How Age of Conan mo-capped their horse mounts

MTV Multiplayer's Tracey John is their resident MMO expert, and today on the site she has a great post up discussing Age of Conan. Instead of the usual filler about PvP or the game's graphics, though, Tracey tossed a question to AoC Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen about their mo-cap process. As we've previously discussed, one of Conan's back-of-the-box features is mounted combat. In order to get the realistic movement required for that sort of intricate system, Funcom used traditional motion capture processes on distinctly non-traditional subjects: horses.

Tharaldsen responded to Tracey's query with several pictures taken at the session, and a few quick words about the individuals who did it for them. It seems, somewhere in England, there is an entire stable and stadium set up just for this sort of work. The submitted images also show the mo-cap transition process, moving the data to a final product state. If you haven't seen pictures of horses taped up with ping pong balls today, make sure to check it out. Then read on below the cut for a demo video of mounted combat, taken at this year's GDC event.