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Halo 4 – Spartan ops

Ten24 and Axis Animation are seasoned partners, having worked together on several large projects over the years. We both share the same appreciation for visual quality.

Their new proposition was massive – to take our head scanning technology and produce assets for Halo Spartan Ops, one of the most loved game franchises of all time and also one of the most anticipated Halo releases in recent years. The benchmark would be high. Thankfully we had recently upgraded our photogrammetry scanner and were eager to set about the task.

Actors were cast and we headed off to meet them at Spotlight Studios in London. Our rig is designed to be fully portable with no wires, cables or cumbersome computer equipment inhibiting potential scanning locations and just over an hour after arriving for the shoot we’d assembled the equipment and were ready to go.

Traditionally scanning a head has been a fairly slow process with older structured light and laser systems taking up to 30 seconds to perform the scan. Whilst this might not seem like a long time any movement during the scan can drastically reduce the quality of the final mesh. Even breathing can result in severely misaligned sections of the model.   However we’ve overcome these issues by constructing a custom scanner that is able to capture a full head, in colour, in approximately 1/10,000th of a second by synchronizing 18 DSLR cameras and four flashes. These capture a split second collection of multi angled shots that can be processed using stereo photogrammetry techniques to generate a high quality, distortion free scan/mesh.