Motion capture is one of the biggest animation methods in use in modern industries. While it’s led to some uncanny-valley-looking results, it’s still an unparalleled technique for creating realistic characters that couldn’t exist otherwise.
Studios spend millions of dollars building motion capture studios, transforming that data into CGI, and meticulously editing from there, but it can be surprisingly cheap to do basic motion capture. (And you won’t need to tape ping pong balls to yourself.)
In this video, Thomas Wester from Pacific Northwest College of Art uses the powerful and affordable Brekel Pro Body motion capture software, along with an XBox Kinect (a favorite among indie technologists) to do some simple motion capture to speed along rigging and animation.
This content comes from Creating and Capturing Mixed Reality, part of the PNCA program Creating for Mixed Reality. Course 1 is free to join—check out the first session for more info.
Creating and Capturing Mixed Reality
Pacific Northwest College of Art