Motion capture

Motion capture is the recording of characters motion such as people or animals, the data is then processed and mapped to a digital character and passed onto animators to then modify as needed.

Motion capure makes the animation pipeline a lot easier. Star Citizen uses optical motion capture as it is more accurate.

Motion capture focus on the daily aspects such as walking or combat, and is separate from performance capture, which focuses on an actor performace and which aims to get the subtlety of a performance or emotion out. Both are in service of the experience and the immersion of game.

Star Citizen has community members that are hard of hearing or deaf so CIG engaged a community member to develop a serie of emotes for American Sign Language so that those members of the community who are hearing impaired can interact and roleplay.

Quote
"This isn't like a dig at anyone else but we get to like, leave our computers and actually meet like different actors, different people and you know it's a nice break from being behind computers." -Conor-Jack Molloy