August 6, 2007
Cameras that capture your every 3-D move
A breakthrough in how film makers create special effects and video game designers develop characters will be unveiled at a computer graphics conference in San Diego this week.
New York-based Organic Motion will demonstrate at Siggraph 2007 a motion-capture system that does away with the need for the body suits, markers and tracking systems that are currently used to translate natural human movements into computer graphics.
Organic’s technology uses an array of 10 standard cameras hooked up to an image processing computer. The different viewpoints are processed in real-time to become 3-D spatial data, creating full-bodied moving characters on the screen rather than the skeletal moving dots of existing systems.
The system could transform how animators work - they can step away from their computers into Organic’s system, simulate the movements they want from their characters and then instantly begin working on the results.
To achieve the same effect currently, they would have to don a body suit with marker dots, work with a technician and spend a long time calibrating the system, and then hand over the end result to an artist to clean up jitters.
"Body-suit systems cost $150,000 and, at the end of the day, the results are mixed," says Andrew Tschesnok, Organic’s chief executive and founder.
"This changes it from being a niche market and turns it into one that can become mainstream."
The company sees applications outside the entertainment industry and is in talks with medical research facilities, sports trainers, physical therapists and even museums on how they could take advantage of the application.
The system, which costs around $80,000, could analyse a golf swing from every angle, including underneath the player. Doctors are already working with the company on motion analysis, tracking the gaits of children with cerebral palsy.
Mr Tschesnok envisages video game players themselves could eventually become completely immersed in what they are playing, stepping into a booth and carrying out the movements of their characters in real time.
And they are likely to be fighting with a friend - Organic Motion’s next advance is for its system to be able to track two people at the same time.
