Awesome Photo of Vinatge MoCap
Nyarlathotep passed along this awesome pic that at first glance looks like some sort of Sci-Fi S&M setup but is really an early motion capture rig. There is more info on Dave Sieg’s Scanimation website about this image
I recall seeing a demonstration videotape in which a girl wore a harness equipped with motion sensors connected to a Scanimate. Each sensor was a goniometer, a type of rotary transformer which converts angular displacement into a corresponding phase shift between windings. The wearer of this harness could cause a stick-figure, generated by Scanimate, to mimic his movements in real time. Remember, this was done back in the early seventies, well before any of the recent magnetic or optical motion capture work.
I’ve searched the whole internet (well not really) trying to find the full demo video of this system but to no avail. Any hints from fellow VFXhackers out there could help us all scratch our vintage MoCap itch.
LINK to a cool movie of the Scanimation system in action for Dave’s site
April 17th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Like I said when I sent it, I first saw it on a TV show on VFX in the early 80’s . It was some hot well known/esoteric experimental “jazz” dancer/choreographer (I am not sure it was the woman in the pic) She was assisted into her harness by 2 white lab coated, bespectacled boffins; I thought the “experiments” took place at Caltech, or possibly at WED (Walt Disney Imagineering) and I thought it was the late 50’s but maybe it was the 60’s. I remember She blew their minds. I also recall the harness being bulkier the umbilical being thicker and the girl being curvier. The same show also had footage of a what I believe is now called DARPA Project where they built an exact miniature model city (Aspen or Denver I think) and Motion-Controlled moves down every street In order to make a recoverable database so you could “learn” a whole city without out ever going there. This was a very early use of MoCo (PDP7 or 8s maybe?) and I believe they show one of the dudes in charge; it is J. Dykstra right before he left to work on StarWars. Of course now we have Google Street view. Somebody needs to find the VFX TV Show from the 80’s or the Dancers name