Facial motion capture

The progression of motion capture

As in my last post we talked about Gollum, and the way he is brought to life, but this led me on to think about the development of facial tracking in 3D animation.

So in the Lord of the rings the motion capture suit was quite bare, only a wet suit with a few tracking markers. so the face was very much exposed, other than very subtle tracking markers dotted out in felt tip.

And there is definitely room for improvement in the animation of Gollum in the lord of the rings, especially in the face. but we are forgetting how this was 14 years ago, so the increase in technology has been incredible since then. so lets compare this to the hobbit.

So as well as having the motion tracking suit, Gollum also had a facial tracking camera of its own, so the camera is constantly pointing and recording the actors face so in can pick up every nuance that the actors face creates.

As you can see the variety of facial expressions due to this method are 10 fold compared to its predecessor. in this method the camera is fixed on the actors face throughout the whole performance which anchors the position of the tracking. which makes it easier to place in the final animation.