Date posted: February 13, 2012
Skateboard MoCap at MMU
A big thanks to the School of Digital Technology team over at Manchester Metropolitan University who kindly took time out to let us play with their Animazoo IGS-180 MoCap kit last Thursday, the session is part of our ongoing partnership with MMU, a deal brokered by SL's Tony Tickle.
Our New Technologies team and James White, our skateboarding Development Director, scooted over to the University, got suited up and grabbed a series of skate tricks. The generated animation files will be used as part of an animated kids TV development SL are currently working on. The transmedia property also includes a smart phone & tablet app, augmented reality learning tools and games all of which will be produced in-house.
The Animazoo kit consists of 18 daisy-chained gyroscopic sensors placed strategically around the body, each sensor (originally intended for use in fighter jets) captures movement within the 3D space meaning the kit can record & wirelessly transmit the complex movements needed to perform skate tricks and translate them to BVH or Motion Builder files that we can bring into 3D Studio Max.
James comments "Creating the nuanced movements and fast weight shifts of a skateboarder for our CG characters would be very time consuming to replicate using more traditional hand animation methods, MoCap allows us to create more authentic and believable movements in a relatively short space of time, this greatly streamlines the production process."
We will be unveiling our latest development at MIPTV in Cannes in April. In the meantime catch a behind the scenes glimpse of what we got up to here http://bit.ly/wfUEOL