Transcending Typical Education
Creating an animated wayshower with motion capture.
Wayshowers College
Transitions and Transformation
As our industry transitions to more digital everything (digital locations, digital products, and digital people), the need to make these digital assets seem more and more lifelike is in high demand. We recently acquired a motion capture system to assist with our traditional 3D animation services.
One of our team members spent a lot of time perfecting the best practice of rigging digital characters for a cleaner motion capture recording.
When Wayshower College contacted us to help with updating their “Man and the Universe” Lecture series, we presented a “what-if” scenario of using their iconic stick figure character to “host” and deliver the lecture. After a sample rigging and view test, our client was sold! So we recorded several hours of motion capture information that was used to export raw animation files of the stick figure on a white background. Then the animations were combined with a professional voice-over artist reading of the lecture and some minimal supporting graphics.
Motion Capture Test
You can view a clip from the original “what-if” motion capture test here and see our team member, Brandon Cory putting the system through its paces.
Performance and the Result
The next clip shows actual recorded output of the animation with our client performing the motion capture for the stick figure in our production studio.
Using motion capture provided a more hand-on, interactive animation session that turned a week’s worth of animated work into a few days. We expected the technology to help speed up the animation process but we were blown away by how much time we saved and still ended up with a very believable animated character.
