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The Future of Motion Capture for Gaming & More is Now [w/ VI
popularmechanics.com — Only a few years ago, movie and video-game companies set out to redefine the science of special effects and makeup artistry with a new technology called motion capture. Instead of spending hours in a makeup chair each day, an actor could don a spandex body suit studded with markers that resembled ping-pong balls, step in front of the camera for a s
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- mattnyc99, on 05/22/2008, -0/+9Wow, cool video. I'm all for one-upping GTA4 and Pirates of the Caribbean—not to mention the implications for the military and my golf game—but not so sure about this: "It could, for instance, take performances by long-dead personalities and map them to new, computer-generated characters, creating an intellectual property conundrum that could be entertaining (Jackie Gleason’s face driving Family Guy’s Peter Griffin?) or profoundly disturbing (Benito Mussolini speeches mapped to the face of SpongeBob SquarePants?)."
- warrior007, on 05/22/2008, -0/+13damn technology
- dinostabOMG, on 05/22/2008, -0/+2It's a cool step forward, but I think the video illustrates its limitation as well as its strength. The old man portion was pretty excellent, and that's where mocap and this technology excel: photorealism or near-photorealism. But motion capture for cartoony characters works just about as well as it did in the 1910s when the Fleischer Bros. invented the rotoscope: which is to say, not really at all. It is flat and unpunctuated when an exaggerated cartoon character moves like an actual person, with weight tied to physical proportions and other limitations of real-world physics. Still, I'm excited to see what is done with this. I just hope it is used properly: not in place of actual animation!
/animator
- dinostabOMG, on 05/22/2008, -0/+2It's a cool step forward, but I think the video illustrates its limitation as well as its strength. The old man portion was pretty excellent, and that's where mocap and this technology excel: photorealism or near-photorealism. But motion capture for cartoony characters works just about as well as it did in the 1910s when the Fleischer Bros. invented the rotoscope: which is to say, not really at all. It is flat and unpunctuated when an exaggerated cartoon character moves like an actual person, with weight tied to physical proportions and other limitations of real-world physics. Still, I'm excited to see what is done with this. I just hope it is used properly: not in place of actual animation!
- smurfz, on 05/22/2008, -1/+3Good read for sure.
- YME1280, on 05/22/2008, -2/+4good stuff
- life38, on 05/22/2008, -2/+5It gets easier and easier to become a film maker.
- P1um, on 05/22/2008, -0/+2Effects do not make a good movie. Just ask George.
- dleesgeetar, on 05/22/2008, -0/+9spandex and ping pong balls, i think i'll wear that to work today
- maddvibe, on 05/22/2008, -6/+1LOL!
- sogeshirts, on 05/22/2008, -1/+3motion capture is awesome I love technology.
- prakashpv, on 05/22/2008, -1/+2Amazing
- photohunter, on 05/22/2008, -1/+2My god that is cool
- cjwhitaker, on 05/22/2008, -0/+2Pretty cool...
- golddiggler, on 05/22/2008, -0/+0Cool Stuff. Love the idea that the organic motion stuff could work in a retail store
- psogle, on 05/22/2008, -4/+2Motion capture is great but I need to so my avatar in action...
- mm911, on 05/22/2008, -1/+9Nevermind gaming and medicine and military applications, it'll be big time once porn studios start using it.
- P1um, on 05/22/2008, -1/+7I bet animating Gollum would have been 100 times easier with this.
- idc5, on 05/22/2008, -0/+3http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS15 ...
an article on this - arcooke, on 05/22/2008, -1/+7When the guy in the video was transformed into a cartoon character.. my initial reaction was "ok, this is good, but it's not a whole lot better than what we have now"... when they focused on the model of the old man... wow. I'm seriously blown away.
I can't wait to see this technology put into video games.- dOOBiEx213, on 05/22/2008, -1/+2"already implemented in Grand Theft Auto IV"
RTFA- arcooke, on 05/22/2008, -1/+1Yeah, I read that after I was able to edit.. but in any case.. I still don't see any facial realism of that caliber in GTA IV. It's really not much different than what we have now in most games.
Whatever was shown in the video had to have been pre-rendered.
- arcooke, on 05/22/2008, -1/+1Yeah, I read that after I was able to edit.. but in any case.. I still don't see any facial realism of that caliber in GTA IV. It's really not much different than what we have now in most games.
- sTiKyt, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1What people really need to do is start implementing this in today's mmos.
Imagine setting up a web-cam like camera on your monitor that reads your emotions and applies them to your character in-game.
Although it may be a while before this kind of technology is cheap enough for personal use.
- dOOBiEx213, on 05/22/2008, -1/+2"already implemented in Grand Theft Auto IV"
- dvsbastard, on 05/22/2008, -0/+3It would have been much more impressive if they had both the live recording, and the motion capture animation running side by side... This way we could actually tell how accurate interpretations of his facial expressions / movement really was.
- neonoodle, on 05/22/2008, -0/+2good catch. I'm a 3d animator who has some experience with this sort of technology and it's always better on paper than it is in practice. You could already tell from the video that even though they never showed the live action and the cg together so you could compare, the expressions weren't correct. The old man looked constipated as opposed to the excited look the actual guy had when it faded back to him. There are a ton of subtle differences between having a character look weird or not, and the computer just isn't picking up on them. It's a useful tool, to be sure, but without a skilled interpreter of the acting and emotion (ie: the animators), it's just going to look like crap like GTA4's cutscenes do. Someone already mentioned Gollum as if Andy Serkis was completely involved in the performance and it was straight motion capture of his face. It wasn't. Every frame of it was managed and often reanimated by the animators at Weta to capture the essence of Serkis' performance and not just the position of the left corner of Andy Serkis' lip on frame 137 (which is what this technology does).
- renegade334, on 05/22/2008, -0/+3At first when they showed the "newrdy looking cartoon character" I wasn't that impressed, I mean yeah, it's cool and all, but it's just another step into the future. But when they showed the "grumpy, angry looking old man", now THAT was cool.
- dOOBiEx213, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1You know, you could've just "dugged" this comment:
"When the guy in the video was transformed into a cartoon character.. my initial reaction was "ok, this is good, but it's not a whole lot better than what we have now"... when they focused on the model of the old man... wow. I'm seriously blown away."- renegade334, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1Oops, I didn't see it, but yes, I agree.
- dOOBiEx213, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1You know, you could've just "dugged" this comment:
- Haoie, on 05/22/2008, -0/+0It's very useful for the more modern genres of gaming.
- glinsvad, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1...and internet dating?
- Blablah01, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1I want that. Period.
- shadowspawn, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1I remember when they did something like this for the video game blade runner.
- KyloOb, on 05/22/2008, -1/+0WAIT WAIT. I can actually slap my hoes now?!
- Shawkab, on 05/22/2008, -1/+1Screw faces, imagine what they can do with boobs..
- CrudeDarkness, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1imagine mapping Bush's face on yours then making him confess to war crimes.
- rsc0, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1"Instead of spending hours in a makeup chair each day..."
watch some of the Beowulf special features - Ray Winstone still spent hours everyday (starting in the early hours of the morning) getting special 'makeup' applied - reflective dots all over his face in a specific pattern / location. - GregFD3S, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1Just think of all of the hilarious motions that are going un-captured.
- protogenxl, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1Urinal Cake Eroding...Eroding...Eroding...Gone!
- uuesley, on 05/22/2008, -0/+0come on emacs fanboys....where you at now?
- MrSketch, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1I've always known that vi was better than emacs, but to see it used for motion capture gaming is a true achievement.
- SSCrow, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1Meh, Mocap can't touch the amount of character that a animator can produce.
Although that face transposing is the most impressive example I have seen yet. - jabelar, on 05/22/2008, -0/+0An interesting aspect of this, I'm told by a friend in the CGI movie industry, is that films are not allowed to re-use motion capture. The stunt and actors guilds quickly realized that once a comprehensive database is made of motion capture, then their necessity would be greatly diminished. So apparently every movie has to recapture the motion, even if it is standard stuff like walking. I think it would still be really cool to have an open source database of motion capture to enable amateur film and game makers ... anyone know of such a resource?
- ThetaDot, on 05/22/2008, -0/+1http://www.mova.com/
Check that out. - phasespace, on 06/21/2008, -0/+0www.phasespace.com We've been doing mocap for years and get better motion capture results in real time. These are fun technologies but would you watch a movie with results like that? There are several examples of motion on our website that clearly have much smoother data, and ironically the system is more affordable.
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