alt Hacker NewsOscar Winner Brings Monsters to Life with His Simulation Software
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While technically very impressive you would hope this effort would be reflected in a higher quality of resulting movie, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
It's interesting that even their details mention essentially using it as a ML training set data generator for later:
"By analysing training sets that demonstrate how a 3D character should look as it moves, Ziva RealTime learns to reconstruct the shape of that character at realtime speeds.
Character effects that traditionally require seconds or even minutes per frame are reproduced in milliseconds. This unlocks the potential to deploy full-fidelity character assets into Virtual Production, Virtual Reality, or game environments and directly interact with them."
Another cool self-developed tool is the Mantis Motion Controller.
It's been developed by a cinematographer who specialized in stop-motion animation and other special effects, Melbourne-based Gerald Thompson [0]. In true amateur spirit, the above website is probably 90% stock content that he never bothered to remove (e.g., the "team" is just the generic placeholder garbage that came with the template). That might turn you off, but the product is so niche that I suppose there is no point in making a professional website for a wider audience.
The tool allows you reliably and repeatedly run your camera through predefined motion paths. That way, you could for instance overlay a real-time tracking shot with stop motion tech recorded in the studio - the camera can be positioned in the exact same positions and angles as during the live shot.
For such a visual topic it’s a lotta text I have to say. Would have expected more comparisons and performance data to be honest..