Video game facial animation has come a long way, from the first twitch of Mario's moustache to the near-Hollywood production levels of titles like Grand Theft Auto and Halo . Today's characters can emote with a visual fidelity that has entered the realm of realism.
But dramatic impact isn't just the domain of narrative-led action titles. A sense of believability is also key to the next generation of sports games - games like NBA 2K. Not only must these games accurately reflect the strategy and physicality of the sport they emulate, but also the intensity, passion, and the all-out drama experienced by the players.
I've been working on the NBA series for six years now, and our end goal hasn't changed in that time - we just want to get better and better at selling the emotion of basketball, says Anthony Tominia, performance-capture stage manager at 2K. We're working on 2K16 now, and we want everything to be as realistic as it possibly can be. That means everything from mocap'ing the basketball itself to realistically representing the real-life players in digital form.
This year, we're trying to get more expressive emotions; better-looking lip sync in our story mode; distinct reactions that mirror what happens on the actual court - Faceware Technologies is an important contributing factor to all of that.
Capturing Every Wrinkle
2K has used Faceware's hardware and software solutions for it facial performance capture for many years, and utilized them once again to bring NBA 2K16 to life. For Tominia, the technology was nothing less than integral in capturing the raw kinetic energy of the sport.
Basketball is a story, and emotion helps you to tell that story, he says on his team's approach to NBA 2K16. Those physical facial expressions add to the drama of the game. The player might get irritated if they miss a shot, or reach for the skies when they make that last-minute alley-oop, and seeing that makes your actions all the more engaging. We really wanted to delve deeper into those little narrative movements this time and sell what's happening on an emotional level.
So, in 2K16 we've really exploited our rigs to the extreme so we can match every nuance of the person, continues Tominia. We're making sure that not only does each digital character look like their real-life counterpart, but they also show the signature emotion of that person. When you look at Shaquille O'Neal this year, it's not just a representation of him - it has every tic, every subtle nuance that makes his face uniquely O'Neal.' It's not just a celebratory face, it's Shaq's celebratory face, based off his real-life performance.
Custom Software
Faceware's technology was used to capture the facial performance of over 30 different NBA athletes, including O'Neal. Actions both on the court and off were recorded, with players undergoing full-performance capture for their in-game animations and also recording dialog for the My Career story mode. Once this acquisition was complete, it was time to transplant the performances into the game.
To make the next steps of the process more streamlined, the 2K team dived into the Analyzer and Retargeter scriptability.
The great thing about Faceware's script interface is that it's really simple, so we can easily develop scripts that make our job easier, explains Tominia. In this case, we wrote a bunch of Python scripts that allowed us to automatically solve everything that little bit faster. There were over 232 lines spoken by each of the 30 players, and we found that we could easily batch, through Analyzer, 232 lines per player without having to even touch the data.
We did the same thing with Retargeter, he continues. In our pipeline, the Python script does the retargeting, creates play blasts, and saves those files immediately for review. The process doesn't have to be manned, so we could capture all day, then leave the system to analyze and retarget overnight. We would then just come in the next morning and quickly identify which files needed the most touch-up, and pass those on to the team. The speed could not be better.
Speed and Power to Rival LeBron
The ease of use of the software, along with the custom development done to streamline the pipeline, meant that after analyzing and retargeting the data, cleanup time on NBA 2K's animation was down to three to four minutes per second of data.
At the end of the day, this kind of work will always rely on the touch of a human animator to flesh the capture out - that's just a matter of fact, begins Tominia. However, in our line of work, we want to get as far into the pipeline as we can before a human has to touch that data, and Faceware delivers excellent results in that regard. Four minutes per second wasnt really that much time, because there was nobody touching the file until that point, and that's a huge advantage in a production such as this.
Combined with the raw power of Faceware's solutions, this speed makes for a particularly lethal combination. Last year for NBA 2K, we recorded 120 hours of facial animation - that's massive amounts of data, says Tominia. In comparison, most feature films are two hours long and have a maximum of three CG characters on screen at any time, so that's just six hours. But we did 20 times that in the space of a year.
When you put that into context, it's insane, he marvels. A keyframe animator might be able to give you five minutes of animation a day, and that's pushing it. That would take one animator nearly four years of nonstop work to achieve, and if you're paying them $30 an hour, it's going to total up to an incredible amount. Really, there's no number of animators on the planet that could be assembled to put out 120
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
02/12/2025
Case Study: How Mid-Atlantic Sports Network Moved to All-IP Distribution in 60 D...
02/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Lee Corso, Coach, Commentator, FirebrandBy Ken Kerschbaumer
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | S...
02/12/2025
SVG All-Stars: Dan Nabors, Senior Director, Remote Engineering, TNT SportsThe veteran tech leader is helping guide Warner Bros. Discovery's at-home' re...
02/12/2025
National Lacrosse League Opens Season With New Cloud-Based Official Replay-Revie...
02/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: The Cinematic Look in Live Production - Bridging Aesthetic...
02/12/2025
SVG India Announces Advisory Board; JioStar's Prashant Khanna Named ChairmanBy Ken Kerschbaumer
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 11:15 am
Print This Story |...
02/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: New AI Production Tools Workshop' Features ESPN, F...
02/12/2025
Written and directed by Hailey Gates, Atropia won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival....
02/12/2025
The lightweight and highly portable CORVUS-RAVEN, recently demonstrated at the V...
02/12/2025
The lightweight, rugged Panther 2 tri-band VSAT delivers high-speed data communications for Internet, VPN connectivity and video transmission over commercial an...
02/12/2025
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({...
02/12/2025
NGID volunteers in the United States
NGID volunteers in Mexico
NGID volunteers in India
NGID volunteers in Spain
NGID volunteers in Australia
NGID voluntee...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau has issued a reminder that stations in DMAs 111 through 120 must implement its audio descrip...
02/12/2025
SAN DIEGO Sony Electronics today introduced the Alpha 7 V (ILCE-7M5), the fifth generation of its Alpha 7 full-frame mirrorless lineup, powered by the newly dev...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has opened a docket for comments on Nexstar Media Group's proposed $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna and se...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON The National Association of Broadcasters has added a trio of media executives, Veronica Rodriguez, Matt Schnaars and Jeff Warshaw, to its board of di...
02/12/2025
MILAN, Italy Brightcove has released seven new features designed to expand global reach, improve audience engagement, enhance live-streaming quality and streaml...
02/12/2025
BCNEXXT, the developers of the advanced playout platform Vipe, today announced a new Service Provider Partner agreement with NPC Media, the Australian managed p...
02/12/2025
DPA Microphones today announces the immediate availability of its new N-Series Digital Wireless Microphone System for customers throughout the U.S. In addition ...
02/12/2025
Hiltron Communications reports a well attended and successful Space Tech Expo exhibition, held at the Messe Bremen from Tuesday November 18 through Thursday Nov...
02/12/2025
The beginning of September saw Riverfire by Australian Retirement Trust, in association with Channel 9 and Triple M, kick off the 2025 Brisbane Festival in spec...
02/12/2025
SGM Lighting is pleased to announce an exciting new partnership with ACT Entertainment, under which ACT will serve as the exclusive distributor for SGM's ne...
02/12/2025
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that Telia, the second largest telecom operator in Norway, is modernizing its broadband network with the company's i...
02/12/2025
European cloud data protection specialist Keepit is expanding its sales network in the DACH region and has gained TIM AG, one of the leading value-added distrib...
02/12/2025
Featured products at ISE 2026
This year s ISE 2026 theme "Push Beyond" reflects Calrec s direction of travel. The company is dedicated to supporting the AV an...
02/12/2025
Czech Television, the national public broadcaster, has deployed one of the largest LiveU live production projects in the region for live sports and news coverag...
02/12/2025
Test & measurement innovator, Leader Electronics, has announced the release of v8.2 software for its ZEN and ZEN-W Series, bringing advanced cinematic camera se...
02/12/2025
Global provider of video streaming software and services, Accedo, and OTT platform provider, Magine Pro, have signed a binding agreement to carve out and merge ...
02/12/2025
With proven success in broadcast, OTT, and content supply chains, K.S Avinash set to scale Skandha's service-first approach across APAC
Skandha Media Servi...
02/12/2025
AJA Video Systems has joined the RAVENNA community, a network of partners devoted to advancing the RAVENNA standard for distributing real-time audio over intern...
02/12/2025
HUNT VALLEY, Md. Sinclair and its wholly-owned subsidiary One Media Technologies have released a new report focused on how ATSC 3.0, the IP-based NextGen TV sta...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau has issued a reminder that stations in DMAs 111 through 120 must implement its audio descrip...
02/12/2025
WASHINGTON Members of the Advanced Television Systems Committee have elected four industry veterans to three-year terms on the organization's board of direc...
02/12/2025
A new survey from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan highlights how important social media is for younger consumers, with Gen Z spending 5.1 hours a day on so...
02/12/2025
Faculty Notes: Fall/Winter 2025 Recent accomplishments, releases, and events by Berklee faculty.
December 1, 2025
By
Editorial Staff
The cast of Kind of M...
02/12/2025
Ring In The Holidays With Our Biggest Sale Ever On Ivory II Pianos!From now until December 31st, you can save 50% or more on every Ivory II piano and collection...
02/12/2025
Back to All News
Made in America: How Stranger Things' Electrified the US Economy
Entertainment
02 December 2025
GlobalUnited States
Link copied to cl...
02/12/2025
Back to All News
Culinary Class Wars' Season 2 Trailer Teases New Rules, R...
02/12/2025
--
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Telecommunication Unio...
02/12/2025
Harmonic's cOS Platform Will Redefine Subscribers' Quality of Experience, Lowering Churn SAN JOSE, Calif. - Dec. 2, 2025 - Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today...
02/12/2025
At AWS re:Invent, NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services expanded their strategic collab...
02/12/2025
S an Nollaig
Hollywood blockbusters The Banshees of Inisherin, Barbie and Oppenheimer make their Irish TV debut
Tune into the classics such as Love Actual...
02/12/2025
Showcasing fresh Irish storytelling and emerging talent Storyland 2025 signals a fantastic time for Irish drama
RT and F s ireann/Screen Ireland are proud to...
01/12/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
01/12/2025
Artemis II is NASA's first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The crew, from left: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Vic...
01/12/2025
IRVINE, Calif. Wooden Camera has introduced its new Accessory Collection for the Canon EOS C50. The new lineup includes a low-profile, gimbal-ready cage, expand...
01/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for its Dec. 18 Open Commission Meeting that will include a vote on a report an...
01/12/2025
In most years, a graph of annual local TV ad spending is about as predictable as an electrocardiogram of a reasonably healthy patient in a doctor's office. ...
Video game facial animation has come a long way, from the first twitch of Mario's moustache to the near-Hollywood production levels of titles like Grand Theft Auto and Halo . Today's characters can emote with a visual fidelity that has entered the realm of realism. 
