News Archive

MTV Honours

'ROCK DJ' VIDEO WINS BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS AT MTV VMAS
Sept 2001

Carter-White, Audiomotion and Clear Post Production won the MTV Video Music Award for their visual effects work on the Robbie Williams video 'Rock DJ', directed by Vaughan Arnell. Earlier this year the video won the same honour at the Music Video Production Association (MVPA) Awards. Rock DJ also won Best British Video at the 2001 BRIT AWARDS.

Carter Whites' prosthetics work was outstanding and both the concept by production company Godman and the effects by CG house Clear were lauded by commentators for their originality and daring. But it was the motion capture recorded by Audiomotion that tied the whole piece together.

Everyone at Audiomotion is delighted that the video received such a prestigious award and would like to take this opportunity to congratulate everyone who was involved.

For more on the Rock DJ shoot, click here

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Horse & Jockey

Ground breaking capture for I-Race
Sept 2001

Vicon, developer of motion capture systems, announced that simultaneous motion capture sessions were held in the UK at Audiomotion and in the USA at Locomotion (Austin, TX) to capture animation data for the world's first 100% computer generated TV channel.

I-Race, a revolutionary horse racing simulation and management game, is due for launch in the second quarter of 2002 as a 24 hour-a-day interactive television channel and internet gaming experience. Created by VIS iTV, a 50/50 joint venture between Telewest, the U.K.'s second biggest cable operator, and VIS entertainment plc, one of Europe's leading games developers, I-Race offers viewers the opportunity to race, buy, train and trade horses and bet on the horse races. Uniquely the channel will allow people who play games to gamble on their game strategy as well as letting people who gamble try and influence the outcome of their bet selection.

Motion capture crews at Audiomotion and Locomotion faced the challenge of capturing the horse and jockey simultaneously in a series of complex interactions.

As Audiomotion's Mick Morris explained, 'The horse and jockey are so closely intertwined for much of the time that one is usually obscuring markers on the other, so it's a constant puzzle for the mocap system to identify which character is which.'

Over a three-day session Audiomotion captured more than two hundred animations. 'We did a whole range of interactions between the jockey, groom and horse, like mounting and dismounting, winning and losing reactions, leading the horse by the bridle and so on.'

Both facilities adapted to meet the special demands of the sessions.

For Audiomotion this meant creating a comfortable environment for the horse inside the capture studio, with an 80-square-meter litter tray filled with sawdust.

Locomotion needed more space to allow the horse and jockey to gallop, so their motion-capture team transferred a 15-camera Vicon 8i from their studio to an indoor rodeo arena. The crew built scaffolding gantries to partially enclose a 60' by 12' capture volume, which the horse and jockey could gallop through. Once the cameras were mounted on the gantries, the crew dug trenches so that the cables could run across the capture space without hindering the horse and rider. Locomotion captured run-cycles of the horse and jockey, as well as the horse loading and then launching from the starting gate.

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Audiomotion Capture Enemy

How Audiomotion and Double Negative Helped Deliver Epic Storytelling With A Cast Of Thousands.
Feb 2001

Some of the most dynamic and spectacular crowd effects ever shot for a movie have been created for the forthcoming epic 'Enemy at the Gates' by Double Negative using motion capture from Audiomotion.

Created by a core effects team of only five artists, the scenes set in the ruins of Stalingrad during the epic WW2 battle feature a cast of thousands of digital extras deployed in computer-generated sets spreading over two miles or more. And the motion data for every extra in the film was captured in a single session at Banbury-based specialists Audiomotion, with just one performer providing all the animation.

Using a Vicon 8 system equipped with 17 cameras, Audiomotion provided Double Negative's effects team with the data for a library of animations for all the action required by the digital extras, running, climbing, ducking, crawling and so on. Using Double Negative's custom crowd control software, effects artist Frederik Sundqvist painted 'scent trails' over the CG scenery for the digital characters to follow. Artificial intelligence routines developed in-house were then used to help the characters adopt and blend animations appropriate to the terrain and situation.

Although an essentially intimate story of individuals duelling under intense pressure, Enemy at the Gates is set against the backdrop of the devastating battle in which more than 2 million people died. For director Jean-Jacques Annaud, VFX director Peter Chiang and Double Negative's Head of CG Paul Franklin it was essential that the tragic scale of the conflict should be convincingly represented in the movie.

Double Negative created a digital model of the whole of Stalingrad, with a vast vista of war-torn buildings stretching over 20 miles into the distance. In the film, even 'blimp' shots of the entire city are filled with moving digital characters. But as Franklin explained, digital characters were also featured extensively close to the camera: 'The motion capture data was so good, that we were able to bring digital extras very close and mix them with real actors without the difference being detectable.'

'There are shots in the movie that I've seen over and over, but I still can't tell which characters are real actors and which are digital,' Franklin added.

'When we were planning the work on Enemy, we knew there would be a huge amount of animation, and we knew we'd need the best data. Audiomotion are a great team and as for the motion capture it just had to be Vicon.' concluded Franklin.

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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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World League Soccer

Michael Owen shows us how it's done
1998

Our motion capture facilities were used by Silicon Dreams to capture Michael Owen's football wizardry for use in Michael Owen's World League Soccer Series.

Also, our audio and video facilities were used to capture some of his essence for use in key moments in the game.

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Dope Smugglaz - The Word

1998

The music video for the Dope Smugglaz debut single was produced entirely at Audiomotion. The song is still doing very well in the dance scene, and on release the video recieved heavy rotation on MTV.

Some of the comments about the song we have seen go something like... 'Not bad tune, but the video is great!'.

The fullbody capture studio was used to capture dance moves for the psychedelic characters, and the facial capture was mainly used to animate a little girl called Misha who mouthed the main sample loop 'Is the word, is the word, is the word...'.

The whole video was modelled, animated and rendered in house in a very short time scale (nearly four minutes of animation done in sixteen days).

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News Archive

Special effects earn top award...

Capture for ground breaking concept...

Spectacular crowd effects for 'Enemy at the Gates' epic...

How we helped Robbie strip...

Mocap for the Oscar winning film...

Owen's moves captured for video game...

The video to their debut single...