7 sats \ 3 replies \ @davidw 14 Mar \ on: AMA - I run the Motion Capture stage at Digital Domain AMA
I got 2 for you:
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Has technology actually made things way easier (due to capabilities) or much harder (due to pushing the boundaries / expectations / cost)?
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And how has motion capture changed over the years, with regards to work done pre & post production?
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I would say technology generally has the power to make things possible that were not before. In the performance capture space technology is rapidly changing. Our stage was built over 20 years ago at this point and at the time they had to put silks and diffusion over all the lights and even had white carpet specifically to bounce as much light as possible onto the performer with no shadows for the HMCs (Head Mounted Cameras - Facial Capture). Now the headcams don't require all that and the facial solving tools are much more robust. We can even use iPhones for facial capture. Overall, technology has made it easier and it's a rapidly evolving field.
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I have only been in my current position for 4 years. Before that my only mocap experience was when I worked on LA Noire with Rockstar and that's a whole other story. It has changed immensely from them till now. It's changed in facial capture more than motion capture (body). However there are now consumer motion capture products you can do with your iPhone such as move ai. Or you can do inertial capture with an XSens suit or Rokoko suit. Industry leading manufactures are also beta testing markerless optical MoCap systems. Very exciting!
In terms of prep I don't think it has changed tremendously. For virtual production we do have more tools now such as real time visualization and virtual cameras. On the post side the software is more powerful and does more of the work for you but you will always need humans overseeing and checking everything for quality data outputs.
Keep in mind I am a producer and while I do have a fair amount of technical knowledge I am not the MoCap Supervisor that manges all the data on a day to day basis.
Hope that answers some questions.
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Yes that is fair to sa more CAN be done on a regular set. Both inertial suits and technology advancements make this possible. I wouldn't say there is a "Gold Standard" necessarily unless we are talking about something specific. Like, if you wanted Tiger Woods exact golf swing you would want him to do that in our studio. But if needs dictate overall it's better to capture She Hulk in the studio lot for a scene instead on our MoCap stage, we can do that. It just depends on the needs of the show, the budget, the particular sequence needs. Markless MoCap is being integrated into virtual productions on LED Volumes and also people still do MoCap and Performance Capture on traditional MoCap stages. We are doing more and more videogames these days and a little less feature and episodic work overall.
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