Computer science and computer animation students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have access to even higher technology now that the new computer science building is open: A full motion capture laboratory.

The lab, located on the first floor of the new facility, is unique in the state of Louisiana. It will allow students to dress up in a special black body suit, covered in strategically located white spheres, and capture animation for use in video game development and computer animation production.

“It’s about $100,000 worth of eight-megapixel cameras from Vicon,” said Jared Chambliss, a computer science graduate student. “Most of their products are used not in the game development area, but [...] for bioinformatics companies to analyze movement.”

The red light-emitting motion capture cameras follow the movement of the white spheres against the black backdrop.

“Basically, all those little sensor dots,” said David Ducrest, a computer science major who is using the lab for one of his projects. “The camera will track them in 3D space.”

The orbs are placed on strategic locations corresponding with bones and joints all over the body, allowing for computers to interpret bodily movements.

“We can associate these dots with different bones in the body,” said Ducrest.

The files generated at then mapped to computer models. The result is eerily accurate animation superimposed on students’ digital creations.

“You can say, ‘I want this bone to affect these polygons,’” said Ducrest. “So when this bone moves, those polygons are going to move.”

Tim Roden, Ph.D., the professor in charge of the equipment, said that because the equipment is new, students and faculty in the department are still learning the nuances of its operation. He demonstrated a figure dancing which was captured in the lab, noting a few minute problems in the animation he was working on.

“In the game class I’m teaching now, most people have a terrain with some trees and rocks, and a sky and a waterfall, and stuff like that,” said Roden, who is teaching CMPS 427, a class that will use the lab, “but there’s no people walking around. The next step in the class, now that we have this equipment, one of the assignments is going to be to get a character or a monster walking around. They’ll go in the motion capture lab and record their own data.”

Chambliss said that if the department needed to capture larger scenes, the tripod-based setup of the lab allowed them to move the system anywhere they needed to.

Roden said the computer science department would be open to allow any group on campus to use the lab once the department had the lab fully operational.

“Using a motion capture system is part of the education for animation,” said Yeon Choi, an art professor who teaches computer animation. “For the senior students, when they do the senior project, I’m sure a lot of students are going to find it very useful.”

She said that the system would not take work away from her students.

“After we use the motion system, we still need to fix a lot of things,” she said. “To be able to get natural movements, a lot of times we have to work for 80 hours. With the motion capture system, it can be done quickly, although there’s some cleanup jobs. It’s very exciting news.”

Roden said that a graduate-level course, entertainment computing, would be using the equipment this fall.

“Normal, average art and computer students will be able to use this to do animation,” said Chambliss. “They can come in and put on a fun little suit with reflective markers on it, and instead of having to sit there and hand-animate a foot moving, they can just move their foot or dance around, and be able to export that data into a 3D model to get a more fluid range of motion.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 8:40 am and is filed under news, vermilion.