Motion Capture

Motion capture - or MoCap - is a great tool used for making animated movements more lifelike and accurate, by recording the movement of an actor with equipment that feeds the movements into a computer and creates data that can be used to move an animated model. This can make animation much quicker and easier - which means that it can also sometimes cut costs.

One of the most famous examples of successful motion capture is Gollum, from Lord of the Rings.




He was one of the first fully CGI characters, using motion capture for a full digital performance. Andy Serkis, who provided the movement for the motion capture also voices Gollum which helped him get the personality in both the voice and movement matching. It works better than with prosthetics, especially considering that the character is supposed to be bony and starving, which would be somewhat impractical for an actor (although that isn't to say that some people wouldn't go that far). His movements can then be animated to be even more exaggerated than his own if needed, but having Serkis do the movements first and have it captured can make it seem a lot more natural - for such an unnatural character, anyway.

Doing this for large amounts of characters can be much more expensive though - for example, Avatar. The Na'vi people are all blue with almost feline features, and instead of trying to do matching make up for each of the characters and reapplying it every time they shoot, using mocap and then animating them was much more easy. A lot of people argue that too much time and effort was spent on making the film so visually exciting that the writing was neglected and the story felt weak compared.

Motion Capture is especially big with games right now - some going as far as to even model the characters after the voice actors who also do the motion capture for that character. This is almost like using the actors in live action, just much more expensive but much easier to integrate into gameplay.


Troy Baker plays Delsin Rowe in Infamous: Second Son - he does the voice acting, motion capture, and is even the face model for the character, and it works really well. With next gen console and higher powered computers, games are constantly looking at ways to improve their graphics and have started doing this more often to make the game more lifelike and realistic.

Sometimes this just doesn't work, and especially in animated films like Polar Express, the characters move very lifelike, but there is just something about it that doesn't work. Some people say it is just because the eyes look lifeless, but maybe that is because the stylisation of the animation doesn't work as well with motion capture and more realistic animation.