51 votes!?
Seriously, come on! How can you guys support this sad software-co marketing peddling video?

How can this software be so much better than that which exists already?

• Motion capture in everyday surroundings; and
  
• Motion Capture without markers, Awesome!

>> ^SaNdMaN:
^ What the heck are you talking about? The whole point is to surprise people that the person they've just seen explaining the technology is actually CGI. Did you think that the CGI demonstration was just the face turning red and black? That would be stupid and pointless.


The demonstration was showing that THE FACE was CG for the whole video.

Geebus.

They are showing that their motion tracking system is really great at FACES.

The rest is REAL.

You want proof? how about this?:

Using (USC's) Institute for Creative Technologies' special scanning system that can capture facial details down to the individual pore, the face of actress Emily O'Brien was transformed into a digital representation of herself, which could then be entirely machine-manipulated. A special spherical lighting rig captured O'Brien in 35 reference facial poses using a pair of high resolution digital cameras. The facial maps were then converted into 3D data using Image Metrics' proprietary markerless motion capture technology.

The animation/motion capture/image metrics in this look really great in many of the cut scenes here. I want to kiss the animators.

So many console production houses these days seem happy with wobbly, barely-refined motion capture output that in no way suit the figures they're attached to. I especially love the energetic movements of the Emperor as he attacks

The (motion captured) woman clearly went to salsa class..

Motion capture sucks. It never looks as good as decent quality animation and if you're going to use realistic human styled characters moving in ways humans can move (ie no superhero moves, cartoony moves or exaggerated movement) then you should just be filming with real actors.

This is why Beowulf and Polar Express sucked.

Aside from which, most motion capture is not clean, it needs an animator to fix all the little issues that occur anyhow. See Max Steel Season 3 Episode 1 where Max and Kat are fighting with staffs down a staircase and onto pilings for an example of "motion capture" that's actually about 75% properly animated because it's nearly impossible for the mocap crew to actually perform that crap. Believe me it would have been less animation work to just animate it from the beginning.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'motion, capture, 3d, clothing, dancing, movement, cameras' to 'motion, capture, 3d, clothing, dancing, movement, cameras, tech, neato, cgi' - edited by lucky760

>> ^Obsidianfire:
With this technology, imagine the realistic CG movies that artists could produce. Very nice.


And the video games.

Thank you for that.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
*promote

I'm really impressed by the animation on the juggler. Especially the little extra kick he gives right before he does his backflip. It almost looks as good as motion capture just for a moment.

Yeah SuperSaiyan I'm pretty sure back in these days you didn't get to see your animation in playback until you printed each frame one at a time, then scanned each printed frame one at a time through an optical printer onto a film reel.

Computer models back then were created through direct input of co-ordinate mapping in worldspace, meaning the "artists" would type in the 3-axis co-ordinate of each vertex in the geometry without seeing what it looked like.

After modelling was complete, animation worked the same way... animators would figure out the keyframes by timelining things on paper and with maquettes and stopwatches. Then they'd manually type in the position changes, frame-by-frame... there were no motion paths or CG tweens back then. That's why in Tron the computer animation basically conists of statuelike, singular objects sliding around in space, except for some of the CG tanks, which have a 1-degree of motion turret. It was way too much work to have articulated CG characters.

This was one heck of a movie, although I admit, I've yet to meet a girl that liked it even half as much as any of my friends.

MG - I was of very similar mind before I saw it - never liked motion capture CGI, never watched Polar Express for this reason, but when my wife insisted on seeing Beowulf (she likes 'cartoons', what can I say? ), I was most pleasantly surprised.

I too prefer the theatrical over this one. Not saying I "liked" it, just preferred it. Here's why: Throughout the entire movie, the sub-humans, "infected", whatever you want to call them, showed no human traits. Then, all of a sudden at the end, they're going to show thought and compassion? I don't buy it. Having not read the book (and books are obviously ALWAYS infinitely better) I don't know which ending is more close to the written ending. But regardless, the theatrical stays more true to the rest of the movie.

I, too, also couldn't stand the CGI humans. When are 3D animators going to get the clue and realize that CGI needs to be there too enhance what is already shot? You don't build entire scenes around it. Now, had they done some true motion capture, stayed rigid to the rules, etc. with just a slight amount of computer graphic enhancement, the movie would have been a lot better.

Also, on a different but related side note. Will Smith's performance was especially fantastic; I would say almost TOO good. Here's my point: When he loses Sam, his acting was so good, it took me out of the movie, as I thought to myself, "Damn, he's a good actor." Which is the cardinal sin for a movie to do. I can say, however, that this was the first performance that ever did that to me. So again, kudos to Smith, even if it did pull me out.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'beck, stop motion, michel, gondry, the information' to 'beck, michel, gondry, the information, motion, capture, cgi, morphing, transforming' - edited by bamdrew

Hey Bamdrew, that's awesome. However, my POINT was that the title of the video is "...satellite VIDEO of "

"Video" is defined as thus: Video (Latin for "I see", first person singular present, indicative of videre, "to see") is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion. Video technology was first developed for television systems, but has been further developed in many formats to allow for consumer video recording. Video can also be viewed through the Internet as video clips or streaming media clips on computer monitors.

Now, I'm sure saying "video" by NASA geeks is perfectly cool for THEM, but using the term "video" when what you are really talkin about is computer simulation based on accurate data gathered is not the same thing. Video motion capture is not the same thing as a video of a person moving because in order to use the motion capture data, they create or simulate a human (or whatever) to illustrate the motion capture. Actual video of something is not the same as a sim of it's data. I don't MIND that it's sim and I am perfectly fine with it, it still has the same impact, but the veracity is a problem if you mislead by calling it somethig it clearly is not. It is NOT actual video footage taken from space- it's a sim of DATA collected. More accurate yes, but not accurate title of the video here.

Capiche?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

You can. You're a bronze star, baby.

In reply to this comment by prisonpanda:
if only i could downvote:(

That was pretty accurate, but I will call out that not all companies plan their dev schedules like that. It looked like they were mainly using a waterfall approach and that is just one of many methods that can be used.

What they described about motion capturing was basically correct, but they did not show motion capturing in the video. MoCap is done by performers (not the animators) in black suits with what looks like ping pong balls glued on all over, and on any weapons they are using. Scanners capture the movements and the animators get these MoCap files to edit and filter and massage to create very realistic animations in their animation software. My cousin actually works at on of EA's MoCap studios. What they showed on the video was traditional hand animation where all the animation is done by hand.

That looked like Ubisoft's Montreal studio there, and I have to say that place is beautiful. Upvote!