OXFORD, UK - After years of development and an expansive beta program, Vicon is releasing a new, markerless motion-capture solution. The launch comes more than a year after Vicon showed a markerless prototype at SIGGRAPH 2023. The technology was beta-tested through the company's Visual Effects (VFX) Pioneer Program, giving the VFX and virtual production communities the opportunity to discover, understand and define how markerless motion capture could be applied in their industries. Vicon Markerless for VFX will be available on March 19th.
Vicon Markerless reduces time to visualization, enabling rapid iteration from prototyping and previsualization to realtime animation – even with props. Creative teams can quickly explore ideas marker-free and transition efficiently to full optical motion capture when required. The release will integrate seamlessly into existing Vicon optical motion capture pipelines and increases team efficiency with a single ecosystem across calibration, capture and data cleaning pipelines.
Some of the beta participants that explored the markerless solution included Industrial Light & Magic, Gearbox Entertainment, Dimension|DNEG360 (pictured, top), Dreamscape Immersive, and Framestore.
"The new markerless system from Vicon has significantly accelerated our creative process, enabling us to reach results faster," notes Ben Kolakovic, virtual production operations manager at Industrial Light & Magic. "We now receive mocap data much more quickly than before, which allows our artists to experiment with new ideas in a fraction of the time. This streamlined workflow not only fosters creativity but also enhances our ability to iterate efficiently and fine-tune performances."
Randy Pitchford, founder and president of Gearbox Entertainment, says the new solution provides the studio with both speed and flexibility.
"Anyone of us at Gearbox, including me, can quickly jump into our Vicon markerless motion-capture volume – even in our street clothes – to quickly get the data we need as we work to bring exciting potential future projects to life, including Borderlands."