Activision hears the mocap Call

The new 48-camera Vicon MX suite has been installed to help Activision’s in-house teams and co-development partners with dedicated motion-capture facilities.

The set-up has already been used on titles such as Call of Duty 3, which featured full-body and hand capture from eight simultaneous performers.

“In evaluating motion capture solutions and manufacturers, it was clear that Vicon was making the big push,” said Matt Karnes, Activision’s mocap director. “I like the focus of Vicon; I like its hardware, its software and its people. I like the fact that they are production minded and have product development paired up with real-world production. The way data is captured with the Vicon MX cameras is flawless. In the five months since we’ve had the Vicon system, a team of two of us produced over 20,000 character animations – more than I’ve ever done in a year!”

“Vicon has been providing motion capture solutions for games for more than a decade,” said Nick Bolton, CEO of Oxford Metrics Group. “In that time, the requirements of the developers and platforms have grown exponentially. With the accelerated performance and 4MegaPixel accuracy of our cameras and software pipeline, we make it our goal to be wherever pace-setters such as Activision want, or need, the technology to go.”