Andrew Buckland performs in theSABC2 motion capture studio.
Pieter Kruger is recording the motion while Angus Davidson looks on.

Performance animation is recorded in real-time from a performer wearing a suit covered with position-sensitive sensors. Computers reading the sensors many times each second record their positions and in this manner every movement of the performer is recorded. The data that the computer generates is the equivalent of creating a key frame on every frame.

The advantages of using motion capture over traditional animation are:

You don’t need experienced animators in order to create believable animation.

The animation process is quick and interactive. You can try many more things and incorporate the improvisations of the performance artists.

It is a more collaborative approach to animation as it directly includes performance artists in the creative process. As digital characters become more and more complex, their acting abilities will necessarily have to improve. At the same time, this complexity will make it more and more difficult for a single key frame animator to animate an entire character. The body of knowledge required will be so vast as to make it a highly specialized field. However, with the clever use of motion-capture technology, the load can be shared

The disadvantages are:

The data is very dense and can require a lot of “cleaning up”. This is a time-consuming process and can often be more time-consuming than key frame animating the same motion. However, as this is a relatively new field, there are sure to be advancements in this area, including the automation of many of the cleaning tasks.

It is best for capturing humans (or animals who can have sensors attached to them). It is not good for cartoony characters that require exaggerated poses and expressions, because these are impossible for the performance artist to perform.

It is not as accurate as key frame animation. This is particularly important in scenes with interaction between characters and objects.

You’re only as good as your motion-capture suite and it’s calibration. Top of the range suites can give you precise data, but at a top of the range price.

The setup process is quite extensive, though in a well-oiled pipeline I don’t think this would be a problem.

There are character rigs in production that combine the best of both worlds, blending motion capture data and control-based key frame animation. However, this is still quite a tricky, technical area and not one that we mastered within our timeframe.