Siggraph

What makes a VP of Production happy? This morning, for Brian Rausch of Vicon/House of Moves it was onboard trajectory building. Vicon is here with the new MX T-Series 160 camera system based on their proprietary 16 megapixel 10-bit Avalon sensor (it runs full res at 120fps; it can do 240fps at half res). Quick math says this is a big jump in performance from the 4 megapixel sensors that established Vicon’s business and reputation.

But back to trajectories. In the not-too-distant past, Rausch explains, each frame was an island; trajectory really meant snapshot (which is hardly the true spirit of trajectory). Now onboard trajectory building is additive, and a successful trajectory can be built from a single camera when other cameras lose sight of markers. “We’ll get fewer labeling issues, markers aren’t going to swap as much, the trajectories will persist and markers will remember where they were, not just where they are.” For how long? Ah, who knows? Depends on movement, occlusion, how many actors. “How long will the trajectory will allow us to be part of its life? We don’t know,” Rausch says fondly, even wistfully. However brief or persistant it’s all an improvement on precision and clarity.

The new Vicon cameras are larger volume, see farther and more clearly, supports\ remote focus and aperture setting with Canon mount lenses. Gigabit Ether connections allow for 1000MB/sec transfer in preview mode, a ten-fold increase.

In addition to helping customers of the Vicon product, this performance jump helps support the business plan at House of Moves, which now has a new sound stage and full service animation team. “We’re hyper-focusing on the drama; we want to make sure we’re getting the drama in our animation Audio, video, motion, face, body fingers–this allows people to wrap all that together in one full experience,” Rausch says. “There’s a rhythm that can’t be repeated in the ADR, or when you capture in pieces, so this let’s people get it all in one go.”