Artanim participated in the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève 2011 which rewards the finest watch creations of the year. The ceremony was held at the Grand Théâtre de Genève on Saturday 19th of November 2011. Simply the best Swiss watchmakers were present, as well as the President of the Confederation – Micheline Calmy-Rey – the Director of the United Nations in Geneva and Ambassadors.
Under the theme “Time in the cinema”, artanim created in collaboration with Move for Art a show combining dance and 3D animation, a leap into the future marked by the inevitable epic sci-fi film “Star Wars” created by George Lucas. Darth Vader, the head of the imperial army, was embodied on stage by a dancer (Manuel Vignoulle). Its 3D clone, as well as the imperial troops were projected on big screens behind him and animated by the rhythm of his motion.
Last Thursday, the students from the Digital Film Animation Program of SAE Institute Geneva came to our studio for a great workshop on motion capture.
After 5 hours of theoretical lectures, the students were able to discover our motion capture studio and get their hands on our Vicon system.
The first step was to learn how to calibrate properly the system: camera parameters adjustment, reflections, wand wave and finally setting up the origin of the system. Once this was done, they quickly dressed up and started to position the reflective markers on the actors. Care was taken not to forget one!
The next step was to calibrate the actors. A range of motion was first captured and then processed to fit a virtual skeleton to the performers. Last check: no marker is missing, reconstruction is fine, the labeling and the solve is ok… Good! Now let’s capture something!
During the afternoon, a few movements were captured and then post-processed. The students were also able to preview in real-time their animation in Motion Builder. A lot of fun but also a nice way to check how the actor performance will be transposed to a 3D character.
Artanim is dedicated to the development and promotion of motion capture. We conduct research projects in computer animation and biomedicine, educational activities and cultural activities such as the creation of audiovisual projects and events.
We will present our different motion capture systems:
Vicon: 24 MXT40S cameras, 110m2 studio
Xsens: MVN suit allowing outdoor capture session
To help us cater for the correct number of visitors, we would be grateful if you could contact us to let us know your company name and number of people in your party.
Our team looks forward to meeting you and will be pleased to answer any of your questions!
Last week, Prophysics came to our studio in order to install our Vicon system: 3 MX Giganets, 24 MXT40S cameras!
The first day was dedicated to build the system that came packed into several boxes (see photo on the left). 16 cameras were first attached to the two flexible grids and 8 others were mounted on tripods.
The next day, the Prophysics’s technicians carefully calibrated each camera to obtain the biggest motion capture volume as possible while maintaining high tracking accuracy (see photo below). We finally tested the system intensively with different sizes of markers to ensure its proper setup, and especially to make sure we can precisely capture the smallest eyebrow movements, as well as incredible fast and large range of motion!
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.
