ThreeSpace, a Los Angeles based computer animation and interactive media company has opened an Optical Motion Capture Studio for Film, Video and Games
Production
The studio will function as a service bureau for other computer animation and game development companies, as well as for in-house production.
The optical based system is able to handle up to 120 samples per second of data without the need of heavy suits and cables, and the resulting data is much cleaner
than with the commonly used magnetic systems. It uses multiple cameras to record the motion of actors wearing reflective markers. The video images are then
processed and the systems computer combines the multiple camera views to mathematically locate the 3D coordinates of each marker. The raw data generated by
the system is then filtered with ThreeSpaces proprietary software to be integrated into most computer animation packages.
Complex and fast motions, such as gymnastic flips with twists can be captured quickly, reducing the time animators would otherwise have to spend working on inverse
kinematics software to obtain a much less believable result.
