Bollywood: GTA 6's Face Animation Tech Likely Boosted By T2's Dynamixyz Takeover

Likely signaling plans for Grand Theft Auto 6, Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has announced the acquisition of Dynamixyz, a French company specializing in "video-based facial animation services." While the firm has worked on movies and TV shows as well as games, it's now slated to become an "exclusive partner" for Take-Two's subsidiary studios.

Not to be confused with Dynamix - the defunct creator of games like Tribes and Red Baron - Dynamixyz's credits include work on Marvel's Avengers: Endgame and the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots. It has partnered with Take-Two previously, for instance contributing to Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 and 2K's NBA 2K21. The team is said to consist of a little over 15 people.

The takeover was confirmed via a Take-Two press release spotted by Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad. Though not mentioning future projects, the release notes that Dynamixyz's technology enables "marker-less" motion capture - traditionally, game and film studios capturing facial animation have put small dots on actors' faces, making it easier for computers to track. Modern facial recognition has become good enough, though, that it can operate based on natural features. Apple employs a less elaborate version of this for the animoji on iPhones and the iPad Pro.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is presumably a major incentive for the acquisition, given the GTA games' increasingly realistic character models and elaborate, story-driven cutscenes. Improvements in PC and console graphics have also made more expressive faces possible, though natural animation has been an obstacle for many studios, often landing in uncanny valley territory if it has to be done manually. The high watermark for Rockstar may actually have been 2011's L.A. Noire, which depended on fully natural animation so players could judge suspects' demeanor during interrogation sequences. Actors were surrounded by 32 cameras on set, allowing accurate recording of things like sneers and shifty eyes.

Other series under Take-Two's wing include the likes of Borderlands, XCOM, BioShock, WWE 2K, and Kerbal Space Program, but the GTA and Red Dead games have easily been its most lucrative. GTA 5 alone has sold over 145 million copies, and the title brings in yet more income through DLC for GTA Online. Indeed, neither Take-Two nor Rockstar are probably in a rush to ship Grand Theft Auto 6, given the effort and money needed to craft its engine, missions, game world, and multiplayer systems. However, the addition of new talent like that at Dynamixyz will likely ensure that any new products coming from the company will look as realistic as possible.