Real Life or Just Fantasy: Live Performance to Animation

As most animators do, I love the idea of getting the best possible results with the least work possible. My name is Cole, and with the help of my advisor, Vinny, we worked on troubleshooting some of the performance capture technologies available on campus. Yes, performance capture is those silly mocap suits with the shiny markers all over them, with the funny-looking facial capture camera helmets. It's great because the only thing separating being a weirdo and working as an actor is wearing the right equipment, so I get an excuse to be as goofy as I want. Oh, yeah, and it also saves a lot of time for making a high quality production when you don't have to animate every few frames by hand. Unsurprisingly, techy stuff doesn't always work on the first try, and that's a problem for anyone that needs to focus on the creative side. Setting these performance capture systems up and documenting the process allows future students to use these systems more freely for their own projects. As for mine, I had the chance to make whatever I wanted using these technologies. I decided on making a story from scratch. The process went something like this: I drafted versions of a script, created 3D assets, recorded the appropriate performance captures, refined the performance data, and rendered everything in Unreal Engine.