"....it's easy to see that the EyePet is the best virtual pet that anyone has ever created. It's cute, it can do lots of neat tricks, and it puts motion controls to great use. The EyePet is probably going to sell like hotcakes this Christmas, and its success will be richly deserved..." Eurogamer
I am extremely proud to have been involved with the creation of EyePet, the new augmented-reality game from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. The game features a virtual pet that players can interact with using the EyeToy camera on the PS3. I was Senior Character Technical Director on the project, and was responsible for creating animation pipleines. A highlight for me on the project was the opportunity to develople a 'state-of-the-art' facial animation system that aimed to bring the level of detail previously only seen in films to a computer game character. EyePet was released in November in Europe, and is planned for release in North America in Spring 2010.
Offical EyePet Trailer
In this video Gamespot talk with Game Designer Nicholas Doucet and Art Director Masami Kochi about how augmented reality is used to engage the player with virtual pet character. The video showcases some of the amazing features in the game, and shows of some of the great facial work the animators did using the facial animation tech.
EyePet Interview
".......It looks fantastic, with great art direction and absolutely gorgeous animation. The Pet is nearly always amiable and it's a joy to simply kick back and watch him play......" Destructoid
One of the pleasures I had in working on the EyePet project was to take place in some of the early user testing for the game. This gave us a chance to view first hand some of the reactions that families had playing the game. It was great to see how excited people got when seeing the pet jump to life, and how well it was received. There is a nice video here EyePet in the Wild - Eurogamer that shows user reactions that were similar to the ones we saw when watching people testing out the game.
"...The best thing about EyePet is the quality of the character design and animation. It’s so good that it fools you into thinking the PlayStation Eye technology is actually better than it is. At least we think it does..." - Now Gamer Review
I am currently in the process of writing an article on the facial animation tech used in the game, in the meantime there are some videos showing a bit about this system in my Technical Videos section.
So how's the game doing so far? Well as mentioned its not released in North America, but over in Europe things are looking good so far!
And finally, there are some other interesting EyePet links here: