Meeting Report
Motion Capture Way Cool
August 2001
Red Eye Motion Capture Studio sponsored our August meeting in partnership with High Voltage Games. Not only was the food great and the beer free they showed us all how motion capture works! Maggie and her team rigged up Rick to check his golf swing. Of course they made him into an overstuffed lizard while they were at it! The entire process is fascinating. They have a huge studio (in case anyone wants to capture an elephant) with a gazillion cameras set up all the way around the capture area. Then they suit you up (they have suits and shoes in all sizes plus toys!). They tape the motion capture balls to key areas on the suit and shoes. Then they have you pose and move each arm and leg to capture the reference points. Lots of stuff goes on in the computer and then they place an image over the model. Once it's all set up the actor starts moving around and the motion can be displayed up on the screen. Rick made a great golf swinging lizard!
Eric brought us books and stuff from SIGGRAPH and set up a terrific slide show presentation. Some of the graphics were just incredible. We had a new person join us from GameBeat. Darryl creates the music behind the games we love to play. I hope to have him bring his music to one of the meetings. Everyone had a good time mostly talking with old friends and making new ones. We had programmers, producers, artists, writers and musicians.
Here's some pics from the meeting.
Tony and Mike discussing Tony's new book he's writing.
Jim, John, and Nick caught hanging around the food table!
"Are you sure they're just gonna test my golf swing?" Rick suits up for motion capture.
Maggie and team are taping on the motion capture balls. Look at the cameras needed for this!
Maggie is directing Rick while the guys are in the back busy capturing data on the computers.