In recognition of over 10 years of success with Vicon motion capture systems for production, the Academy for the Performing Arts awarded the company an Academy Award for Technical Achievement. So whether for TV or film production, full CG character animation feature or VFX shot, real-time or offline, Vicon MX can help.

HIGH FIDELITY CHARACTER ANIMATION

For full frame character animation there is no substitute - motion capture is now a routine technique for creating believable full size characters on set and on screen. Mocap used to be the technology for the background characters - those days are over.  Foreground characters are now routinely animated using Vicon MX motion capture systems.  Industrial Light and Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks, The Moving Picture Company all use Vicon systems as a standard component of their VFX arsenals.

FIRST UNIT CAPABLE

Live action, green screen, 25 people on set and optical motion capture.  Prior to Vicon MX, those things would never have been possible simultaneously. Now they are - and routinely. With "on the fly" calibration and intelligent cameras coupled with studio integration tools like SMTPE, Genlock and remote triggering, Vicon MX right at home on the first unit set. Just ask ILM - click here to find out more about what ILM achieved on Van Helsing with a Vicon system.

CAPTURE MULTIPLE ACTORS SIMULTANEOUSLY

Vicon MX makes capturing multiple actor shots easy. Whether in big volumes or not, because of the high resolution MX-F40 cameras, you get super high detail. Users routinely capture 8 actors simultaneously.

SCALABILITY BUILT-IN

Vicon MX scales as your production needs dictate. The system can do ths because everything in Vicon MX is effectively a network device – the cameras, the synchronization box, the timecode/genlock box. So if you want a bigger system you just add more cameras each connected to the sync units with one cable. One cable which carries all the power and the data.

REAL-TIME

Real data on real CG characters in real-time.  Allow your talent and your director to see the motion applied to CG right there at the time of capture - ensuring that the right performance comes through.

HIGH QUALITY. HIGH ACCURACY.

The MX system delivers the cleanest data. Pure, high quality, high accuracy. Vicon does this because every step of the capture process from the design of the marker to the design of the export software, the focus is on preserving the fidelity of the move. This qulaity focus means you get the most believable animations available.

SIMULTANEOUS CAPTURE OF BODY & FACE

Never before have both face and body data been captured during the same performance with enough fidelity to make it to the big screen. Vicon MX erases this limitation.  Face, full body, and hand captures are now possible all on the same actor on the same stage at the same time. The Vicon MX-F40 camera, with 4 million pixels processing 256 shades of grayscale in every frame make it possible. Hop aboard the Polar Express to find out how Tom Hanks was able to drive 5 different characters wtih simultaneous face and body capture (click here for The Polar Express case study)

POWER TOOLS

Powerful tools to finish even the jobs that go horribly wrong – the ability to can a shot that was not perfect. Vicon's iQ software pipeline saves you time and money. Easy to setup and use with a well designed workflow allowing for fast turnaround of previz and final shots needing fewer people than other motion capture systems.

On one recent film shoot, shots were being delivered in minutes on the mocap studio floor by one person who was also capturing data at the same time. This was thanks to the automated pipelines that learn your specific and unique processes and way of working and then automates it in a savable pipeline process file.

PRODUCTION READY

Vicon MX has been designed with production in mind. This is why the system offers full master and slave timecode support and genlock abilities, including the ability to uplock from broadcast and film frame rates (24/25/30 fps) to the higher rates of motion capture (up to 1000 fps). It even makes shooting Pick-ups easy because it is straightforward to unpack the system, set it up and shoot.

EXPERIENCED - FROM TITANIC TO POLAR EXPRESS

Been there, seen it, done it, got the Academy Award. Vicon systems have been used in film and television production for over 10 years. This broad experience shows in the system's design and every day of its use.

Anima Vitae Ltd

Blur Studio

Computed Animated Technology

Crytek Studios

Cyper Entertainment

Dida Video Production Co Ltd

Digimax Production Center Co Ltd

Digital Dream Studio

Digital Media Lab Inc

Grape City

Griot Inc

Industrial Light & Magic

Kaydara

Links Digiworks

LocoMotion Studios

Mill Film

Moving Picture Company

Naray Digital Entertainment

Nippon Television Network Corporation (NTV)

Ocon Inc.

Philos Entertainment RT

Pixomondo

Prograph Research srl

Rhythm & Hues

Space Illusion Inc.

Synthetique

V-Star

www.circlesandlines.com

The making of Shinobi.  Read how Links Digiworks used the 'digital double' method to create CG shots for the film Shinobi.

"This is going to change everything. Nobody can imagine the ultimate impact. At its best, it's going to completely liberate the moving-image story-teller. There will be nothing he can't do." Robert Zemeckis, Director, Polar Express

November's edition of American Cinematographer features coverage of the extraordinary new motion-captured movie The Polar Express, released by Warner Bros and created with visual effects artistry by Sony Pictures Imageworks. Ron Magid's article gives a fascinating insight into the revolutionary production methods and ground-breaking techniques used to capture the actors' performances.

A Vicon motion-capture system was used to amass face and body data from live actors, whose performances were finessed within the digital realm. Tom Hanks took on five roles, including those of the Express Conductor and the Hero Boy, and different mo-cap 'takes' were used to create each character's ideal performance.

We wanted to use the most brilliant light possible for the facial capture so we went for red LEDs,' says Imageworks' Alberto Menache, author of the 1998 book Understanding Motion Capture, who oversaw the technical aspects of Express' mo-cap shoot and Imageworks' digital pipeline.  'It turned out that 64 cameras with red rings shining in the actors' faces was a little too much. When Ken saw all that light, he said: do something about it. We went to less visible infrared, which doesn't travel as far as red, but still worked fine.'

This 'invisible' lighting solution was part of an ongoing R&D project involving Vicon Motion Systems and Imageworks, which led to an evolution in motion-capture techniques...The biggest obstacle was managing capture data from more MCam2 cameras than Vicon had ever intended to deploy.