How Motion Capture is Shaping the Gaming Industry?

  Arjun       January 12, 2021

Motion capture is the technique of recreating animated movements of people by recording their real-time movements. Although this technology has been used for over 20 years in the film, animation, and later the game industry, it is expanding the stretches with regular usage. In the past years, the arrival of devices like Kinect, Orbbec, etc has made recording animations on our own an easy process. A similar option like facial tracking can be seen in apps like Instagram and Snapchat as filters. These interesting techniques even though capture animations are not of the best quality. A professional studio is a necessary requirement to recreate the best motion capture animation outputs.

 
How does motion capture work in a Studio?

This is not an easy process and demands effort from every department involved in creating high-quality 2D or 3D animations using the motion capture technique. The whole working method is pointed out as steps for having an easy understanding of the process.

Calibration

It is essential to calibrate the cameras. Within the 3D viewport of Blade, all cameras should aim and stand the precise way as they are doing in the real world. Also, confirm they capture no other light than the reflective markers on the actor’s suit. Bad calibration and good calibration.

Calibrating the actor

The actor’s markers will appear on the screen as he or she walks around the studio. This is known as “Range of Motions.” (ROM) He or she is going to exercise all extreme rotations of the body. See this as a little workout with spinning arms, bending back and forth, and kicking the feet. this is often so that Blade recognizes the markers as body parts and knows what the movement limits of the actor are.

Generating a digital skeleton

Before recording animations, sticks will connect the markers on the actor. The actor becomes a simplified 3D skeleton on screen and therefore the sticks are the “bones” of the skeleton. we'll label the reflective markers on the suit, as captured in step 2, with matching body parts, like Left Inner Elbow or Clavicle.

Cleaning

During the Range of Motion recording, it will occur that markers disappear during an extreme pose because the cameras only record light reflections. For instance, if the actor bends forward, the markers on the chest will automatically disappear, because the cameras above him/her cannot see them anymore. This may create gaps within the 3D skeleton, which require to be filled. The higher the ROM is completed, the less painful it's when doing this all manually. Meanwhile, the actor must keep wearing the suit for the simplest results.

 Recording the ultimate animations

Recording the sports animations is, fortunately, the simplest and therefore the most fun part. The actor drives the 3D skeleton now in real-time. this suggests that the 3D skeleton will instantly copy every move he/she makes within the studio. 

Motion capture is one of the hot areas in the animation and gaming industry. With the technological advancements in the field of gaming, motion capture is pioneering a radical change in the gameplay experience for users.