Sochi 2014 – the next Winter Olympic Games – is coming soon… For us, it was the opportunity to motion capture several winter sports! Indeed, we were contacted by Kenzan Technologies for the making of a 3D animation requiring different short captures of professional athletes. We spent a weekend in Zermatt to acquire the necessary data. The weather conditions were not on our side, -15° at the top, snow falls, zero visibility, not really the best conditions to go skiing with our Xsens system and a computer on the slopes! After experiencing a lot of issues, especially because of the cold, we were finally able to obtain good animation data during the weekend. We captured four athletes in the following disciplines: Nordic skiing, alpine skiing, freestyle skiing and snowboard.
Back in Geneva, we captured three additional people to complete our sample of winter sports: ice hockey, speed skating and bobsleigh. Now you are wondering… Is there a bobsleigh slope in Geneva? Well of course, there isn’t! But with some tricks, a good carpenter and a little practice, it is possible to produce the illusion… Note that for this last capture, it was not necessary to have a professional athlete!
We were recently contacted to perform the motion capture for an upcoming short movie entitled “The Great Imitator” created by Boris Beer. This short animated movie will be a tribute to Charlie Chaplin. Without giving too much details, the goal of the shooting was to capture some iconic scenes of Chaplin’s most famous movies.
For example, the first scene we captured was the one from The Great Dictator where Chaplin plays with an inflatable globe. We also had to capture the famous nut screwing scene from Modern Times as well as some scenes from The Kid. Fabrice Bessire (the actor) did a great job reinterpreting Chaplin in those scenes.
Finally, among the selected scenes was the famous “Bread roll dance” from The Gold Rush. In this scene, Charlie Chaplin creates a small ballet by giving life to two forks and two bread roll in order to entertain his friends. As you can see on the pictures, this capture required a very specific and unique bread motion capture setup (patent pending!).
We will talk again about this short film when it will be finished. Stay tuned!
Last week we tested the motion capture protocol for the research project Motion and unconsciousness. The setup is uncommon: subjects are asked to execute movements in the dark while still being able to see the other participant’s hands thanks to phosphorescent tape. They are also equipped with a respiration sensor and headphones with white noise to be isolated from external stimuli.
100 volunteers will participate to the study and be distributed in different groups according to specific criteria. One group will also be captured with simultaneous EEG recording. The goal of the project is to compare the subjective sensation of synchrony with objective data of motor coordination and synchronization acquired from motion capture when two people are engaged in joint action tasks.
In the context of our project Shoulder3D, we spent a day in radiology to acquire specific data required for the validation of our research methodology. The objective of the project is to develop a new kinematic model to reliably evaluate the three-dimensional motion of the shoulder based on motion capture data. In order to compare the kinematics estimated by our methodology with the real motion of the shoulder bones, we performed a double acquisition. We simultaneously recorded motion capture data using our Vicon system and fluoroscopic images.
As you can see on the pictures below, setting up properly the system in such a confine area and dealing with the occlusions of the fluoroscopic device were the tricky parts of our work!
The Institute of Movement Science and Sport Medicine of the University of Geneva and the Willy Taillard Laboratory of Kinesiology of the University Hospital of Geneva contacted us for an unusual motion capture session. Daniel Jaquet, a PhD student in Humanities, focuses his research on the description of fights in full armor in historical documents from the 16th century. Part of his thesis work aims at analyzing the range of possible movements while wearing such a 30 kg medieval armor. By using motion capture, he will be able to get a comprehensive amount of data.
For this mocap session, the main issue was related to the reflective surface of the armor. Indeed, reflections can be perceived as markers by the camera, introducing a lot of unwanted artefacts. By tuning our MXT40S cameras’ parameters and the reconstruction settings, we were able to solve this issue and collect good data for his study.
Thanks to Stéphane Armand, Alice Bonnefoy and Daniel’s equerry for their help during the mocap session!
Are you interested in learning more about motion capture or simply curious to discover the magic of mocap? On May 7th and 8th 2012, we will organize a workshop at artanim in collaboration with Focal.
The goal of this two-day workshop will be to put hands on our two motion capture systems: our 24 cameras MXT40s Vicon system and our Xsens MVN motion capture suit. From system calibration to final rendering, the whole pipeline will be covered.
Program:
The first day will be dedicated to capture data. After a brief theoretical presentation on motion capture, participants will be able to try each system and assess their advantages and drawbacks.
The second day will focus on data post-processing and their integration in a 3D authoring software. This will allow the participants to get a clearer view of what is involved when using motion capture for 3D animation.
Registration to this workshop is open until April 4th on Focal’s website.
We're proud to announce the launch of our new immersive #VR experience "Escalade - The Darkest Night", created in partnership with the Compagnie de 1602 and offered exclusively at the @Dreamscape Geneva center.
Last week we tested the motion capture protocol for the research project 
