Siggraph

Mo cap developer Vicon ended three years of development with the debut of Blade, new customizable Windows-based motion-capture processing software that is said to more or less offer a one-size-fits-all approach to the complex task of handling motion-capture data. Whether you are a small studio with a single camera or a studio the size of Sony Pictures Imageworks (a customer), the software is said to be easy to use. The Sony‘s of the world can dig deep and tweak as needed; the rest of us get a ‘wizards‘ approach that walks you through actor setup, acquisition, solving, occlusion cleanup, and general data wrangling.

The company also noted the ‘enthusiastic‘ acceptance of its FK Extreme; Pixel Liberation Front recently used the $50,000 turnkey mo cap system (eight cameras and software) for previz on a feature.

For those who love a contest, the company announced a mo cap film festival with a $10,000 prize. Selected films will be posted, of course, to YouTube for the public to love you or not. Make a short film between two and five minutes with the provided Vicon mo cap data at www.vicon.com/filmfestival.