Downtown Redmond is home to the first, full-body, markerless motion capture facility on the West Coast.
Digital Double’s new studio, on the second floor of 15814 Bear Creek Parkway, is equipped with STAGE, a trademarked system licensed from Organic Motion, to record three-dimensional movement of a person and map it onto a digital 3D character.
Motion capture technology — often called “mocap” — is applied in a variety of industries, from video gaming and film animation to medicine. It captures the expert movement of human subjects such as athletes, dancers, martial artists or soldiers and creates “digital doubles” of those subjects. In the medical field, clinicians use it to study patients’ gait and other movement.
Kamal Siegel founded Digital Double as a 3D and 2D graphic arts studio in 2004. He studied animation at the Art Institute of Seattle and worked at Redmond’s Microsoft Game Studios and DigiPen Institute of Technology before dedicating himself to Digital Double full-time. And as a member of the Redmond Arts Commission, he spearheaded the City of Redmond’s first Digital Arts Festival in October 2008.
Prior to that event, Siegel told the Redmond Reporter, “Art is the focus of this festival, not the technology. It’s more about ‘How does technology support the creative process?’”
The credo is the same at Digital Double.
During a VIP reception on April 29, artistic director Abbott Smith, who was a panelist at the Digital Arts Festival and helped to build DigiPen’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program, made it clear that he and his colleagues at Digital Double “are artists by trade.”
With markerless motion capture capabilities, the objectives of Digital Double, said Smith, “are production at its best through-put,” and enabling clients to “make their animation product more efficiently and higher quality with this tool.”
What’s the advantage of markerless mocap?
In traditional motion capture technology, the subject must wear a special, dotted suit and complicated calibrations must be performed to attain the 3D image. With the revolutionary STAGE system, the subject simply walks into the motion capture space and within seconds, his or her precise movements automatically generate a skeleton based on the performer’s unique anatomy.
“We’ve dramatically transformed the entire content creation paradigm, where people no longer have to be restricted by high production costs, lengthy calibrations or technical barriers like with traditional systems,” Andrew Tschesnok, CEO of Organic Motion, explained in a press release. “We’ve created the first motion capture system that simply lets artists be artists, not technicians. Now, when inspiration strikes, anyone can simply step into our STAGE and instantly create the next generation of digital content.”
Siegel and Digital Double marketing director Mariya Lincoln demonstrated the process at the opening reception, marching and swaying in a 16-by-16 foot space where 14 cameras emitted bright LED light.
The light bounces off the white walls “and establishes 14 crisp silhouettes,” Siegel noted. As the lights criss-cross, the system generates a digital skeleton mimicking the movements of the subject’s torso and extremities.
“Most mocap is for medical documentation — realistic movements,” Siegel stated.
But he showed how film or video game makers can also tweak realistic movements to make an animated character dance or do calisthenics in a comical way.
Without actually seeing a demonstration, it’s hard to fathom, Lincoln admitted. That’s why Digital Double is eager to have “people seeing it with their own eyes,” she said.
Open houses will be held from 4-7 p.m. on the first Tuesday of each month, “for anyone who is interested in learning more about markerless motion capture.”
Industry professionals, of course, are invited but so are students or Redmond neighbors who are merely curious. RSVP by calling (425) 867-0400. For more information, visit www.digitaldouble.net.
