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The Real Magic: Markerless Motion Capture Tools

Every once in a while a new technology comes along that offers a completely new way of doing somethin while suggesting intriguing new creative possibilities. That’s the buzz in Boston, where a new markerless facial motion capture technology called the Contour Reality Capture System has been introduced. 

Developed by the San Francisco motion capture studio Mova, Contour is not only markerless, it produces a true volumetric 3D image. Using two synchronized cameras, Contour simultaneously records visual and geometric information. When the two sets of data are combined, the  result is a high-resolution 3D digital image that rivals the quality of film cameras, says Mova founder Steve Perlman.

The imagery captured by Contour is extremely realistic, because the cameras are ingesting data from the entire surface of a subject, not just data from strategically placed markers. The motion of any 3D surface can be captured, whether or not it’s deformable faces, body movements, and even cloth. Surfaces to be captured need to have phosphorescent makeup applied to them, which is recognized by the VICON MX cameras. Resolution exceeds 100,000 polygons per frame, with sub-millimeter precision at up to 120 frames a second.   

Download Contour 4 Phases video
Download Mova_Contour_3d_Zoetrope video

Source: Digital Medianet
Source: Wikipedia
Source: Motion Capture Resources

Tagged in Motion

The Tagged in Motion project, builds a bridge between real graffiti art and its virtual depiction. The centre of attention is the graffiti artist DAIM, who co-created the nextwall. Equipped with the appropriate technology, DAIM sprays graffiti into empty space.

In a large hall, three cameras using Motion Capturing record DAIM’s position and the movements he executes with a virtual spray can. The assimilated data is shown to him in real time in a pair of video glasses as free-floating 3D graffiti in space. In this way he can decide how and where to apply his strokes, and via a Bluetooth controller can also determine the colours, strength of brushstrokes and textures of his work. This extended reality thus becomes a three-dimensional graffiti canvas, on which something completely new is created: street art of the next generation!

Source: Fabrik

ShapeWrap III: Motion Capture the simple way

The ShapeWrap III portable suit is designed to fit most people. When buying a motion capture system you must take into account who will be wearing the system. Most users, students for example, will not wear a spandex outfit. ShapeWrap III does not require any spandex.

Source: Measurand

Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904)

During the 1860s Marey threw himself into the study of flight, first of insects and then birds. His aim was to understand how a wing interacted with the air to cause the animal to move. He also devised some ingenious apparatus based on his graphical method, such as a corset which allowed a bird to fly around a circular track while recording the movements of its thorax and wings.

Source: Motion Capture Resources 
Source: Urban Seagull

Picturing Time
Book on Étienne-Jules Marey
by Marta Braun

Étienne-Jules Marey was an inventor whose methods of recording movement revolutionized our way of visualizing time and motion. Best remembered for his chronophotography, Marey constructed a single-camera system that led the way to cinematography. Picturing Time the first complete survey of Marey’s work, investigates the far reaching effects of Marey’s inventions on stream-of-consciousness literature, psychoanalysis, Bergsonian philosophy, and the art of cubists and futurists.

Braun offers a fascinating look at how Marey’s chronophotography was used to express the profound transformation in understanding and experiencing time that occurred in the late nineteenth century. Featuring 335 illustrations, Picturing Time includes many unpublished examples of Marey’s chronophotographs and cinematic work. It also contains a complete bibliography of his writings and the first catalog of his films, photographic prints, and recently discovered negatives.

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Mike the Talking Head (1988)

Mike the talking head is a step towards animators being able to directly control their characters rather than drawing their actions. Silicon Graphics and deGraf-Wahrman Inc are working together to produce a new type of animation tool to allow animators to work with their characters in the same manner as puppeteers work with puppets.

Source: Motion Capture Resources
Source: Digital Puppetry
Source: Mambo

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)

Eadweard Mubridge was born in Kingston upon Thames in 1830 the son of a merchant trader.  He moved away from Kingston in about 1852 to make a fortune for himself in America.  He started his American career as a bookbinder’s agent in New York, but shortly after this moved to San Francisco where he was to make his fame and  fortune. It was in San Francisco where his interest in photography really took off.  At first he was a landscape photographer and sold his views of the Yosemite Valley and San Francisco Bay to the middle classes of the town.  This began to net him a fortune in pre- orders and his fame as a landscape photographer began to spread.

His fame brought him to the attention of a former governor Leland Stanford and he was commissioned to solve an age old argument through photography.  Does a trotting horse have all four feet off the ground at any one stage in its stride?  After some time, during which he was put on trial and acquitted of the murder of his wife’s lover, he was, through a series of experiments with shutters and chemicals, able to prove that it did.  This was the beginning of a relationship between Stanford and Muybridge that was to change the history of the moving image. Muybridge’s experiments proved conclusively for the first time, that a horse while galloping lifted all four hooves off the ground. 

Source: Muybridge Museum
Source: Wikipedia
Source: Horse Locomotion

Front: Sketch Furniture via Motion Capture

Is it possible to let a first sketch become an object, to design directly onto space? The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialise free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined.Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialised through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture.

The Swedish design group FRONT has been working in Japan since September. During this time they have developed and explored the technique they used in the making of Sketch Furniture which they showed in Art Basel Miami / Design with Barry Friedman Gallery Ltd ( New York ).

• Front Design
• Instructable 3D Motion Capture
• Wikipedia