In this photo taken Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014, 2K Sports Vice President Sports Development, Jeffrey Thomas, poses for a photo with his company's NBA 2K15 video game technology featuring NBA Oklahoma City Thunder Kevin Durant, during a demonstration at the Associated Press's office in Los Angeles. The NBA 2k15 upcoming basketball simulation video game developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K Sports releases Oct. 7, 2014. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)(Credit: AP) LOS ANGELES (AP) — “NBA 2K15″ is angling for a slam dunk with an innovative new way to put players in the game. The developers of the interactive basketball franchise are adding the option for gamers to digitally graft lifelike 3D renditions of their faces onto virtual players in the series’ latest installment, set for Oct. 7. The process uses the camera for either the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One game consoles to create faces for wannabe Kobe Bryants and Kevin Durants. “It’s all done using the processing power of the next-gen systems,” said Jeff Thomas, vice president of sports development at “NBA 2K” developer Visual Concepts. “We’ve been talking about doing this for a number of years, but it really wasn’t possible until we knew the processing power of the next-gen machines. It took some time to get it right.” The technology utilizes the stereoscopic cameras for Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One consoles to amass several angles of gamers’ faces. It then renders photorealistic 3D models on screen that can be tweaked and placed onto the bodies of virtual players in the game’s career and online modes. The process requires a well-lit room and takes about three minutes. “That doesn’t sound like a lot of time,” said Thomas. “But if you think of things in milliseconds like you do when you make games, with the computer processing power inside that box, three minutes is like an eternity. That just shows how much math and things are required to compute these points in 3D space, then construct a model that looks like you.” The face mapping marks the latest effort by a game creator to add virtual representations of players in a game, following similar endeavors, like EA Sports crafting virtual athletes based on still images of players’ faces, and developer Rare harnessing Microsoft’s Kinect camera to fashion cartoony avatars for its motion-detecting title “Kinect Sports Rivals.”

• published: 17 Sep 2014
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