Changing the motion capture landscape of Latin America

“Tecnológico de Monterrey was the first school in Mexico, maybe in all of LatinAmerica, to offer a digital arts program BA,” says Carlos Vilchis, a virtual production educator and consultant who helped the university establish its pioneering motion capture labs.

Tecnológico de Monterrey is a privately owned university based in Mexico. It has 26 campuses in 33 cities across the country, and is widely considered one of the top universities in Latin America. Its first motion capture lab, equipped with Vicon T40s, was established in 2009 for use by the digital arts program.

“The digital arts program became very popular, and as people from the university’s life sciences and engineering departments became aware that Tecnológico had these laboratories, they started to ask how they could use it,” says Vilchis.

Other departments began to acquire the software licenses they needed to use the system, and additional labs followed. As of 2024, the university has 10 motion capture labs spread across multiple departments and campuses, all operating Vicon systems and covering animation, VFX and virtual production; life sciences and engineering.

Vilchis, who has worked for companies including Industrial Light & Magic, was brought in as a professor and consultant on the development of Tecnológico de Monterrey’s motion capture labs and the VFX teaching programs associated with them.

In the last six years, the relationship between Tecnológico de Monterrey and Vicon has deepened even further, with entertainment applications (and virtual production in particular) becoming a driving force in the relationship.