Each time I move my arm, the frog on screen extends his. I drop into a low splits and the frog follows suit, even mirroring me when I transition into a handstand. Yes, his hands float a little over the ground, but that’s because he’s been calibrated as someone six inches taller than me. Finally, I take my headset off, and the frog reacts like I’ve decapitated it, head hanging backward, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. But even in its death throes, it’s still uncannily accurate, following my every move perfectly — with zero cameras involved in this motion capture. Motion capture technology costs big bucks in Hollywood, and is widely used for everything from modeling animation to creating a realistic Gollum. But motion capture requires a big investment for a company, which tends to cut out the little guys. The suit I’m wearing hopes to bridge that gap. Danish company Rokoko is offering this for the wallet-friendly price of $2495, and they’ve just opened for orders. But where other cheap motion capture outfits provide a disjointed effect, Rokoko’s magic sauce is their sensor calibration.
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Here’s how it works. An actor/designer/developer wears the Smartsuit Pro, a stylish ninja like bodysuit equipped with 19 sensors and a battery pack that’s held at the small of the back.
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What’s most impressive about this is not just the simplicity but the breadth of potential applications it can be used in. For one, they’ve included a program that accurately maps the degree of angles of the body, which could be a great tool for rehab, when you’re trying to improve motion and want to track your progress. The same can be said for sports as golfers etc. would benefit from being able to use this tech to assess their swings. Virtual reality seems like another obvious play as this type of tracking could be used to create more realistic avatars in places like AltspaceVr or to enhance gaming with HTC’s Vive, now they’ve released the Vive Tracker. It will be intersting to see how this progresses, but the possibilities here have only just started to be explored.
“We could develop for Prosumers, or do a collaboration with Nike if they want… there are so many possibilities,” Balslev says. For now, his focus is in motion capture as that’s an established industry and people can see the application benefits immediately, and then he’ll look to grow in other directions. “VR reinvented gaming, and we want to reinvent the keyboard and the mouse,” he says. “This disrupts the motion capture industry and for the first time makes it a creative tool to personalize films or games.”
The next big step for Rokoko is finger tracking which they’re hoping to roll out this year. He’s also thinking about extending the Smartsuit Pro line into child sizes; though surprisingly, he says he gets asked about if he could fit it for animals a lot. “I could do that — it’s all about rigging the sensors,” he says. “I could get this working for any kind of animal.”
Source: Forbes