Gadgetory

there's been speculation that I'm parading around superhero that's a scene from Ironman the mega blockbuster recently released on DVD to build this kind of computer-generated scene the designers at San francisco-based Industrial Light and Magic filmed it on their image capture stage the idea is that you are surrounded by a room full of cameras you wear a special suit that's got markers on it all the cameras are threshold to just see the markers the computer takes all the images of all the markers and figures out where each one of them is moving in the room the ILM team has worked on the motion capture for more than three dozen films in the last decade we sort of choreograph or mime the process it's almost like a video game you have this 3d world that you can play around in directors love using the technology because it can save them time and ultimately money you could photograph an environment and then come into this space and explore that environment virtually set up your shots your camera angles you don't have to take all that time on the the actual location to do that now it's my turn it's got my bootys I've got my suit now tell me how did I ever agree to wear lycra on camera television I think I must be nuts flattering don't you think next the ilm team velcro's fifty glow-in-the-dark balls to my suit if you look at this in the light you'll see it's reflecting right back at the camera and that's the only thing that the cameras are the only thing that exactly they're cameras are reading the reflective dots and they see all the circles so they don't see anything else and stand your size try to keep your feet about hip width apart as I go through a series of basic calisthenics the 40 cameras in this space capture my movements to customize it to my exact physiology we have a model of what the human skeleton looks like and based on where it's all your dots moving its going to adjust the model to match your bone lengths and where your joint positions are exactly we are tracking a performer skeleton through the room and then we can take that and hook it up to any animated creature we want I get the realistic performance from the actor into the creature yeah with an accurate picture of my frame and how I move I can play with Iron Man or in this case iron woman the end result is this subconsciously believably real motion that's the whole point of the technology after perfecting this motion capture Island says they now need to work on the facial recognition which is incredibly difficult given the the nuances of the skin in a human muffled I do hope I'm invited back to that demo however I'm CNET reporter Cara sue boy