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Miami-based Animaza Studios, led by animator George Carvalho, creates a mix of original and client-based animation work. More than just an animation studio, Animaza sees itself as an entertainment company, with several of their original short films serving as trailers for books that have been published by the company’s publishing arm. The studio’s material geared for children age 5-13 years old is also used in school curriculums throughout the U.S.Animaza has put iPi Soft markerless motion capture technology to use, particularly in two award-winning short films they’ve produced, The Goblin Pact and Termite Samurai and it’s latest project, The Tortoise and the Hare.

“iPi Soft software is the main motion capture tool I use for animating the characters for my films. Not only can it capture a surprising degree of nuance from a performance, its speed and ease of use are instrumental in allowing me to animate characters in just a few hours rather than days.“

~ George Carvalho, Animator /Director of Animaza Studios

Researchers at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center (the RADC), a department at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, currently focused on several large ongoing studies of aging and dementia that include more than 2,000 individuals, have found a new tool in their battle against Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia: markerless motion capture.

According to Bob Dawe, PhD, Assistant Professor of Radiology, there is an increasing recognition in the role gait, mobility and physical activity play in influencing the brain health and successful aging and quality of life in older adults. Because many of the seniors in the study are not able or willing to travel to the facility, a team of RADC researchers are using iPi Soft motion capture technology in conjunction with Microsoft Kinect motion sensor devices to go into different communities to meet with participants and conduct annual tests of cognitive ability, health status questionnaires, blood draws and other research with the goal, he says, of better understanding the factors most influential in staving off these diseases.

“Using iPi Motion Capture software paired with Microsoft Kinect we now have a very accurate digital record of participants’ motions as they complete different motor performances, from which we can better quantify myriad facets of gait, balance and mobility,“ Dawe says. “We compared some of the metrics extracted with iPi Motion Capture to the gold standard optical tracking system in the motion analysis laboratory and the timing measures are spot on, and the accuracy of estimated joint angles is also very respectable. On top of that, the iPi Soft motion capture system is more user-friendly than the professional motion tracking rig.“

Dawe explained that the RADC first became interested in using the Kinect as a tool to capture aspects of mobility in its older research participants, but soon learned that the device alone would not be substantial enough to yield accurate results.

“iPi Soft’s iPi Recorder and iPi Mocap Studio are very polished products that did not require extensive programming knowledge,“ Dawe notes. “I was thrilled when it worked right out of the box in just a few moments, with the installation package taking care of all the necessary components without any of the cryptic error messages I’d become accustomed to with some of the open source packages I’d worked with in the past.“

Iloura, the leading Australian-based animation and visual effects studio, first began using iPi Motion Capture (iPi Mocap) in 2012 when a staff member began experimenting with it on a personal project. That success led to a greater investment by the studio, which now includes a designated mocap space with nine PlayStation cameras. The motion capture solution was used by Iloura throughout season 6 of HBO’s hit show Games Of Thrones (GoT) during pre-production and production, including the “Battle of the Bastards” episode for which the studio was honored with an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects at the 2016 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. In addition, their work on GoT earned Iloura top honors at the 2016 AEAF (Animation & Effects Awards Festival), winning a Gold Award in the TV Series category.

“iPi Mocap was used to extend the scale of the armies in the key battle scene, particularly when they were in formation facing each other,“ Nick Tripodi, Iloura Head of Animation said. “Using iPi Mocap allowed us to generate a library of vignettes we could drop into any number of shots, as well as customize specific animation as required. We fed the cleaned up mocap animation into our crowd-related VFX platform to generate the large number of troops required to successfully generate the large crowd shots.“ 

Adds Dean Elliot, Iloura Lead Animator: “iPi Mocap is an incredibly reliable production tool. Once we had accurate dimensions for our actors, the software gave us a good solve 98 percent of the time. The main advantage of using iPi Mocap was that actors didn’t have to suit up before capturing a performance. The ability for one artist to handle the entire capture process — from performance and data management to processing – streamlined the workflow for us. It was cost effective, fast to capture and fast to process.“ Click here for a behind the scenes look at Iloura’s work on “Battle Of The Bastards” episode of Game Of Thrones: https://vimeo.com/172374044

For the past several years, Stephan Bugaj, independent filmmaker, VR & game director, writer and creative visionary, has been experimenting with iPi Motion Capture – first during his time at Pixar Animation Studios, and now on several independent projects. He shared his positive impressions with us:“Whether you’re producing an animation or game project for final release, or just prototyping a new idea, iPi Motion Capture is an incredibly cost effective and easy-to-use solution for full-body motion capture using hardware you probably already own — and if you don’t, it’s also incredibly cost effective. For not a lot of money you get a mocap solution with quite usable results without an excessive amount of cleanup. Finally the little guy can play with the big boys when it comes to mocap animation.“

Croatia-based animation company NoxStudio used iPi Mocap too create the 3D machinima short film that received a prestigious 2015 Saxxy Awards in the Drama category. Sponsored by video game developer Valve, the competition now in its fifth year honors content based on the company’s Team Fortress 2 and other video games that showcase the use of its Source Filmmaker movie-making tool.NoxStudio’s three-minute animated film entitled «Together We Stand», directed by Igor Dudjak, uses a series of epic landscapes and stunning fantasy creatures, both human and animal, to tell the story of former enemies putting aside their differences and fighting together against a common threat.Although the project marked the first time Dudjak used iPi Soft technology, it became a key part of the content creation workflow involving nearly 60 hours in total to capture the complex motion. Working alongside it was Source Filmmaker to build the sets, process the animation and renders for the final project.

“Literally, within just a few hours I could see the potential of iPi Motion Capture for creating motion that was unique, not generic,“ Dudjak says. “There were many action and fighting sequences in the film and the software did a great job at quickly capturing the motion and making it easy to export into the formats we were working in.“

The Mocap Vaults founder, Oliver Hollis-Leick, is a 13-year mocap acting veteran that has worked on over 80 videogame and movie titles, with roles in such films as Iron Man 2, Stardust, Total Recall, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Godzilla, Hercules, Fred Clause among many others.

“There is actually a revolution happening in motion capture, thanks to the companies like iPi Soft. I can take a Kinect camera, and just put it on a tripod in a room with actors. None of them need marker suits. I can record their performance and the key see it on screen within a minutes on a character.“

Dan Barker, Animation Director, Nymbl (former FA Digital Productions):

“When we chose iPi Motion Capture software for our in-house motion capture studio, we found the process of getting setup and running to be very fast and easy. iPi Soft offers great tutorials and advice on their website, as well as an active online community, both of which we found to be invaluable. Using a six camera setup we are able to capture nice, clean motion capture data. The recording and tracking workflow is very streamlined, and we’ve been able to transfer the data onto our characters and ongoing pipeline development with good success.

We’re particularly impressed how well the iPi Mocap deals with fast movements. It’s an exciting time for us, and we see motion capture beyond its traditional application as a crucial part of expanding our production, and it is already opening new possibilities and services we can offer to our clients.“

Brandon Parvini, Ghost Town Media, has taken on various key roles including creative, technical and overall pipeline director in order to propel the company forward and push past the notions of what a small studio is capable of producing.

“We were excited to bring iPi Motion Capture into the studio production pipeline for initial testing last year and so far our experience has been great,“  says Parvini. “The system is very intuitive and takes about half an hour of setup and you’re able to start capturing. The software is part of a small crop of ‘new-school’ platforms that are helping to motivate the field forward.“

The Shoebox Diorama Founder, Daniël Ernst, is a Dutch game designer/artist and 3D enthusiast best known for spearheading game development work on the Cargo Commander. His latest project, The Pigeon Man, is a magical realist, illustrative game for the Oculus Rift that takes advantage of iPi Motion Capture. Ernst first tested the markerless motion capture solution for quick animation prototyping. From there he’s expanded his scope to creating complex mocap with a multiple Sony Playstation Eye cameras setup, which is then combined with facial motion capture.

“I’ve been working on VR content for well over a year and iPi Motion Capture has proved to be an invaluable addition to my production pipeline for my upcoming game, ‘The Pigeon Man’,“ Daniël Ernst says. “iPi Motion Capture can be used for quick prototyping with a single Kinect or the multi Playstation Eye setup for highly-detailed animation. It is able to capture subtle nuances in a player performance necessary to create believable characters for virtual reality, and, it accomplishes it all for a small studio-friendly fee.“

iPi Motion Capture software was used by London-based design animation studio We Are Formation to create a new Facebook game for auto maker Kia called ‘Take On Blake’. The software was used to create character animation based on Los Angeles Clippers star forward Blake Griffin to provide realistic slam dunks and other basketball moves.

“Modern mocap tools like iPi Motion Capture bring with them the ability to have customized, naturalistic bipedal movement without a huge investment in time and money,” Louis du Mont, We Are Formation’s Creative Director says. “In the past, clients were wary when we mentioned the use of mocap for smaller projects, but now we consider it a time and money saver for creating natural looking movements from scratch.”

Read details here: Press release in PDF>

iPi Motion Capture played a key role for Vancouver design/animation studio The Sequence Group on “Halo 4” – one of the most successful videogame releases of 2012.The studio produced over twenty minutes of original content, including eight “Terminal” animations – hidden content within the game that players can access providing detailed backstory about the characters and the new Halo world.

Sequence Group Producer Dan Sioui says, “The Halo audience is extremely sophisticated and the knowledge they have about the game and its evolution is mind-blowing. We knew we needed to maintain that level of quality for most anticipated videogame release of 2012. We are very pleased with the results iPi Motion Capture delivered.”Read details here: http://www.prweb.com/releases…                       Press release in PDF>