Digital Video - August 2008 - (Page 10)

DV UPDATE 1 MY STUDIO PERFORMER: The motion-capture actor PROJECTOR: A Panasonic HD video projector to allow per- former and director to see the finished animation in real time. (here, production manager Alysha Wheeler) wears a suit covered with reflective sensors. 2 3 VICON CAMERAS: Fifty MX- F40 40 cameras line the walls of the studio. Each sends out an infrared beam, which is reflected in the suit sensors. 4 RESULT: The final MotionBuilder animation being animated in real time via the wireframe. CAPTURED: The wireframe image, which can be 6 turned over as data to the client or applied in real time to characters and backgrounds Perspective Studios has created in Autodesk MotionBuilder. 5 PROCESSING: A rack of Vicon processors share the duty of crunching numbers to transform the 50 2-D images into a single 3-D wireframe. MATTHEW BAUER FACILITY: PERSPECTIVE STUDIOS M atthew Bauer, VP of animation production at Santa Monica, California-based Perspective Studios, oversees real-time motion-capture animation for feature film, television, commercial and video game work. Perspective, which has had a New York presence for the past seven years, became bicoastal last spring. The company specializes in motion-capture production and has recently done work for Jamba Juice and Adidas spots as well as for the hit video game Grand Theft Auto 4. Perspective is also producing its own projects internally. During a motion-capture session, Bauer, will sit at his computer workstation in a corner of the large studio space which is sur10 dv august 2008 rounded by some 50 MX-F40 cameras from Vicon Motion Systems. A motion-capture actor, wearing a rubber suit outfitted with reflective sensors will move around the room performing the movements required for the scene. The cameras detect the movement of the sensors and send that info along with metadata explaining exactly where the camera is in relation to the others. By surrounding the actor or actors with 50 such cameras, the Vicon system’s hardware and software in Bauer’s corner do the necessary calculations to create a wireframe animation of the movement. The company uses a proprietary Web-based data management tool to keep track of all the data and metadata involved in every frame they work on. In the next stage, the wireframe is ported over to another box running Autodesk MotionBuilder. In the case of our demo, Bauer had pre-built a background of an office setting and a character whose actions could be controlled in real time by the wireframe coming out of the Vicon setup. “We can provide everything from the motion capture to the animation,” says Tom Armbruster, Perspective’s VP of business development. “Or, if the client prefers, we can just deliver the wireframe data and they can use it later with any number of 3-D animation programs like Maya and 3D Studio Maxx.” Motion capture isn’t a new technology, but Bauer still sees a lot of directors coming through the studio discovering for the first time the possibilities offered by the kind of work Perspective does. “Directors who are used to working with live actors can direct animation just like they do live action, and see the results instantly.” — Jon Silberg www.dv.com PHOTOS BY JON SILBERG http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - August 2008

Digital Video - August 2008 Contents DV Update My Studio Close-Up Wristshot HV30 Camcorder Tiffen DFX Bench Test PCM-D50 & R-09HR Recorders Camera Cradle Instant Expert My Passport Elite High School Confidential The Ultimate DIY Raid DV101 Click to Play Production Diary

Digital Video - August 2008

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