Post Magazine

30 Post • May 2009 www.postmagazine.com tions. "A lot of smaller companies using mo- tion capture now wouldn't have tried it a few years ago," he says. For example, "a pro- duction company pitching a training video to the National Hockey League found skat- ing easier to teach in 3D animation than in 2D video. So we captured players on rollerblades on our stage." Critical Moves is also seeing interest from indie filmmakers and companies developing cell phone technology for the deaf and hear- ing impaired where spoken calls would be conver ted into animated characters signing the messages. Critical Moves is also working with Henry Ford Community College, which has done award-winning live 3D stereo- scopic productions. It is currently doing a show with the college featuring animated di- nosaurs that talk to the audience. The spread of motion capture to new cus- tomers can be par tly attributed to falling costs and increased ease of use, says Johnson. Wider exposure to the technology's capabili- ties, and the launch of ser vices like Critical Moves in markets outside LA and New York, also fuel business. Indeed, Detroit hopes to be the beneficiary of a powerful 'build it and they will come' initiative, which finds Raleigh Studios coming to town and Hollywood's Wonderstruck Animation Studios, whose owner hails from the city, opening a major digital animation and VFX studio.This growth surge comes on the heels of Michigan legislat- ing what Johnson calls "the largest [produc- tion incentives] in the US," which are available to video game producers as well as filmmak- ers. (See our related story on page 18.) Recently, Critical Moves completed spots for Sprint Nextel and Cox Commu- nications and game cinematics for Sega's Iron Man game. It is currently developing a direct-to-DVD animated feature, Birds of a Feather, which the company aims to take to TV. So far, well- rehearsed actors have been able to produce "lifelike motion for birds, lizards and other animals" that comprise the cast of charac- ters, Johnson repor ts. But the company would like to automate the actors' facial mo- tion capture."We have evaluated facial mark- ers and video-based capture, where you get data points off the video image of the face, which seems to be the direction things are going," he says. "We've been in the engineer- ing and 3D business for two decades, and I hold many patents, so we're working on de- veloping our own technology." Overall, motion capture "is still not at the point where it's push-and-play," Johnson notes. "You still need to have a lot of techni- cal knowledge to do it well." He also re- minds us that "the job is not done when the motion capture cameras turn off just as the film isn't done when you turn off the film cameras. There's still a lot of post to do.You hear some animators say that motion cap- ture will put them out of work. No, it won't. It's just a good star ting point for all the ani- mation to come." S AV I N G T I M E Red Eye Studio (RES), a 5,000-square foot motion capture, animation and effects studio located nor thwest of Chicago, pri- marily ser ves the videogame production market but also delivers high-quality anima- tion for broadcast, multimedia, film and post production.The company is owned by Kerry Ganofsky, CEO of High Voltage Software (HVS), one of the nation's largest indepen- dent videogame developers. RES (www.redeye-studio.com) recently became the first in Nor th America to pur- chase the Vicon T160 passive optical camera system for motion capture. Its 16 megapixel resolution means it can track the finest detail and subtlest movements in even the largest volumes of motion capture. Capable of cap- turing 120 frames per second at full-frame resolution, the T160 delivers a significant performance increase over other similar camera systems. Vicon's new Blade software is one of the industry's most robust motion capture data processing and skeletal solving software packages. Blade also allows users to de- velop custom tools and data processing scripts. This in-house scripting and tool de- velopment is essential to RES's high-quality content and fast turnaround times. The company's primar y animation software in- cludes Maya, 3DS Max, MotionBuilder and Adobe software. RES boasts an international roster of clients with Microsoft, IBM, Pepsi, Sega, Mid- way Games, 2K and HVS among them. Motion capture has become essential for videogame production today, emphasizes RES studio director David Lapekas. "It would take traditional animators a lot longer to process 1,000 moves than for us to capture and process 1,000 moves," he points out. "This directly impacts budgets and turn- around time for our client. As game content grows and producers want more in less time, that translates directly to motion cap- ture for animation. It's a volume necessity." In addition, "motion capture is able to capture nuances a hand-keyed ar tist is not able to produce quickly, or even at all," he notes. Coupling a base of motion capture with a hand-keyed process, in what Lapekas calls "animation adjustment," makes moves "as real as possible and more dramatic," he says. Un- like some motion capture studios, RES also specializes in rigging and hand-keyed anima- tion. "Rigging quality assurance is a key point in the process to make sure the motion cap- ture data and the hand-keyed animation are working seamlessly together," he explains. Despite industr y advances and RES's own contributions to the technology, mo- tion capture still presents some challenges to users. "Preproduction is still highly spe- cialized to each separate project," Lapekas notes. "The size difference between the ac- tors and the characters they're playing can often be a factor ; environments and props must be precisely adjusted to compensate. Many motions require specialized camera configurations, custom props or multiple takes that must be spliced together in post to produce a single, complex or otherwise impossible motion. Depending on how or- ganized and technically experienced the client is directly impacts our overall produc- tion time," he adds. Streamlining facial capture processes is another goal. "Almost every client has a dif- ferent rig for facial capture," he notes. "We have to work with their technical director to make sure our templates work with their rigs based on the detail required from mo- tion capture data and what software pack- ages or game engines they're using." Recently, RES provided motion capture and animation services for the highly antici- pated Nintendo Wii title The Conduit, devel- oped by HVS and due for release this sum- Critical Moves' in-process motion capture data for the Iron Man game cinematic. continued on page 48 motion capture

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