The world of L.A. Noire is populated by wise-cracking hoodlums, femme fatales, and some very familiar faces, thanks to a host of actors and advanced motion capture techniques.

Helping to edit all of this together was 3D Animation & Visual Effects grad Upinder Dhaliwal. We caught up with Upinder to find out about his experience and see what he’s been up to since graduating from VFS.

Hi Upinder! How did you come to work on L.A. Noire, and what did you do?

Upinder:I’ve been working in the games industry for five years and got the opportunity to work with Team Bondi via GOATi Outsourcing for the final push to complete the game.

I started working as an Animator in the cut scene department where we worked on a lot of notebook conversations (in-game interviews) and cut scenes. We ended up doing a lot of mo-cap cleanup for the body and making sure the eye lines matched for each shot.  There were a lot of animation fixes for props and other geometries.

Working with Rockstar and Team Bondi was a great experience. The first day at work I was made to play through the game to get familiar with it. I was so amazed looking at the facial capture – the range of emotions a character could portray – that I didn’t pay attention to the amazingly detailed world of Los Angeles of the 1940s created by some very talented artists.

The game features an amazing amount of motion capture. Any particular challenges working with it?

Upinder: If I remember correctly there were almost 21 hours worth of actors’ performances. There were two parts for each shot – motion capture (body movement and eye lines) and face motion scanning.

Facial motion capture was pretty much done according to the script and we couldn’t change anything on that. Although we had to run an animation pass on top to fix any eye line issues and maintain consistency, especially with two or more characters interacting in a shot.

For motion capture of body movements we had to make sure the animations played well according to the virtual sets the characters were in. For this we ended up using key frame animation on top of the motion capture provided for each shot.

There were also a lot of fixes to be done when characters interacted with props or other characters. For example – characters coming in and out of cars, fight sequences, firing weapons, or holding props.

What else have you been up to since leaving VFS?

Upinder: Since graduating from VFS back in 2002 I’ve worked on a few TV shows in India. I got the opportunity to work as an Animator/Rigger on award-winning shows like Jakers! Adventure of Piggley Winks and Pet Aliens.

Being an avid gamer from childhood, I grabbed an opportunity in 2005 to work at a games studio in Auckland, New Zealand. Eventually I moved to Australia and continued working on games for almost five years, on titles like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Recently I’ve moved to Sydney, Australia to work with Animal Logic on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 in stereoscopic conversion.

Congratulations, Upinder!

L.A. Noire is out this week on PS3 and Xbox 360.