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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."
My computer ran at 7mhz at the time.
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.
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.
He fronted the money, he assumed the risk. The engineers are merely the tools to execute his vision.
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.
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