News 2000

Rock DJ

Robbie Williams Stripped With A Little Help
From Audiomotion
July 2000

When top Soho Production Company Godman came up with the concept for Robbie Williams' latest promo, they knew they were pushing the boundaries of special effects technology to new levels. The radical new promo, directed by Vaughan Arnell, for Robbie's latest single 'Rock DJ' involves the star performing a striptease on a dance floor that goes much further than anybody would expect. Not content with removing all of his clothes, Robbie goes on to remove his skin, muscles and even organs until he is literally stripped down to the bone.

CGI and effects house Clear was given the challenge of creating the special effects necessary for this complex task. The production team at Clear knew that Robbie has a distinct dance style that his fans would instantly recognise and it was vital for the computer-animated skeleton and part muscle man to match Robbie's moves exactly. The only way to achieve this daunting task was to use motion capture technology. Clear's first choice for motion capture services were industry veterans Audiomotion who are currently spearheading the use of advanced motion capture based animation in the entertainment industry.

The process of motion capture involved Robbie dressing in a very tight fitting lycra suit, and then being covered in tiny reflective markers - a very popular job for the female members of the crew! Once the markers were in place, Robbie performed his dance routine in front of 9 state of the art Vicon motion capture cameras from Oxford Metrics, and his moves were converted into 3D data.

The shoot took place at Bray studios in Berkshire and Audiomotion had to relocate all of its equipment to the set. Fortunately, the Vicon 8 equipment is designed to be portable, and the experience and expertise of the team from Audiomotion meant that the whole system was up and running in a couple of hours. The capture process took less than an hour to complete, and everything was recorded in just 5 takes, which is an excellent achievement even by Audiomotion's high standards.

We were extremely pleased with the data quality, it was exceptionally clean and some of the best we've ever seen. I worked very closely with the Audiomotion team and we developed some groundbreaking new techniques, enabling us to turn the motion capture around within 4 days.

John Harvey, Head of Animation - Clear

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Gladiator

Motion capture in Ridley Scott's Oscar winner
May 2000

The company was approached by Mill Film to provide motion capture data for the Ridley Scott film 'Gladiator'. Motion capture technology was essential, as the movie sets had been built using 3D graphics. This enabled the individual camera moves to be chosen at a later date. Unless the characters in these virtual sets were able to move around in 3D, the sets would remain totally unpopulated. Obviously, this would have been unacceptable for the end product, as the intention was to create the illusion of a bustling Roman city.

Whilst many of the motion captured characters in the movie were used for the street scenes, others were used in the Coliseum, for example workers hauling the tarpaulins out over the crowd to protect them from the sun.

Audiomotion was chosen because we employ the latest in high-tech capture equipment - the Vicon 8 system supplied by Oxford Metrics. This has become the tool of choice for major Hollywood titles; it gives Directors far greater freedom to capture complex animation sequences for longer periods of time. Most notably, for some scenes in Gladiator, Audiomotion captured up to six actors simultaneously in order to record their synchronised movement. In reality, many workers were required to pull on the ropes to move the heavy sheets, and this collaborative effort had to be reproduced faithfully, even down to the foreman shouting instructions!

Ben Morris, who supervised the application of the motion capture data at Mill Film, is very experienced in the use of motion capture. His direction of the work at Audiomotion ensured the best possible result. Authentic props were used to get just the right kind of dynamics for the recorded data, many of which were built by Audiomotion. To represent the steps of the Coliseum accurately, we built a scaffold replica of the 3D model used in the film. In the event over three hours of data was captured and a large proportion of the captured data found its way into the film. Naturally, the intention was that the motion capture would be unnoticeable and all that could be seen in the finished product would be crowds of people moving around in ancient Rome!

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News 2000

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