Here’s how a martial artist created the motions for Baldur’s Gate 3 monks
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A recent video from Larian Studios shows how the motion capture movements of the Monk class in Baldur’s Gate 3 were performed by an experienced real-world unarmed martial artist. Michael Li is a French martial artist with 15 years of experience in Wu Dang and Shaolin styles. In addition to the Monk’s unarmed combat, Li portrays the combat animations for Elf characters.
“I did my training in China to perfect, to learn both styles,” says Li in the video, where he demonstrates some of the ideas he brought to the motion capture alongside video of himself capturing for the game.
“For the Monk I was inspired by the styles that I know, that is to say Shaolin, Wu Dang,” said Li. “Then I looked for movements in these two different styles, such as the Dragon Style, that has large, circular movements adn a dragon’s claw. For me, it was important to make this energy felt as an experience for the player.”
“We also worked on the different elements,” said Li, referring to the magical motions of the Four Elements Monk subclass. “If we take for example water I wanted it to be more fluid, circular movements, like flowing water. Whereas when we talked about fire it was sharp movements, lively movements.”
You can watch the video of Li in action above, or on YouTube.
This is the second cool video from Larian about motion capture in Baldur’s Gate 3 recently. Last month, the lead motion capture choreographer revealed that Lae’zel’s alien swordfighting style is based on a real technique that came to an ancient samurai master in a dream.
