Rockstar Couldn’t Afford Motion Capture When Making GTA 3

Co‑founder Dan Houser recounted a fascinating anecdote about the making of Grand Theft Auto III and how Rockstar first ventured into 3D game development.

“When I started on GTA III the team had already sketched out the plot, and I made a few tweaks. But really we were just learning the basics of how to build a narrative in an open world. We’d heard that other studios were using motion capture for cutscenes — it sounded amazing.

We were strapped for cash, so we paid for the service by the second. We found a studio on Long Island that would bill us minute by minute.

They could only capture three people at a time. We weren’t sure we could pull off the lead character’s performance. In the end, much of it was, let’s say, improvised. Alex Horton, the lead animator, did an incredible job stitching it all together on the fly.”

Grand Theft Auto III owes much of its success to Rockstar’s technical and creative innovations on the PlayStation 2. Those advances were later adapted for PC and Xbox, helping the franchise expand.

Alex Horton worked at Rockstar from 2002 until 2008, beginning in the motion‑capture unit and rising to art director. He now heads his own studio, Horton Designworks.

Source: iXBT.games