SIGGRAPH 2007 – Organic Motion’s Sensorless MOCAP

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screenshot047.jpgThe next wave of motion capture technology is upon us. You can debate whether or not it’s good thing for animators. To me, It’s just another art form, a tool.

But, when it comes to attribution or awards, I just don’t want to see it in the same category as an animator. An animator is one who gives life to to an inanimate object by either frame keying, drawing or stop animation to create the expression of the character’s movement. The final performance is in fact, the performance of the animator.

Regardless of the debate, I was intrigued by this new MOCAP system. Organic Motion is the one of the first to go to market with their sensorless motion capture system. With it’s real time speed, there are many possibilities for it’s use, including live performance. I think it that it in the very near future, you will see this product in use on the stage, like Broadway as well as in the movie industry. Imagine, a Disney stage production, where an animated character like Mickey Mouse, interacts on a screen in real time, with the the actors and perhaps the audience. Just look what they did with Lion King on Broadway. If you ever get the opportunity to see the stage production, don’t miss it. To me, it’s live animation, a very creative use of props.
Here’s a demonstration that I recorded at SIGGRAPH 2007.

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    • RedSharky

      It’s nice to see new and hopefully affordable software, especially on this field, coming on the market. But don’t fear, it’ll take quite a while till animators will become no longer necessary.

    • mpl

      Please deinterlace the video…

    • TXRX

      Mocap is always built on by animators, they take the raw data and add to it, well at our studio they do. Most interesting technology indeed. MoCap costs are phenomenal and any way to reduce costs (even for the mocap studios themselves) is a good thing. Animators aren’t scared of Mocap I think. It’s got it’s place and purposes which isn’t every single type of project.

    • jin

      it won’t just be a while. it will never happen. animators won’t be replaced because they’re not really doing the same job.

      mocap is great if you need digital standins/stunt doubles etc… you want it to look like it’s really happening.

      but animation is like a comic or illustration… it’s about caricature and stylization… cleaning up the noise and getting to the heart/essence of it.

      so yah, there’s never any fear that the form will be somehow nullified… not to say that it wouldn’t potentially have an impact on jobs…. :| … but the art form will remain valid.

      jin

    • http://www.photonstudio.eu daniel

      imagine that technology embedded in blender…

    • ccherrett

      Thanks Tim for the hard work and supplying us with these videos!

      mpl are you volunteering to de-interlace? :)

      How nice of you :)

    • http://nicknamfx.blogspot.com Nicknamz

      Nice documentation, blendernation have full coverage of siggraph, for us blenders users, is always nice see some new technology and better, have people who want to show this advances, good work and thanks for sharing this news :D

      Nick

    • http://th3w-san.deviantart.com Th3w-san

      Although a bunch of people have already said it, I really think mocap and animators will always coexist. The team that did Advent Children talked about how they used mocap for characters walking around and speaking and subtle things, but like 90% of the action sequences wouldn’t been virtually impossible to do with mocap. There’ve also been game studios that used mocap extensively, and ultimately realized that actions like jumping, running, and attacking simply look weak when mocapped.

    • gali98

      that is so sweet…
      put it in blender :)

    • Blackboe

      To all you wonderful people who have said or are thinking this. You people end up sounding like a spoiled kid in a candy store sometimes, you know that you can talk to the developers, and you know that you’ll never have to pay, so you abuse this constantly.

      Before you opt for someone to create a feature for you, think please. Are you a professional, are you even any good as an artist? Do you need this feature, do you REALLY need someone to spend ages hacking together a huge feature, just so you can do absolutely nothing with it, like so many people have wasted so many of Blender’s features? Will you use this in a production environment?

      Seriously, think before flinch-reacting with ‘U SHOULD PUT TIHS IN BLENDER AND ALSO MAKE GI KTHX’.

    • http://www.welcometochrisworld.com Chris

      However, if you are a developer and you want the feature for yourself go right ahead. ;)

    • http://www.pussy.org mmph

      Well,

      until someone finds a real dragon,unicorn, or a 12 headed p00f monster from mars, I really dont see MOCAP as much of a threat to animators.

      I love the idea of nice new tools, hopefully this technology will be cheap enough that we can all enjoy and experement with it :D

    • http://addzero.org AddZero

      Really neat developments… but I doubt it will replace marker mocap systems as is.

      It relies on clear silhouettes.

      Notice that the model always had her arms and legs out, she never folded her arms or touched her body. also notice she’s wearing very dark solid color clothing (no need to change clothing claim is inaccurate.) and she has her hair up.

      This doesn’t have any applications yet– except maybe capturing ballerinas.

      Now when they get it to understand shading clues, and reliably make guesses of where hidden body parts are (where arms are if the subject is rolled in a ball. or where the neck is when hair is down) as we do- or understand even if the person is wearing white pants, with striped shirts- they’ll have a marker mocap killer.

      At that stage they wont be very far off from capturing motion (understanding what it sees as we do) from raw videos with one camera, and no special backdrops… that will be cool.

    • http://www.bealecorner.com JohnB

      I’m guessing it doesn’t work reliably when the arms are against the sides or with textured fabrics, but even so it is a big advance to not need special markers.

    • RNS

      This concept was suggested by me a long time ago for blender,but now is commercial-”RATS”
      A lost opportunity.