Electronic Arts (EA) have partnered with researchers at UBC, including CAIDA member Michiel van de Panne, to use artificial intelligence (AI) to speed video game development and make visuals more lifelike.
Usually, video game developers use motion capture technology to manually develop their characters, but that limits the animation to what has been recorded. With the use of the AI technique reinforcement learning, the animation process becomes automated and developers are less restricted in their design elements. This could end up saving gaming companies millions of dollars.
The use of AI for video games has the potential to become an even bigger part of video game development: even possibly generating game content or creating simple video games. While we’re not there yet, it is exciting to think about where this AI-gaming partnership could go.
This EA-UBC project will be presented by researchers in July at Siggraph 2020, a computer graphics conference.
To learn more about this project, you can read the full article in Wired magazine.