Mirror your movements onto a 3D character in real-time with AI Motion Capture
As we’ve been covering nearly every day for the past several months here at No Film School, AI is 100% becoming the hottest topic in film and video production. From crazy new generative AI possibilities to iPhones recreating professional video production, AI is revolutionizing the industry across the board (for better or worse).
And while there are undoubtedly scary elements to AI when it comes to possibly replacing jobs and entire industries, there are also some new technologies that show promise for simply making the world of video easier and less complicated.
One of these new technologies comes to us from NAB and the Cannes Film Festival this year with the announcement of a new Invisible solution technology bundle for real-time markerless motion capture. Developed in a partnership with Move.ai, this new tool promises to remove the need for markers, wearable suits, or long calibration setups as a way to allow anyone the ability to mirror their movements onto a character rig in real-time.
Let’s take a look at this new real-time AI-driven motion capture tool and explore how it might work for you.
The Invisible AI Motion Capture Tool
Built to work within the Disguise Designer software, this solution leverages the Move.ai patented Invisible real-time markerless mocap software to extract natural human motion from video using AI. Capable of tracking up to two people at once, this new tech promises to be a faster, easier, and ultimately more cost-effective live motion capture tool on your video sets—or perhaps on your live production (or even meta-production) stages.
For live broadcasts in particular, this app is really designed to help provide motion capture data which can then be used to drive feature-triggered graphs and scene changes—or even accurate shadows—for talent on set. A process that could also be used or shared in the metaverse as well… if that’s your thing, of course.
Also, for live events, the Invisible software can integrate with the scalable processing capabilities of other Disguise hardware to ensure a high-fidelity real-time output to any LED stages or virtual production volumes of all sizes, giving your virtual setups more advanced controls and features.
AI Motion Capture for Film and Video
However, the real exciting uses for this Invisible AI motion capture tool are really in the world of filmmaking and video production as it enables the capture of 3D characters that can seamlessly interact with real actors or even drive movement-triggered effects like smoke or fire when working on the right sets.
“We’re exceptionally excited to have created the demo for the Invisible solution showcase at Cannes. Working directly with disguise and Move.ai allowed us to create a visual experience which looked and worked brilliantly thanks to the seamless integration between both platforms. Markerless motion tracking in Unreal Engine opens up vast creative possibilities that allows directors, designers, and artists to achieve much more and in a faster and more reliable way, while seeing a final quality product at every stage of creation.” — Svet Lapcheva, Executive Producer / Client Partner at FutureDeluxe.
When then combined with other tools like Unreal Engine, this new markerless motion capture tracking technology opens up a whole world of custom environments and virtual production possibilities which have usually been reserved for only the biggest budget studio production with advanced equipment and gear.
The Future of Motion Capture
Ultimately, like many video-adjacent industries, the future of motion capture is set to change rapidly with the coming advancements in AI.
If you’re looking to get started with this Invisible tool in particular, it might be best to explore one of the bundles Disguise offers for various setups. To enable real-time markerless motion capture with the Invisible solution, a minimum of one disguise vx or gx machine is also needed for graphics processing and one disguise rx II for real-time rendering.
However, if you’re simply looking to keep tabs on these new advancements and begin to gameplan how you might start to possibly integrate markerless motion capture into your own videos and projects, be sure to stay tuned for more updates and features as we find out more and more about this coming AI revolution.
Also, feel free to let us know your thoughts on this new AI motion capture tech in the comments below!
