Part 1:
1. Stakeholders of the mocap process:
• Production company
o Funds the movie(s) that will employ the mocap software and decides the process
that will be used to produce the movie
• Director
o Has artistic control and elements of technical control over the filmography which
includes the requirements of the mocap system
• Actors
o Perform the actions that which are captured by the software and transformed into
the final product incorporated into the movie
• Studio team
o Sets up the technical aspects of the movie and facilitates the capturing and
transformation of the actors movements using the software
• Software Developers
o Develops a software that fulfils the requirements of the Production Company and
Director to be used in converting sensor data into visual effects
• Movie-goers
o Provide the market for the production company to produce films for and ultimately
funds the use of innovative software to realise scenes that would otherwise not be
possible
2. Factors of developing mocap software for location shooting"
o The data must be accurately captured, if being used in a wet/moist environment,
there must be hardware available that is waterproof/resistant to ensure data is
reliable to be used in the software
o The software must be able to handle the variable lighting conditions and illuminate
the location appropriately and for this reason, powerful and advanced videography
editing processes must be produced.
3. Thanos User Story
o The purpose of the process required is to provide a believable but fictional figure
that will serve as the antagonist in a fictional film in a way that is suitable of a
superhero film franchise "end villain" i.e. intimidating, complex and warrior like with
fictional elements tied in to serve the "off world" theme. This should result in a
process that will "incorporat[e] facial features of Josh Brolin into Thanos". It should
capture a wide variety of facial features from Brolin in order to provide realistic
human expressions to the humanoid character.
4. Task Card
o Formulate a block of code that will map each sensor of the mocap to a fixed point on
the digital Josh Brolin figure
• Should maintain all movement data and be readily manipulated by editing
software (colour, brightness, contrast etc.)
Part 2:
1. Explain briefly what you learnt in this assignment?
a. Motion Capture (MOCAP) can be used to overlay physical features of actors with
visually manipulated imagery so as to provide a fictional character with natural
human movement and features.
b. This assignment required me to understand a relatively complex program from a
point of general novelty. To overcome this learning curve, I utilised various sources
to expand my general understanding of CGI software and the multiple variations in
which film manipulation can be achieved. This enabled me to approach the topic
with a great contextual understanding and provided a rounded comprehension of
MOCAP.
c. I am not altogether familiar with the movie production industry, nor filmography in
general and this was a challenge that required a great deal of research to overcome.
In future, I will likely try more experimental research like trying to visualise the
process for the mapping of data to digital figures using current knowledge than
depending on online sources to provide all information.