So far, film studios have had to
put in huge amounts of effort to set monsters, superheroes, fairies or other
virtual characters into real feature film scenes. Within the so-called motion
capturing process, real actors wear skintight suits with markers on them. These
suits reflect infrared light that is emitted and captured by special cameras.
Subsequent to this, the movements of the actors are rendered with the aid of
software into animated characters.
Researchers from the Max Planck
Institute for Informatics in Saarbruecken, developed a method that works
without markers. It immediately transfers actors' movements to the virtual
characters in near real-time. They dealt with the task of transferring the
movements of two actors at the same time into two animated characters.
Moreover, the technique makes it possible to imitate entire tracking shots. The
movements of one character can thus be more easily captured from every angle.
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