Tuesady 6th December 2011

Today we went down to the photography studio to have a go at playing different animated games on the xbox so that we could see how many different ways we use Mocap. We played various types of games such as Zumba, which is a dance game, Fifa, which is a football game and another game which had all different activities on it to get people moving and more.

This was a really good lesson because whilst we were playing the games it gets you thinking about how much we actually use Mocap and how many games we use it for.

Without Mocap a lot of games we play today wouldn't even exist. We need Mocap to be able to create games like COD MW3 because every single character in the game has been created using Mocap. This has been done by people wearing special sensor pads all over there body that are wired up to a computer which detects the persons movement and is then stored into the computer so that when someone needs to create a character in a movie or game for example, they have the movement of how a real parson moves stored into the computer which will dramatically improve the quality of the character in the movie/game.  

Here I have another example of mocap being used. This time it is a picture of a dancer being used to create a character in either a film or video etc..

Here is another example of a 'mocap'. This is a picture of a dog being tested for motion so that they can use the computer to detect the dogs movement and are then able to create a dog character in a movie or programme etc..

Motion capture..

Motion capture is ''the creation of 3D representation of a live performance''. It is also considered to be a very controversial tool for creating animation, e.g animated games on the play station or xbox such as Fifa, pirates of the caribbean lego, Gt racing etc.

Here are a couple of examples of good use of motion capture...

Here is an example of how fictional characters are created for movies such as 'The Lord Of The Rings'.

LIGHTS!

On tuesday we went down to the studio and used torches with colored rappers placed over the top of them to create different colors, we then turned the lights off and got into groups of three and worked together to create a wide range of images using the lights.

To get the full effect of the different colors we turned off the lights and held down the capture button on the camera, keeping the shutter open so that it would capture the picture perfectly and let go of the capture button when we had finished. I worked with Ben and Gareth, here are some of the pictures we created using the lights and ourselves...

I feel that this is one of the best animation projects we have had in photography so far because it was a really fun and creative project and i was quite pleased with the results at the end of the lesson.

I would like to do this kind of work using lights again but maybe go outside in the dark instead so that the lights have more of an effect when taking the picture and use a wider range of colored sweet rappers to enable me to create a bigger, better image.

I have searched on you tube for video games I have played on play station 3 that i thought contained really good animations. I also a posted a behind the scenes video for each game showing how the games are made and some of the people that put the whole game together.

I have learnt that it takes a lot more than i thought to make an animated game such as C.O.D mw3, this game has only just come out in the shops and has already sold really well, I think this is mainly because the graphics and animations are so good that it makes the game seem very realistic.

I think that the video games i have played and chosen to search on you tube then upload onto my blog are really good examples of some of the best animation features around because they contain a lot of different animations and even though they looked like difficult games to make they have been very successful and managed to sell really well.

I would like to have a go at using a computer to create my own animation, maybe a character from a film or game or something. I would like to do this just to see what it includes and what it takes to create a simple animation on a computer compared to a more complexed animation.