Motion capture is used for many media formats we all interact and view every day. From computer games to film, it offers a unique way of providing immersion and an improved sense of ‘believability’ into what you are looking at. This technology is improving all the time as it fundamentally requires good camera’s, sensors, a computer and some decent software.

We have recently begun exploring ways to best create a realistic set of animations for the main characters for “Open Wide and Step Inside”. Such as walking, talking and other key movements, and feel motion capture would be a good option for this.

(Non human characters such as the plaque (bad guy) and captain fluoride (good guy) will be animated differently using good old fashioned keyframe animations.)

Not only will motion capture make for a more realistic set of animations…it should in theory speed up development time and flexibility.

We have begun testing using some open source software and a bunch of Playstation cameras as a proof of concept that we can achieve results quickly.

View below a quick timelapse of one of our earliest motion capture test sessions in Portland Square:

Whilst the funding for this project may not reach the level of motion capture used by large film and game companies…it will nonetheless provide a useful benchmark to work upon. Any animations created this way are still editable once used in the 3D development environment.