F1 2023 Braking Point

F1 2023 Braking Point

We returned to collaborate with REALTIME on Codemaster’s bestselling F1 series and its new release F1 ® 23. It utilized PURE4D once again to produce facial animation for six characters in the game’s popular Braking Point mode. The end result was over one hour of facial animation.

Building on success 

Working closely with developer Codemasters for the second time on the series, REALTIME built on the success of the cinematic cutscenes they created for the previous installment of the Braking Point story mode in F1 ® 21.

Braking Point returned in F1 ® 23 and REALTIME pushed the graphical envelope again,  covering all aspects of production, from casting all the way through to final renders. While the F1 ® 21 Braking Point scenes were deemed as being very successful by the client, REALTIME wished to push the quality even further by rebuilding the pipeline from the ground up.

Creating digital doubles with the PURE4D pipeline

A pivotal part of the 16th game in Codemasters’ series, the new F1 ® 23 Braking Point mode sees the return of longtime F1 characters Devon Butler, and rival Aiden Jackson, who are now on the same team. The newly formed Konnersport Butler Racing Team is also joined by a new character — Formula 2 prodigy Callie Mayer. 

Our PURE4D advanced machine learning based pipeline was used to combine the facial performance data captured by the DI4D HMCs with the high fidelity 4D expression data captured by DI4D PRO. This approach boosted both the scale and efficiency, making it ideal for a large project like F1 ® 23.

Our HMCs (Head-mounted Cameras) were used to capture the facial performances of multiple actors at the same time as full-body motion capture, audio recording, and reference video. This enabled REALTIME to achieve a much more natural and realistic final result than if these elements were captured separately. 

With the facial performance, we utilised our DI4D Pro system alongside the HMCs to acquire super high-fidelity colour 4D facial performance data for each actor. The DI4D PRO system is also very efficient, allowing an extensive set of dynamic facial expressions and “phonetic pangram” phrases to be captured during short breaks in performance capture. This data was then used to build an extensive, high fidelity 4D facial dataset for each character. 

PURE4D also eliminated the need to apply facial markers or make-up, freeing up preparation time at the start of every shoot day by reducing time spent on capturing the actor’s performance. In total, we produced five, performance-driven digital doubles that maintained the exact likeness of the actors.

Creating Devon Butler

One of the biggest challenges was creating the lifelike portrayal of fan-favourite, Devon Butler. As a legacy character from previous F1 games, Butler’s appearance and voice were already well established. However, these two elements were provided by two different actors, meaning that REALTIME had to retarget the performance of one actor onto the face of another.

By collecting the DI4D PRO datasets for the performance actors, we enabled REALTIME to cross-reference how each actor’s face moves, retargeting expressions from one actor to the corresponding expressions of the other. An additional animation rig, applied over the result, meant that REALTIME’s animators could then make fine adjustments to the final performance.

Using our technology to create the most realistic digital characters possible, REALTIME produced more than 40 cutscenes, with one hour and ten minutes of facial animation, for the project in total – an increase from the work produced for F1 ® 21.

F1 2023 is available now on most platforms.