though they are being scanned the pictures won't be used (you say 10-15 players per team?) Technology is plenty capable.. shit even EA's game face was solid.

This is true, I was also reading something awhile back about the new technology used to take facial scans makes this process much easier. Hopefully this is expanded on and player models look like their counterpart, I want to see Kaepernick with his long limbs and Tom Brady having a normal sized head.

 

[j.hen]

This is true, I was also reading something awhile back about the new technology used to take facial scans makes this process much easier. Hopefully this is expanded on and player models look like their counterpart, I want to see Kaepernick with his long limbs and Tom Brady having a normal sized head.

This. I'd much rather have player models look like they're supposed to look and not flat out stupid like they are now.