You’re an aspiring Peter Jackson. You scoured Craigslist to find the next great Andy Serkis, and the actor is ready to mime his way into your movie through the magic of motion capture. When it’s time to finally shoot the…

You’re an aspiring Peter Jackson. You scoured Craigslist to find the next great Andy Serkis, and the actor is ready to mime his way into your motion picture through the magic of motion capture. When it’s time to finally shoot the scene, you take a deep breath, mainly because there are no pro motion picture cameras around. Instead, you pick up your… phone. Action?

It’s possible. Using the accelerometer technology available in many of today’s multimedia phones, like Nokia’s N95, software designer Tea Vui Huang has created a mobile application that can capture 2- and 3-axis motions for 3D animations in movies and games.

So how does he do it? By using the accelerometer to generate motion data when a phone points, rolls & pitches in space. Huanh’s MoCap application takes this data and converts it into axial animation data and positional data.

In addition, you can adjust the frame rate on the phone itself, as well as choose the type of MoCap file you’ll use for full-blown editing later, on your Computer. Standard type of FX motion capture file managers like Vicon C3D, Autodesk FBX, and Acclaim AMC ASF can be used with your cell videos.

Interestingly, all of these formats have different ways that they have the ability to take the data and create 3D animations, so you’ll have to follow his directions about importing commands, such as the rotation of an arm, interpolation of an image, or anything else. But it’s good to know that you won’t be stuck using only one type of animation software on the back end.

According to Vui Huang, motion capturing through the phone is also possible without an accelerometer — just use a combination of keys to simulate the azimuth, roll, and pitch of an image.

So while the memory constraints of a phone will limit the length and quality of a full-blown, high-res motion picture, the fact that it can be used for something this useful says something about where this tech is going. If you’re the experimental type, you might even take it all the way to the bedroom, if that’s what you’re into.

Source: teavuihuang.com

See also:

• Motion-Capture Suits Will Spice Up Virtual Sex
• USC Lab Creates 3-D Holographic Displays, Brings TIE Fighters to Life

Via [wired.com]

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Hover Boards, Holy Grails and TIE Fighters Fill Hollywood Prop Auction’s Geek Memorabilia Motherlode [Want Want Want]

For sci-fi and comic book motion picture fans, it doesn’t get much superior than right now. This week has brought both Dark Knight and the Watchmen trailer, and later this month, the Profiles in History auction house in Hollywood is opening up the prop vaults from just about each classic film over the last, oh, fifty years and isn’t stopping until everything is gone, gone, gone! Marty’s hover board? Check. Capt. Kirk’s phaser from Search For Spock? Yep. The actual holy grail from The Last Crusade? Oh yeah! No shitty replicas here—all are the actual props used on screen, and they have the ability to be yours. But those are just the beginning.

There aren’t a lot of bargains, as you might anticipate. Top-shelf merchandise like this is expected to fetch massive collector prices. But the catalog is almost too good to be true—check out 34 highlights in the gallery below, and a few extra special favorites here:

Forget any exercise you could possible think of—it won’t come close to the strength of using Bruce Lee’s own actual forearm strengthener. Possibly some Dragon sweat still on it.

No, It doesn’t hover but I couldn’t give less of a damn. If I can’t have the shoes, I want this. Too bad it’s expected to fetch $30-$50k.

I love scotch. But I’m pretty certain I would love it even more if I was drinking it out of this ultra-dystopian Blade Runner tumbler. Plus this one’s one of the few sub-$1,000 items.

Just one of the countless things the originals have on Lucas’s new films, the costumes in the original Star Wars were extraordinary. Especially the Imperial dudes—stylish in only the way a space fascist can be.

More highlights from this astounding trove, including C3PO’s feet, Ahnold’s sawed-off from T2, the rabbit mask from Donnie Darko and more:

[Profiles in History Auction House via Tech Digest]

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Gallery of Home-Made Prison Escape Tools
In the movies, prison inmates spend their time whittling chess pieces and digging escape tunnels with modded teaspoons. In real life, the forced ingenuity of the convict is turned to bleaker, more violent purposes, as we see in this gallery…

In the movies, prison inmates spend their time whittling chess pieces and digging escape tunnels with modded teaspoons. In real life, the forced ingenuity of the convict is turned to bleaker, more violent purposes, as we see in this gallery of Escape Tools, photographed by Marc Steinmetz back in 1999.

Some of these hacks would leave even MacGyver with his head in a spin. There’s the usual something-in-a-box (in this case, a radio), but the dagger/crucifix is truly horrifying, and the immersion heater fashioned from an old kettle-lead and a few razor blades is a dazzingly innovative device for distilling hooch.

Not surprisingly, drug paraphernalia features large. The hash-pipe fashioned from an empty tube of horseradish is the favorite of BoingBoing Gadget’s resident deviant, John Brownlee. What I really love, though, are the fake guns. It seems that in prison, front is everything. The lineup of fake pistols and even a submachine gun (”made from a grease injector, wood, a rubber sleeve, and tape”) show that the threat of violence is as good as the real thing. Either that or the lads inside were just tooling up for an innocent game of Cowboys and Indians.

Gallery [Marc Steinmetz via BBG]

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This