The Brief
To provide an Organic Motion, Markerless Motion capture system for BBCs Bang Goes The Theory TV series, at one of their Roadshows in Edinburgh.
Solution
The Organic Motion stage was used as part of an experiment, using members of the public to see how people judge different peoples dancing abilities.
Results
Hundreds of people used the system throughout the day, allowing memebers of the public to just walk into the space and be tracked straight away.
Organic Motion Stage
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Distant Thunder: Exploring Africa in 3D
The Brief
World-renowned filmmakers Deeble & Stone partnered with Inition to co-produce a 3D wildlife pilot in Africa called Distant Thunder 3D.
Solution
The shoot took place in Kenya and was produced in association with equipment manufacturer P+S TECHNIK. During the production process the team identified and perfected the 3D rigs necessary to shoot wildlife in the field of Africa. Being an environment of widely varying scales, Inition used equally a large variety of interaxial lens distances to capture the extremities of the landscape, from extreme close ups of chameleons eating lunch to the final dramatic time-lapse sequence of the Kenyan night sky where two still cameras were positioned 30 metres apart.
Over the space of a month Inition used a variety of 3D rigs - both commercial models and custom built. These included mirror rigs, 3D time-lapse set ups, side-by-side configurations and gyro stabilized, using SI-2K Minicams and shooting uncompressed RAW, recording to solid state drives so full creativity could be achieved in the post production process.
Every evening, the team reviewed the daily rushes on a large 3D screen to develop what was working and what was not. Over a two week period and in challenging stormy condiitons, we obtained enough spectacular footage to edit together a stunning 10 minute pilot.
Results
The promo premiered at the Dimension 3 S3D expo in Paris in 2010 and was later shown to audiences at the Berlin Film Festival 2010 and the Cannes Film Festival where it received a highly postive response.
Victoria Stone, producer and director of the pilot, in an interview with creativeplanetnetwork.com said, "Digital 3D is so immersive and experiential that it is perfectly suited to natural history storytelling. We were delighted that it was possible to achieve so much in such a short time. It was an extraordinary and very successful collaboration."
Inition’s 3D Dragon versus The Stig at Top Gear Live
The Brief
Following the success and popularity of 3D (deployed by Inition) at MPH 05 and 06, MPH’07 producer Rowland French approached Inition for a new 3D extravaganza: ‘The GATSO Dragon’. MPH (now Top Gear Live) is a unique concept including a live theatrical car show, hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.
Inition were briefed to produce a spectacular in-your-face 3D short film to be choreographed with on-stage action of The Stig (the mystery test driver) doing battle with the 3D Dragon.
Solution
Concept- "The year is 2050, and the Government has gone mad. A small resistance of petrol heads do their best to fight Baby Blair’s army wherever they can. Leader of the resistance is The Stig; top of the Government's Most Wanted, he roams like a road warrior battling traffic wardens and mobile speed cameras where he can. In response to his success, the Government has designed a new type of mobile speed camera – something more frightening and devious than anything seen before: GATSO Dragon".
Inition’s concept artists got to work for various treatments of the GATSO Dragon developing ideas and direction:
The Show- Inition provided a 3DVidBoxHD playback server, high-transmission polarising filters, a 40-feet-wide silver screen and over 100,000 pairs of 3D glasses for the show. Inition technicians supervised the 3D installation at the show and operated the playback for all 20 shows (to date).
Results
The 3D sequence ran flawlessly in every show.
We asked the client for some feedback on the MPH project and a quote for the story….
"Inition are fucking brilliant; if you want the best 3D in the UK, you'd be mad to use anyone else", said Rowland French, Producer of MPH 07.
Rowland went on to say: "Often the greatest working disappointments as a producer are when the reality of something bears little or no relation to what you had in your head. It's easy to design giant fighting koala bears in your mind, but who is going to make them?
"The same sense of foreboding haunted me when I came up with the idea of making a giant 3D dragon to fight The Stig, live in the MPH arena. Not complex enough already, the dragon had to be from the future, with armaments to deploy in the scrap, armour to be blown off - and most importantly had to have enough character in its face and movement to almost be a 'fourth presenter'.
"Inition were as excited as me about the idea, and organised plenty of artist meetings where we could discuss the dragons look. Once they had my barmy outline, they then started supplying their own drawings, and slowly the dragon in my head came to life on paper. Their seemingly limitless patience was never tested by my constant 'eyes need to be further apart' and 'the wings should beat slower' redesigns.
"When I finally sat down in their subterranean lair in East London, and watched the exact dragon from the middle of my head bob and flap in 3D in front of me, I was speechless. The dragon was all I could have hoped for, its movements were totally animalistic, its look perfectly well-worn futuristic. Jump to the first performance in Earls Court and The Stig tears around evading rockets and razor edged parking tickets, the audience ducking the stereo moments and jumping as the rockets cue with huge pyrotechnics on the floor. Inition had graced me with a beautiful baby dragon, and I was as proud a father as you could imagine."
Remote Avatar: Gadget Show Virtual Pesenter Challenge
The Brief
The producers of North One Television approached 3D creative services company Inition, asking us to provide the technical expertise for an ambitious 'virtual presenter' challenge.
Solution
Inition helped presenter Suzi Perry to win the ‘virtual presenter’ challenge (Season 15, Episode 4) in which she and Jon were invited to find the best way to present the show without actually being in the studio. Whilst Jon commissioned an android version of himself and placed it in the studio to take his place, Suzi came to Inition to make use of our motion capture technology.
Based on real-time 3D animation software Autodest MotionBuilder, LILA is Inition’s markerless motion capture solution which can provide show stopping interactive installations for brands, exhibitions, tours and marketing agencies.
Using LILA, Inition were able to capture the motion of Suzi in London and transmit this data to Birmingham to drive an avatar which was composited in the Gadget Show studio, all in real time.
Without any calibration required, Suzi stepped into the holo-deck style cube at Inition’s London studios where her silhouette was tracked by 14 x2D cameras. No markers or any special clothing were required. The vision processor software calculated a 3D mesh of her body from these views and a digital skeleton was applied using the Organic Motion plugin.
The frame-by-frame motion co-ordinates from the data were transmitted to the MotionBuilder system at North One TV studios via a special driver which then applied Suzi’s features- including clothes, hair, skin tones etc. The avatar of Suzi was composited into the studios of The Gadget Show next to the real co-presenter Otis and the android version of Jason Bradbury.
Suzi’s avatar character included full face expressions and mouth shapes driven by her voice, fed through LILA’s voice recognition software. The composited footage was sent back to Inition’s Shoreditch studios via Skype which Suzi could monitor on a screen, seeing exactly what the public would see.
Results
This project posed several challenges, not least because of the processing power required to deliver the avatar in real time. This was the first time a motion capture system had been used to drive another avatar over the Internet. By chosing to approach Inition for help, Suzi beat Jason's android by 16 points to just 12.
Based on the success of this project, North One Television decided to invite Inition to help create fun and innovative crowd games to be played at Gadget Show Live, a consumer event based on the television show. Read more about this here.
The LILA motion capture is a complete attention grabbing solution which is available for events, promotions and exhibitions. As well as hire of the LILA system itself, Inition also provide a complete production service with the hardware, software, and creative design of the characters, environments and interactions.