University Of Portsmouth Motion Capture Case Study 

Here at Novatech we have been working closely with the University Of Portsmouth’s Motion Capture team to supply high-end specialist equipment to assist their students’ learning experience.

What Is Motion Capture? 

Motion Capture (also sometimes referred to as mo-cap) is the process of using computer tracking software to capture the movement of people, objects and animals for entertainment purposes, used in television, film and gaming character creation. Using specialist software motion capture can track the movement to generate a digital skeleton that can then be used to drive a digital character creation.

Motion capture is thought to be a relatively new creation, however, believe it or not the first use of motion capture was in fact in 1915. During the First World War animator, Max Fleischer developed a technology called Rotoscoping that laid the foundations for today’s cutting edge mocap technology. 

University Of Portsmouth Motion Capture Studio

The University Of Portsmouth has been running the Motion Capture Studio for over 10 years, the studio uses specialist optical systems to deliver a professional, industry-relevant experience of motion capture to the students of the university. 

The university uses the latest technology to explore cutting edge areas of development such as virtual production, virtual reality, VFX and gaming. Some of the Universities ex Motion Capture students have gone on to work all across the globe within the motion capture industry for companies such as Vicon, The Imaginarium Studios, Weta Digital and Rockstar Games. 

Our Partnership

Here at Novatech, we have been working with The University Of Portsmouth for some years now on various projects from supporting their E-Sports team at multiple gaming events right through to developing race cars with their race team. 

In recent years we have been working closely with the University to support the Motion Capture Studio, one particular project we have worked with the department with is a project called Fatherland. This partnership started at the Digital Catapult in London where the University was awarded funds to build a prototype to explore using live motion capture and Virtual Reality in a live theatre production.  

The challenge faced throughout this project was achieving real-time live output (90 frames per second) however Novatech were able to supply powerful Workstations with the right hardware to overcome this issue.

Alex Counsell, Faculty Technical Adviser at the University commented about the partnership with our team here at Novatech and why we were the preferred supplier. 
“off the shelf solutions for projects such as Fatherland are not ideal so its best for us to work with suppliers like Novatech who listen to our requirements and deliver a bespoke hardware solution which is tailored specifically to the needs of our project…”

“...When approaching Novatech to work on our Fatherland project I straight away asked for the highest possible spec of computers and the latest GPUs, the team at Novatech were great and offered us two PCs meeting all of our requirements making this project a huge success. Novatech certainly didn’t disappoint” 

 If you think we could assist you with an upcoming project like this one then contact a member of our team today!