Realtime Mocap Camera for Games

A camera operator on a mocap stage, shooting footage inside a live game.

Role
Engineer
Areas
VFX, Tools, Pipelines

For a major game publisher I built a realtime motion-capture bridge between a Vicon stage and a flagship shooter's engine. It streams a virtual camera position into the unmodified game, so a human camera operator on the stage can shoot combat footage as if embedded with a group of soldiers, for marketing and esports. The approach extends readily to other titles.

A four-step flow: a camera operator moves on a Vicon motion-capture stage, a realtime bridge streams the virtual camera position, the unmodified game's camera follows the operator, and the result is combat footage for marketing and esports.
The bridge turns an operator's movement on the stage into a camera inside the running game.

That's a different thing from traditional machinima, where the observer camera is just another character, piloted the usual way. Here the camera moves the way a person holding it moves.

A two-column comparison. In traditional machinima the observer camera is another character, piloted the usual way. With the mocap camera, a person on the stage holds it and it moves as they move.
Here the camera moves the way a person holding it moves.

A second engine

I built a similar realtime mocap solution for a second game engine, with a Lua plugin inside the game that receives camera pose, field of view and other data, for the same kinds of shoots.

A two-column comparison. In the first engine, a realtime bridge streams the virtual camera position from the Vicon stage into the unmodified shooter. In the second engine, a Lua plugin inside the game receives camera pose, field of view and other data.
Two engines, two integration routes, the same kind of shoot.