Glycon 3D Motion Capture - History of the VR Based motion capture system
Here's how it all went down. In August of 1999, Starship Troopers: Roughneck Chronicles made its debut, and my world was rocked. It had, at the time, some of the best CG work on the planet. It mixed characters from one of my favorite movies (Starship Troopers) with stories from one of my favorite books (Starship Troopers) and added its own flair to it on top. It was amazing. As I learned more about it, it became evident they were really breaking new ground. Foundation Imaging was one of the companies behind it, with Ron Thornton at the helm. They used LightWave3D for most of the show. Check out this madness: Many years later, I had the opportunity to work on LightWave at NewTek, and through them, I finally met Ron. Another decade later, I finally had a chance to talk to him in depth about one of my favorite shows. One of the biggest problems, I was surprised to learn, was motion capture cleanup. The show leveraged tons of motion capture performances, but all of that r...