Motion Capture, An Introduction

A very brief one I might add as I will look into this with more detail tomorrow.

Motion capture is a common technique used to create CGI characters within films and video games.

Motion capture entails an actor wearing a skin tight suit covered in a varying number of special balls. These balls are detected by a special camera which sends the movement patterns of these balls into a computer. This data is then relayed to a 3D model of a character in which I can be realistically animated based upon the actors movement.

Examples of this can be seen in The Lord Of The Rings with the Golum character, and also in King Kong.

An advanced form of Motion Capture was used to create Avatar (See previous post for a quick insight).