Game Motion Capture. EA facilitates one of the biggest motion capture in the world!

Have you ever wondered how games are made in our days ? Well except the graphic stuff, one of the most important things that today's games have, is realistic motion !

EA games, a colossus gaming company, tends to have one of the biggest motion capture facility in the world.

Located in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, EA's state-of-the-art mocap facility is one of the largest and best equipped in the world. 

The studio has well over 100 cameras deployed to capture motion and has over 200 video game titles to its credit.

The concept is the following:

A large place with highly modified cameras and projectors-receivers, installed in many positions in order to capture more detailed motion from all aspects !

Here is an example of the EA motion facility: 

-The red dots are motion detectors. They are positioned in many angles for better motion caption.

 Cameras are also used for the tricks! They are highly useful for Cinematic videos through a game.

Now how can such thing be recording a humans movement? Simply by wearing projecting equipment!

In the left picture, we see a man who wares a suit with projecting orbs ! The Motion detectors we saw in the first picture, send infrared signals which are send back from the orbs. When the receptors take the signal back, the system acquires the orbs position in the terrain, (gathering horizontal and vertical position).

Through appropriate software, The info gathered is decoded into skeletal form. (the orbs in the right picture are linked, featuring a skeletal form of a human body!) After that process, the graphic textures of the game are linked to the skeletal objects, resulting to gather skin and complexity (a thorough process). The more orbs used in motion capture, the better detail is gained to represent human movement!

Such motion patterns are used in other items too. Projecting cars and weapons movement for example!

Games that have been using motion capture techniques are like:

• Dead Space 2,
• Bulletstorm,
•  Crysis 2,
• Mass Effect  

and many more. 

Here is a video of EA making Motion Capture:



The concept of motion capture is pretty much the same in general as described above.The only thing that changes is the area scale of capture, the software and the equipment.

For more info about EA motion click here.