THE TASK:
Comissioned by Phoenix Technologies founders - Chris and Jen Ma, I was tasked with a challenge to pitch their new VIZUALEYEZ active optical system to the entertainment industry at SIGGRAPH 2002.
In order to topple the competing offer by highly established VICON mocap system, I was coming up with an idea to use and amplify the greatest advantage of Phoenix Technologies VISUALEYEZ system - and that was it's true real-time no-delay performance and high precision and accuracy.
THE CONCEPT:
To demonstrate true real-time capability of the system, I created an interactive concept for Virtual Cinematography or Cyber-Cinema Authoring - dubbed CAPSCENE.
CAPSCENE is set of motion-capture procedures for pre-visualization and/or creation of real-time synthesized cyber-movies, achieved by non-linear sequencing and layering of motion-captured actions performed by actors and/or cinematographers.
CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Using few unusual solutions, cinematographers have the ability to create shots in way that is more superior than any other capturing process in the place at that time.
SEQUENCING THE ACTING
In practical terms, actor will see his/hers previous performance (acting) in Virtual Reality (using personal display system) and will record additional acting performance by reacting to his own previous performance - but this time - as another character in the scene.
In that way - just like musicinas can add instrument after instrument on multi-channel recording, actors can add performance after performance - changing characters as they go.
In similar ways as sythesized music works - CAPSCENE concept enables real-time recording of layer after layer of action, where actors can add their performance on top of the sum of previous performances created for the scene.
THE RESULT:
Initially designed around Phonix Technologies realtime active optical motion-capture technology, CAPSCENE (Capturing the Scene) concept is director-centric mocap solution featuring UI that empowers creation/authoring of CG-based movies with unique speed, efficiency, and flexibility.
ACHIEVED:
Presented as an open-source concept at SIGGRAPH 2002. - CAPSCENE procedures of virtual cinematography have been presented by hundreds of visitors and various companies VIPs, and have later been emulated by various companies in different versions and solutions.
Presented as an open-source concept at SIGGRAPH 2002. - CAPSCENE procedures of virtual cinematography have been presented by hundreds of visitors and various companies VIPs, and have later been emulated by various companies in different versions and solutions.
