Vicon's low-cost motion capture system, FK Extreme, has been gaining momentum with continually growing system sales to both entertainment and educational facilities worldwide. FK Extreme was first introduced at last year's Game Developer's Conference.
"As an existing Vicon customer with a 48-camera MX40 motion capture solution, the decision to add an additional FK Extreme system was easy," said Matt Karnes, Motion Capture coordinator, Activision. "We use the FK Extreme for facial animation alongside our full body system and, despite its entry-level price point, it puts out really high-quality performance data."
The latest facilities to adopt Vicon's FK Extreme include animation and previs studio Pixel Liberation Front of Venice, California, 3D animation studio Hydrogen Whiskey of Santa Monica, California, France's Widescreen Games, Newport Beach-based gaming facility InXile Ent. and UK-based Another Dimension.
"Having been in the industry since 1997, I can remember the days when high quality motion capture was prohibitively expensive. With the FK Extreme system, those days are gone; I was surprised by how easy it is to set up and work with, yielding fantastic results from the very first day of shooting," said Christophe Leulier, animation TD at Widescreen Games.
Validating its position as the predominant provider of in-house motion capture systems, numerous educational facilities have also installed Vicon's FK Extreme, including the Art Institute of California (Santa Ana, California), the New York Institute of Technology (New York, NY), Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), the University of California, Santa Barbara, University at Buffalo, Fanshawe College (Ontario, Canada), Orlando Tech, the John Deere Southeast Engineering Center (Charlotte, North Carolina), Vizeon (Albuquerque, New Mexico), Clemson University (Clemson, South Carolina), the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia), Confederation College (Ontario, Canada), Platt College (San Diego, California), the University of Michigan, Oregon State University and the University of Technology, Sydney.
"We're delighted that such a wide array of customers are realizing the benefits of bringing high quality motion capture capabilities in-house," commented Robin Pengelly, SVP, entertainment division. "FK Extreme delivers a highly accurate motion capture solution in a very practical, low profile and cost-effective package, so it's extremely rewarding to see so many facilities incorporating it into their animation and training pipelines."
With an extensive amount of new camera engineering and a simplified, user-friendly software interface, FK Extreme delivers price performance in a setup comprised of Vicon's MX3+ cameras, new processing software and a full customer support package. The software component contains all of the underlying power of Vicon's robust architecture in a new GUI that takes the user step-by-step through the process of running a motion capture system, yet can still be easily customized by experienced users who want to design their own specific interface and workflow.
Academy Award-winning Vicon is the largest supplier of precision motion tracking systems, serving customers and CG animation applications in 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 as well as 125 Vicon MX40 cameras.
Vicon is the largest holding of OMG (Oxford Metrics Group), plc., a group of technology companies that produces image understanding solutions for the entertainment, defense, life science and engineering markets. Other holdings include Emmy Award-winning 2d3 and newly founded Geospatial Vision Ltd. For more information about OMG and its subsidiaries, visit www.omg3d.com, www.vicon.com or www.2d3.com.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
