Motion Capture: Pro Motion
Technology Motion Capture has long been included in the category must have for developers of both AAA titles and mobile projects. It allows you to make the movement of the characters truly realistic and put almost any scene. This article will talk about the history of the formation of Motion Capture, the advantages and disadvantages of technology, and its use in promoting games.
About ancestors
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In 1914, American director and producer Max Fleisher realized that cartoons look a bit dull and you need to do something with animation.
After much thought and experimentation, Max came to the conclusion that realism can be achieved by translating the movements of real actors to paper. So the rotoscope was born - a device that Fleischer patented in 1915.
The principle of operation of the rotoscope was as follows: a paper was put on the glass, then a film was projected on it frame by frame. The artist-animator redrawed each frame and got a pretty good result in the end. There were, of course, "minor" flaws: to create a one-minute film, it was necessary to draw 2600 frames, and the whole process took about a year.
In the 1940s, the rotoscope was widely used in the Walt Disney studio. With his help, created "Alice in Wonderland", "Cinderella", "Snow White".
Motion capture
Back in the early 80s, Tom Calvert, a professor of kinesiology (the science of motion studies), conducted experiments: he fixed potentiometers on himself to count and digitize his own movements.
Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have improved this technology - they created a system based on LED markers. Several cameras located at different angles, filmed the dynamics of markers distributed over the human body. Meanwhile, a special program calculated the coordinates of the markers in space, correlating the data from each camera. The rotation of the markers was determined on the basis of the relative orientation of three or more of them. For example, sensors on the leg, knee, and foot were needed to show the flexure of the joints.
Cinema
In 2002, when Andy Serkis superbly played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, in every third edition you could find material about mo-cap. Although back in 1999, when shooting the first episode of "Star Warrior", Jar-Jar Binks was created using this technology.
Mo-cap came to taste of the creators of the movie. He reduced the time of filming, considerably expanded the toolkit of directors and producers, and also helped them increase their fees.
After the success that came to Peter Jackson and George Lucas, the creator of "Forrest Gump" Robert Zemeckis decided to make his next project using 3D animation. He called it the Polar Express. In this cartoon, Tom Hanks played 5 characters, including the main character and Santa Claus, and the mo-cap was used in each scene.
Now it is difficult to imagine the creations of Hollywood without the technology of motion capture. This is not surprising, because it greatly reduces the time of character animation. One actor and a team working on a project in mo-cap studios can create more material per day than classic animators do in a month.
Games
Mo-cap in the gaming industry began to use even before his success on film sets.
In 1994, the game Rise of Robots was released on Sega. To create realistic movements of combat robots, motion capture technology was used. Instead of traditional pixel art, developers used CGI sprites.
Mo-cap adopted by the developers of AAA projects. So the world saw Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Battlefield and The Last of Us, and the mo-cap technology used in them allowed to take the game to a completely different stage of development.
Creating a video team
In-game videos, cinematics and teasers have become an integral part of promoting mobile and social titles. The last Super Bowl convincingly proved it.
To create high-quality video content in the Kharkov studio Plarium, the Video Production Department was formed. This is a team of experienced animators, artists, videographers and special effects specialists, who also work on marketing videos and animations for all Plarium projects.
It takes a lot of resources to work through a large number of characters in our games, but the most valuable of them is time. Creating cinematics for the project “Sparta: War of Empires” took 4 months. The use of technology mo-cap will reduce the production time by half.
This technology will allow you to build pipeline commands in a completely different way. We will be able to significantly reduce the time of video production and significantly raise the level of its quality, which, given the high competition in the mobile market, is of key importance:
● Improved animation quality. With the help of mo-cap equipment you can capture complex movements.
● Within a few minutes after the shooting of the scene, you can get a preliminary result.
● Mo-cap allows you to capture the smallest movements of the human body.
But this technology has certain disadvantages:
● It is quite expensive, and for productive work you need to undergo special training with experienced instructors.
● The footage needs some work to accurately display the director’s idea and to fully match each movement and posture to the chosen angle.
● Professional actors are required for filming, and at the moment few of them are familiar with the specifics of Motion Capture.
After weighing all the pros and cons, we began to develop the concept of a future studio.
Building and going to Oxford
Now our specialists have at their disposal a real film set with the following filling:
● 22 Bonita 10 cameras;
● 4 special suits with markers;
● Blade 3.2 - program for reading and processing materials;
● hooks, ropes and other special equipment for staging flight scenes and fights.
We chose Vicon's Bonita marker system because it is a universal solution. Based on this, we plan to install new Vantage cameras and a Cara motion detection and facial expression system.
To learn how to work with the Motion Capture, Video Production Department experts visited Vicon's office in Oxford. Each participant in the training program got acquainted with all the main stages, from camera calibration to the final export of animation.
Camera installation and calibration
The cameras are placed at the same distance from each other around the set and securely fastened. Then they are calibrated in such a way as to maximally capture the film set in the frame and recognize markers well. After that, they are automatically positioned in 3D space. By the way, the accuracy of the system allows you to detect even the unevenness of the floor, if you sprinkle markers on it.
Calibration of markers on the actors (setting the "skeleton")
Then the actors put on costumes on which the markers are fixed. It is for these markers that the system recognizes the outlines of the human body in 3D space and with a little help from the supervisor “fixes” the “skeleton” on them. As a result, the actor can see his movements on the monitor in 3D as in a mirror. For the first time, this causes very vivid emotions among the actors, especially if the screen is no longer just a schematic depiction of a human figure, but a character.
Shooting
After the "skeletons" are set up and everything works fine, the director takes over. By that time, the actors are already familiar with the script and rehearsed several times. Such filming is vaguely reminiscent of film and theater, but there is a specificity here.
Revision
With good preparation in one shooting day, you can shoot a lot of quality material, but it is still a kind of clay from which animators will sculpt the final product.
Motion Capture allows you to turn the game into an interactive movie. Realistic movements, animation and facial expressions of characters in cut scenes and cinematics allow you to truly immerse yourself in your favorite game universe.
And also mo-cap is a lot of fun.
About ancestors
')
In 1914, American director and producer Max Fleisher realized that cartoons look a bit dull and you need to do something with animation.
After much thought and experimentation, Max came to the conclusion that realism can be achieved by translating the movements of real actors to paper. So the rotoscope was born - a device that Fleischer patented in 1915.
The principle of operation of the rotoscope was as follows: a paper was put on the glass, then a film was projected on it frame by frame. The artist-animator redrawed each frame and got a pretty good result in the end. There were, of course, "minor" flaws: to create a one-minute film, it was necessary to draw 2600 frames, and the whole process took about a year.
In the 1940s, the rotoscope was widely used in the Walt Disney studio. With his help, created "Alice in Wonderland", "Cinderella", "Snow White".
Motion capture
Back in the early 80s, Tom Calvert, a professor of kinesiology (the science of motion studies), conducted experiments: he fixed potentiometers on himself to count and digitize his own movements.
Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have improved this technology - they created a system based on LED markers. Several cameras located at different angles, filmed the dynamics of markers distributed over the human body. Meanwhile, a special program calculated the coordinates of the markers in space, correlating the data from each camera. The rotation of the markers was determined on the basis of the relative orientation of three or more of them. For example, sensors on the leg, knee, and foot were needed to show the flexure of the joints.
Cinema
In 2002, when Andy Serkis superbly played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, in every third edition you could find material about mo-cap. Although back in 1999, when shooting the first episode of "Star Warrior", Jar-Jar Binks was created using this technology.
Mo-cap came to taste of the creators of the movie. He reduced the time of filming, considerably expanded the toolkit of directors and producers, and also helped them increase their fees.
After the success that came to Peter Jackson and George Lucas, the creator of "Forrest Gump" Robert Zemeckis decided to make his next project using 3D animation. He called it the Polar Express. In this cartoon, Tom Hanks played 5 characters, including the main character and Santa Claus, and the mo-cap was used in each scene.
Now it is difficult to imagine the creations of Hollywood without the technology of motion capture. This is not surprising, because it greatly reduces the time of character animation. One actor and a team working on a project in mo-cap studios can create more material per day than classic animators do in a month.
Games
Mo-cap in the gaming industry began to use even before his success on film sets.
In 1994, the game Rise of Robots was released on Sega. To create realistic movements of combat robots, motion capture technology was used. Instead of traditional pixel art, developers used CGI sprites.
Mo-cap adopted by the developers of AAA projects. So the world saw Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Battlefield and The Last of Us, and the mo-cap technology used in them allowed to take the game to a completely different stage of development.
Creating a video team
In-game videos, cinematics and teasers have become an integral part of promoting mobile and social titles. The last Super Bowl convincingly proved it.
To create high-quality video content in the Kharkov studio Plarium, the Video Production Department was formed. This is a team of experienced animators, artists, videographers and special effects specialists, who also work on marketing videos and animations for all Plarium projects.
It takes a lot of resources to work through a large number of characters in our games, but the most valuable of them is time. Creating cinematics for the project “Sparta: War of Empires” took 4 months. The use of technology mo-cap will reduce the production time by half.
This technology will allow you to build pipeline commands in a completely different way. We will be able to significantly reduce the time of video production and significantly raise the level of its quality, which, given the high competition in the mobile market, is of key importance:
● Improved animation quality. With the help of mo-cap equipment you can capture complex movements.
● Within a few minutes after the shooting of the scene, you can get a preliminary result.
● Mo-cap allows you to capture the smallest movements of the human body.
But this technology has certain disadvantages:
● It is quite expensive, and for productive work you need to undergo special training with experienced instructors.
● The footage needs some work to accurately display the director’s idea and to fully match each movement and posture to the chosen angle.
● Professional actors are required for filming, and at the moment few of them are familiar with the specifics of Motion Capture.
After weighing all the pros and cons, we began to develop the concept of a future studio.
Building and going to Oxford
Now our specialists have at their disposal a real film set with the following filling:
● 22 Bonita 10 cameras;
● 4 special suits with markers;
● Blade 3.2 - program for reading and processing materials;
● hooks, ropes and other special equipment for staging flight scenes and fights.
We chose Vicon's Bonita marker system because it is a universal solution. Based on this, we plan to install new Vantage cameras and a Cara motion detection and facial expression system.
To learn how to work with the Motion Capture, Video Production Department experts visited Vicon's office in Oxford. Each participant in the training program got acquainted with all the main stages, from camera calibration to the final export of animation.
Camera installation and calibration
The cameras are placed at the same distance from each other around the set and securely fastened. Then they are calibrated in such a way as to maximally capture the film set in the frame and recognize markers well. After that, they are automatically positioned in 3D space. By the way, the accuracy of the system allows you to detect even the unevenness of the floor, if you sprinkle markers on it.
Calibration of markers on the actors (setting the "skeleton")
Then the actors put on costumes on which the markers are fixed. It is for these markers that the system recognizes the outlines of the human body in 3D space and with a little help from the supervisor “fixes” the “skeleton” on them. As a result, the actor can see his movements on the monitor in 3D as in a mirror. For the first time, this causes very vivid emotions among the actors, especially if the screen is no longer just a schematic depiction of a human figure, but a character.
Shooting
After the "skeletons" are set up and everything works fine, the director takes over. By that time, the actors are already familiar with the script and rehearsed several times. Such filming is vaguely reminiscent of film and theater, but there is a specificity here.
Revision
With good preparation in one shooting day, you can shoot a lot of quality material, but it is still a kind of clay from which animators will sculpt the final product.
Motion Capture allows you to turn the game into an interactive movie. Realistic movements, animation and facial expressions of characters in cut scenes and cinematics allow you to truly immerse yourself in your favorite game universe.
And also mo-cap is a lot of fun.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/366803/
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