Motion Capture Uses
Motion Capture for Education
Game Development Curricula
Game Development Curricula benefit greatly from including a motion capture system as part of their budget. Hands-on access to motion capture systems helps trainees develop skills that are in highly valued in the gaming industry and a familiarity with motion capture planning, execution and clean-up gives artistic and technical trainees.
Access to motion capture technology helps trainees develop portfolios that are relevant to their future employers. Students need to be able to discuss why they chose motion capture for their project, how traditional animation techniques were used in conjunction with the motion captured data, why they might choose active optical over passive optical and where inertial motion capture fits into the the pipeline.
When it comes to optical motion capture we feel that the PhaseSpace system offers tremendous benefits for optical motion capture. Students are going to be able to get more work done more quickly and the quality of their data will be superior to data captured by other methods. They will be able to spend their lab time capturing and working with good data rather than spending the entire semester trying to learn how to operate a system. While some my answer that 'students need to know how to operate the Brand X system because that is what's being used in the industry' we feel it is more important that students learn best practices for working with motion capture and have something really good to show as a result rather than trying to seek validation for having learned a difficult system even though they couldn't do much with it.
More game companies are choosing to bring motion capture technology in-house. It makes a lot of sense for them from the standpoint of efficiency and cost and being able to make their games as good as they can without being constrained by high costs from renting time at a mocap house (and having to deal with scheduling and cost issues for retakes, data cleaning etc.
Students who can show that they know how to use motion capture to help get the results that game companies need are the ones who will get called back for second interviews that eventually land them the job. Strong motion capture skills also offer a lot of alternative jobs to help get a foot in the door at a game company - even if their initial job is strictly data cleaning. The foot in the door gives them a chance to really show off what they have learned, enabling them to turn their apprenticeship or first-job position into a rewarding permanent job in their chosen field.