{"id":442,"date":"2008-11-01T23:59:15","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T04:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=442"},"modified":"2008-11-02T00:09:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-02T05:09:40","slug":"motion-capture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=442","title":{"rendered":"Motion Capture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today at the 2008 Machinima Filmfest<\/a> I did a public demo in which I used a sensor device we invented in our lab to capture the motion of my hands, in order to make two animated characters walk around on a screen. It was a simple thing, this digital puppetry, but very important to me – bringing together two different areas that I’ve worked on, both of which I really care about.<\/p>\n

The sensor measured the pressure from my hands and fingers. By varying position and pressure of my fingers, I could make each hand convey goals (walking, leaning, squatting, …) to one of the characters. The characters were “smart” enough to understand how to turn those pressure signals into human-like movements.<\/p>\n

We had a panel discussion afterward, and somebody asked whether the goal for Machinima (a genre that records the actions of characters in a computer game and uses the results to make movies) was greater and greater realism.<\/p>\n

I answered that people are not trying<\/i> to make the actors in movies look realistic. The realism comes about only because the filmmakers happen to be using the materials at hand – actual people. The goal for a medium should not be to slavishly imitate another medium – that would miss the point. A book glories in the infinite possibilities afforded by printed words on paper, the theatre by the immediacy of seeing a live human before you, cinema by using moving images of real people to create a dream reality.<\/p>\n

Machinima should be finding its own true nature, not trying to imitate conventional cinema. From what I’ve seen at the festival this year, I think it is well on its way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today at the 2008 Machinima Filmfest I did a public demo in which I used a sensor device we invented in our lab to capture the motion of my hands, in order to make two animated characters walk around on a screen. It was a simple thing, this digital puppetry, but very important to me … Continue reading “Motion Capture”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}