Black Myth: Wukong New Year Trailer Reveals Cats Can Be Difficult Mo-Cap Actors

thegamer.com:

It’s been a while since we heard from Game Science, the developers hard at work creating the upcoming action-adventure game, Black Myth: Wukong. Last time we got to see what Black Myth: Wukong will look like in Unreal Engine 5 with a 12-minute trailer. And before that, Game Science celebrated the Year of the Bull with another extra-long trailer of Wukong fighting a giant bull demon.

Now that we’re on the cusp of the Year of the Tiger, you’d think that Game Science would show some footage of Wukong fighting a tiger enemy. But years, like cats, have a way of subverting expectations.

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Instead, we get to see how Game Science used cats as mo-cap actors to generate data on quadruped motion. "In most cases, actors must fit themselves into existing solutions. But we want to build a solution around actual animals,” said animation specialist Gao in the video. "Cats are the perfect source of motion data for us."

However, Gao notes that cats are also “very, very unpredictable.” Fitting a cat into a tiny mo-cap suit is hard enough, but as Gao explains, "If you want to put them in a studio and do routines you give them, sorry, it just won't happen."

Getting useful footage out of the cats was more a matter of luck, with Gao estimating they received only around 2% useful data from their time in the mo-cap studio. Then we get to see that useful data in action in the second half of the trailer where Wukong faces off against a tiger enemy.

Only the tiger seems to be as uncooperative as the real-life cats. First the tiger seems to teleport away, then it becomes clear that the enemy model is bugged when its sword and scabbard start floating several feet beside its body. Then