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Motus Lets Users 'Film' Within Any 3D Environment
Zothecula writes "In the creation of the film Avatar, director James Cameron invented a system called Simul-cam. It allowed him to see the video output of the cameras, in real time, but with the human actors digitally altered to look like the alien creatures whom they were playing. The system also negated the need for a huge amount of animation – every performance was captured in all its blue-skinned, pointy-eared majesty as it happened, so it didn't need to be created from scratch on a computer. Now, researchers from the University of Abertay Dundee have built on the techniques pioneered by Simul-cam to create a new system that lets users act as their own cameraperson within existing 3D environments."
This looks similar to what Lightwave 10's, Virtual Cinematography.
:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhJauu_vB2A
Pretty amazing stuff. Though not as exciting as the old days of waiting 24 hours to see what a single frame turned out like.
The first weird and not specifically predictable combination of erp/cosplay/fanfic/porn using Motus emergent in 3... 2... 1...
I can see the fnords!
This sounds like rotoscoping in real time using a digital process.
Being able to "skin" your actors in real time with costumes/makeup will have a profound impact on a lot of films, but also the film making industry itself. I'm sure there are a lot fewer model-makers/matte painters since the advent of CG, will this have the same effect on makeup/props/costumers?
crazy dynamite monkey
Did James Cameron actually invent this system? I thought he was a director.
Does it work in the cinema?
If Cameron came up with the idea and had someone build it for him, I'd say you could argue he invented it.
He may not have been the one doing the technical details, but if it's his concept developed on his dime ... well, my past employers own the works I did for them, so why not in this case?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No. This summary is horrible. The article and the technology it references has nothing to do with real-time skinning of character models onto real humans.
What they show is basically 2 Wii remotes at the same time for more accurate movement in a video game.
Great, just what I never wanted, automated ShakeyCam.
Note from the CAD industry this is decades old. Is the actual story that AutoCad's patent finally expired so movie folks can use it legally in their software, or something like that?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Well essentially you're just transplanting the costs to someone else - where did that 3D model come from? It didn't just prop up out of nowhere.
Some things, like Zombies, are generally much cheaper on Make up than something like a talking Gorilla suit. One of the reason there are so many Zombie movies out there is because it's essentially the cheapest thing an Indie Film maker can make - They require little to no story writing, they don't require any special effects besides 1 good make up artist and a lot of cornsyrup and food colouring, and you can simply run around your city shooting.
Now - is it possible to make a Zombie model and transpose it over your actors? Definately. Is that cheaper? Not really. You're paying big bucks not only for the design of the model but the textures, skinning, skeleton work - there's a lot of stuff that goes into this.
One of the reasons this worked so well for James Cameron in Avatar is that essentially the world of Pandora was meant to be vast and immersive, which is really hard to do on a sound stage - or its extra expensive that way. Since the rest of the world was in CGI to cheapen the costs of producing an elaborate stage - it wasn't much of a stretch to move the Actors and Actresses into CGI as well - in fact for me personally I think it makes the parts with Live actors look more faked somehow (specifically the end fight scene).
So I don't think this is exactly "the end" for makeup and costume artists, because 100 yards of silk and a good tailor to do up Costumes can be a lot cheaper than a team of 3D modellers - and still look more real.
Actually, it's my understanding they still use the model-makers and old school techniques, they just integrate them with the digital stuff.
I seem to recall seeing something that one of the big CG houses (Pixar?) actually had physical skeleton models to let the old-school animators move the wireframe since they got much more realistic results.
I think they actually use hybrid systems to really good effect.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If Cameron came up with the idea and had someone build it for him, I'd say you could argue he invented it
That sets the bar for the concept of "invention" pretty damn low. If one can claim invented status for anything you can dream of, then I can produce quite a list of inventions on my resume. It's the actually making it work that is the hard part
He may not have been the one doing the technical details, but if it's his concept developed on his dime ... well, my past employers own the works I did for them, so why not in this case?
owning is one thing, being attributed as the inventor is another.
He fronted the money, he assumed the risk. The engineers are merely the tools to execute his vision.
If Cameron came up with the idea and had someone build it for him, I'd say you could argue he invented it.
He may not have been the one doing the technical details, but if it's his concept developed on his dime ... well, my past employers own the works I did for them, so why not in this case?
My guess is its one of those situations where Cameron invented it, until Autocad and friends open their decades of patent portfolios for enhanced animated architectural walkthrus and smash them, uh, then I guess it turns out those engineers invented it instead.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Now - is it possible to make a Zombie model and transpose it over your actors? Definately. Is that cheaper? Not really. You're paying big bucks not only for the design of the model but the textures, skinning, skeleton work - there's a lot of stuff that goes into this.
Not to mention the fact that a zombie movie with only a single zombie is going to be pretty boring. You're going to want a bunch of them, and you don't want them all identical. Which means you want a bunch of different skins.
Technoli
you are aware that the USPTO has allowed IBM to patent collating documents by hand right. You set each page on a table in sequence and then you simply walk along grabbing a page at a time.
the new idea bar is already pretty low.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
After watching the video from the source article I can't say I'm impressed and I don't see any advantages when using this compared to my general PC hardware. He says the applications of the commercial version will (for example) be replacing in-game democams so you can film it yourself as if you were really there. Oh please. We all use slick traced animations for that not shakey videos shot by hand, why would we want to have that? We could easily emulate that afterwarts too if we wanted it. Then he tells us about a game idea where the character is part of a journalist film crew..
I specifically said "and had someone build it for him" ... meaning he didn't just come up with the idea, he footed the development costs, and probably had to explain his grand vision to people to try to get them to build it. He probably needed to iterate over a couple of prototypes to get to the final thing.
And, since the engineers likely weren't sitting around inventing this non-existent thing ... someone has to be the one who invented it.
It's a work for hire. I'm sure if the Academy gives an award for the technology, the guys who built it will be the ones receiving it.
But, for public discussion, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to say that if Cameron envisioned it, paid for it, pioneered its use, and made it become more than a technology testbed ... well, he may have invented it in the broadest sense of the word. He didn't build it, but maybe he did invent it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Sadly, I spent all my mod-points earlier today on utterly irrelevant posts.
It has NOTHING to do with 3D as in stereoscopy (read: Avatar and similar 3D movies) it is instead just yet another control system for 3D games (as in Duke Nukem 3D).
Like the parent said - it's a Wii remote. Again.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Honest question ... are these the same thing? I honestly don't know since I've never used autocad.
Does it support a real-time mapping between the live performance of an actor and a partial result towards the final animation?
Some patents are just plain stupid, some represent a real jump in the state of the art. Which is this? (And, did Cameron even patent it?)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
From TFA: "The system also negated the need for a huge amount of animation – every performance was captured in all its blue-skinned, pointy-eared majesty as it happened, so it didn’t need to be created from scratch on a computer."
That magic little piece of technology is called motion capture. Most definatly NOT something that Mr Cameron invented.
Additionally, while he may have been able to see the cgi characters in realtime, they would need to be realtime models with realtime capable effects/textures/lighting. Its not going to be of the quality the final product has. That kinda crap still takes renderfarms butt-tons of time to render out. His "invention" is only a tool to help him visuallize how the scene will look in the end. Note: I'm only refering to the tool James Cameron "invented".. not Motus
is what Simul-cam sounds like. However, the technique from the article is a bit different, in that it lets a hand-held device to act as a camera controller within a virtual environment. Nothing particularly new there either. Previously, the tracking device on the user's head performed such a function.
I was a member of that team and we weren't all engineers. What we were was a team of artists and artists-with-technical-inclination who assembled the bits and pieces he needed to fulfill HIS vision. He was often the guy that would point out exactly how to assemble what we needed.
So, no, I have no problem saying he invented it. I would concede, though, that 'created' is a better word. I believe my colleagues feel the same way.
And different models as well - since you wouldn't want to see the same face with a different skin every moment either.
It's another advantage a makeup artist and a hundred extras has over CGI. It's pretty simple to find a bunch of people wanting to be a in a zombie movie, you can probably find a bunch of Teenagers off school willing to do it the whole day for like 20 bucks.
And then your costume and make up artists can spend 2 hours making them exactly how you want them - and you've got a wide variety for a fraction of the cost of having to model and skin each and every one
Being able to "skin" your actors in real time with costumes/makeup will have a profound impact on a lot of films, but also the film making industry itself. I'm sure there are a lot fewer model-makers/matte painters since the advent of CG, will this have the same effect on makeup/props/costumers?
I'm quite sure that the makeup people have plenty of work to do. Have you seen how bad people look in HD? If a camera adds ten pounds, HD adds twenty pounds and twenty years.
I remember seeing some behind the scenes stuff from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and they had sensors on a full-sized, over the shoulder sized video camera, so someone could control the camera's position as the animation played out.
(I think it was on "Science of the Movies") ... so the technique's been done ... maybe the novel part is that it's generic to work with other systems?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
But...what if you were being attacked by CLONES of zombies....or zombie clones....
Someone call hollywood, i smell a hit!!!
you know the patent # ? i'd like to read that one
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Is that quoted straight out of an Ayn Rand novel?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But...what if you were being attacked by CLONES of zombies....or zombie clones....
Someone call hollywood, i smell a hit!!!
"We thought we were smart. Creating a horde of clones to do all the menial jobs that us Americans didn't want to do anymore. And with them genetically programmed to die after a year, we were going to have an endless revenue stream selling replacements.
It never occurred to us that they might not *stay* dead..."
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
Yes this is something that used to piss me off when, as a student, I worked as a researcher for a faculty member. We would agree on the very broad outline of what I would do, i.e. the general goal, and then I went away and with no other contact came back later - usually months later - having refined the problem, designed the solution, implemented the solution and frequently having redefined the problem definition itself since the original formulation was flawed or inadequate in some way.
But he talked to others as if it was his work. Hey he paid for it and coming up with money in academia is certainly a necessity and can be hard. But that made him an enabler not the creator. It's pretty simple if you hire an artist and tell him/her that you want an oil painting that shows animals coming out of a barn and the artist goes away and comes back with their painting... who is the painter? Who is the artist? Who signs the painting - the guy who commissioned it or the guy who painted it?
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
you are aware that the USPTO has allowed IBM to patent collating documents by hand right. You set each page on a table in sequence and then you simply walk along grabbing a page at a time.
the new idea bar is already pretty low.
the words "patent" and "invention" are a long way from synonymous. The USPTO has given patents for everything from "method of swinging on a swing" to "using a school desk at bullet shield".
So no, I don't allow the goverment to define "invent" either, I hold that bar a little higher.
I'm pretty sure Ayn Rand would have said the opposite.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Yes, and none of that is invention.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
I think the previous poster meant Autodesk (and not their CAD product). Autodesk have been swallowing up every single one of the main players in the filmFX / 3D animation arena for the last few years. They've never actually developed their own animation software, but have bought out discreet (devs of 3ds max), alias wavefront (devs of maya), Kaydara (devs of Motionbuilder), Softimage (devs of XSI) to name but a few.
The upshot is that Autodesk now own pretty much every conceivable patent to do with 3D animation. It's effectively impossible to develop any competing product without falling foul of one of their data structure patents (Dependency graphs, modifier stacks, you name it, if it's a data structure used for 3D animation, they've got the patent...). As someone who works on one of the few remaining non-autodesk products, I can assure you it's a minefield! I'm not going to go into details, suffice to say that we normally have a patent lawyer in our code reviews and design meetings......
As for real time re-targetting, yes motionbuilder, maya and xsi can all do this easily, and this stuff has been in use in mocap studios for years. I'm failing to grasp what is actually 'new' here. The only thing I can potentially see, is the use of a motion tracked camera. Mind you, you can be fairly certain that ILM did all of this twenty years ago and never told anyone.....
"Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." I suppose James Cameron might have contributed 1% of the invention of Simulcam.
Of course it should be noted that Edison himself did not put in most of the perspiration for "his" inventions once he had already become successful. It could be argued that his greatest invention was in industrializing the methods of invention.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Mod parent up for truth.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Now the actors will be getting paid even less because they can super impose the face of any other actor, and only pay royalties on that actors face, but the actual physical displacement of the body is done by a stunt double....watch ...soon, all movies will be semi computer animated to save even more money!
...The guy in the video that is - he used to be my lab tutor 5 years ago when I studied CGT there. Good course, cool profs, hi Matt!
The speaker in the video makes a grandiose claim but shows no proof - all the footage is from their own test environment. "Motus Lets Users 'Film' Within Any 3D Environment"? Gizmag should take some journalism courses.
patent #7,720,794
patent # 6,925,605
Patent #7,215,445
Of those the last one is my favorite. Here is the abstract
Method and apparatus to correct distortion of document copies
Abstract
Pages of books are copied without distortion due to curvature of the page near the book binding or the distortion in a copied page is corrected using the spacing of equidistant bars on tape strips applied to the top and bottom edges of a page before copying. The tape is preferably transparent and rather narrow and easily attached to a page to be copied. The first step in the distortion correction procedure is to locate the bars at the top and bottom of the page. The distortion of the spacing between the imaged bars is computed based on the known distance between the equidistant bars. The computed distortion of the spacing is then input to a distortion correction algorithm. The output of the distortion correction algorithm generates a corrected image. This image may also optionally delete the bars so that they are not printed in the copy. The corrected image is then copied.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Build me an FTL ship. Here's a barrel of cash. Oh and put the drive near the rear of the ship....
Hey look! I invented FTL travel!
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
what on earth is different about this from say..
a augmented reality headset? What exactly is new about this? With a motion controller headset, the thing is basically strapped to your eyes. The only difference here is that the video output is piped to a computer display somewhere else..which I doubt they are the first to do.
Whats the harm in yelling 'Computer, end program!'? You could be living in Star Trek! Go on.. give it a try.
Er, the slight difference is that no-one can build your ship, whereas Cameron has actually used his invention to make a film.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6368227.PN.&OS=PN/6368227&RS=PN/6368227
that is my personal favorite.
"Method of swinging on a swing"
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I know, I was trolling. It is fucking pathetic I was modded up for it.
No one? Hmmm can you prove that negative?
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop