Vicon House of Moves (HOM), a leading motion capture and animation service company, contributed to the cinematic animation and facial keyframing on the recently released video game, Gears of War 3.
Press Release from Vicon House of Moves
Los Angeles, CA (October 12, 2011) — Vicon House of Moves (HOM), a leading motion capture and animation service company, contributed to the cinematic animation and facial keyframing on the recently released video game, Gears of War 3. Developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft, sales for the highly anticipated third-person shooter soared when it hit shelves in late September.
Collaboration between Vicon House of Moves and Epic on the third installment of the billion-dollar Gears of War franchise began in January 2010. Epic completed all the motion capture for the game on its own stage, which features a Vicon mocap system. Prior to shooting, Vicon HOM refined Epic’s mocap pipeline for the cinematic process and delivered front-end tools to improve capture of performances.
Once captured, Epic sent the raw data to Vicon HOM. The data was then reconstructed and uploaded into Vicon HOM’s online ordering tool for Epic to log into and order takes. After takes were selected, Vicon HOM tracked, solved, and retargeted the data, which was then sent back to Epic as FBX files, which are readily supported in the Unreal Engine. Epic seamlessly imported the files, laid in cameras, and exported data back to Maya. The files were then sent back to Vicon HOM for finishing. A team of about 44 worked on the project for approximately a year and a half, resulting in the completion of over 36,000 seconds of character work.
“A project of this scope really highlights both the animation capabilities at House of Moves and the quality of Vicon mocap systems,” said Brian Rausch, Vice President of Production, Vicon, House of Moves. “By setting up their own system but enlisting the help of House of Moves, Epic was able to capture the data on their own timeline and terms with the assurance the resulting data would be transformed into the compelling footage featured in Gears of War 3.”
About Vicon House of MovesVicon House of Moves has been the go-to studio for film, television, game and commercial creatives for over 10 years and has recently worked on projects for clients including Microsoft, Activision, EA, Bandai, Rockstar Games, Capcom, THQ, Naughty Dog Studios, SCEA, Bungie and others. In addition to the HOM main stage, the 26,000 square-foot facility is also home to a full performance capture volume capable of recording simultaneous high-quality audio with a capture session without any interfering background noise. http://moves.com/
About ViconAcademy Award-winning Vicon is the world’s largest supplier of precision motion tracking systems, and match moving software. It serves customers in the CG animation industry, film, visual effects, computer games, and broadcast television, as well as engineering and life science industries. Vicon operates in four offices worldwide, including its Los Angeles-based Entertainment headquarters: a 26,000 square-foot facility equipped with three performance capture stages for Vicon’s service company House of Moves.
Vicon is a subsidiary of OMG (Oxford Metrics Group - LSE: OMG), plc., a group of technology companies that produces image-understanding solutions for the Entertainment, Defense, Life Science and Engineering markets. Other holdings include: 2d3, a manufacturer of specialized image understanding software for defense applications; Yotta DCL our highways surveying business in the UK; and Yotta MVS, a leading US provider of data collection services for the assessment of property taxation.
Vicon and OMG global clients include: Life Science leaders University of Pennsylvania, the VA Hospitals, Shriners Hospitals for Children, Titleist Golf, The Andrews Institute; Engineering industry leaders Ford, BMW, Airbus, Lockheed, Pratt-Whitney, NASA, Caterpillar, International Truck, and Toyota; and Entertainment companies Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sony Computer Entertainment, Industrial Light and Magic, Sega, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Vivendi, Electronic Arts, Square Enix and many others.
For more information about OMG and its subsidiaries, visit www.omg3d.com, www.vicon.com, www.vicon.com/boujou, www.2d3.com, www.yottadcl.com, or www.yottamvs.com.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
