Week 48: Assignment 2 in Motion Capture

This came out later than originally planned, mainly due to an inconvenient accident involving my shoulder becoming dislocated. Anyway! This week has mainly focused on creating our own Motion Capture shoot, with me taking on the part of the actor. It has been an unusual experience to say the least, giving me new insights on such professions and difficulties with implementing them to fairly recent technology.

For this assignment we utilised Passive Optical Motion Capture to record the animation, where the actor in question was required to perform a handful of scenes in both idle and ready (intense) poses as well as various actions using a marker-equipped staff.

While we had received thorough instructions in how to operate the equipment both physical and digital, calibrating and preparing for a shoot was a lot more time consuming than previously thought, highlighting the need for the capability to proceed through the various steps efficiently. Despite this lengthy process, our director was able to prepare everything from the cameras to the software without incident. The only problem we encountered involved the connecting of the markers during the live recording. This, we concluded, could simply be corrected during post-processing where we were more familiar with the Quick Marker ID tool.

Setting up the hardware and software, while involving many steps, was a fairly simple endeavour to achieve. Suit implementation went exceptionally well with the number of markers kept to a level simplistic enough for a couple of rookies to memorise easily.

The experience of conducting our own shoot showed me not only the importance of the tools and programs, but also the interaction between the director and actor in an environment devoid of reference. The challenge an actor is faced with is undeniable, as I constantly had to reconsider what I wanted to portray using my body language. Due to the fact that there is no scenery or props to utilise means it’s even more important to relay information correctly not just for the final product but also more efficient differentiation during post-processing.

Understanding what sort of character you’re portraying is paramount. Am I acting as a professional soldier or a levied farmhand, a confident fighter or an uncertain man merely wishing to fend for his life? Making sure the director and actor stay on the same page is difficult, especially when you have little apart from your own exchange to go by. Even with good communication I often found myself having to return to the director for guidelines as she was the only one available. All this only involved a handful of scenes. I can only imagine the complications arising when dealing with large scale productions that implement countless more such animations.

Helping the actor goes beyond merely helping them with the suit. You have to give them something to work with when the environment cannot. Give them a state of mind, a purpose, a goal, a scene… anything to help them interpret the meaning of the scene and to a further extension its essence. Capturing that can face any number of obstacles be it from communication to the resulting performance. While the technical aspects of it may seem daunting at first, it really is just a simple, linear step-by-step process that’s fairly easy to memorise. Once the workings of Passive Optical Motion Capture become routine you can proceed into the post-processing clean up more quickly. With this in mind I can see why this particular method is the most used to this day as it allows for efficient production once installed correctly.

In overall the recording went better than I had feared, with our director more than capable of going through all the necessary steps in order to acquire working material. Communication was in the end good enough to be translated into physical portrayal despite the need for rehearsal at the start, highlighting the need for a solid plan of attack when performing a shoot as well as a proper understanding about not just what to create but what its context is.

Utilising this technology enabled us to create truly realistic performances with both form and weight being captured naturally without the need for a physics engine or more traditional animation. Its limitations shows however when trying to do anything beyond short, simple scenes. Not only is there a large amount of resources required for Passive Optical Motion Capture to record even a small area, it limits what an actor can do with risks of markers not registering being near constant. Examples include when trying to perform more close quarter interaction between two actors. Whether or not alternatives to this method will mend these issues remains to be seen.

Björn Erik Berndtsson. Graphics and Game Design.