Case Studies of Motion Capture as a Tool for Human-Computer Interaction Research in the Areas of Design and Animation

Abstract

We intend in this article to demonstrate how motion capture is being used in different areas of academic research about human-computer interaction in our laboratory in conjunction with the university undergraduate Animation course, and master and doctoral program in Design about Media and Technology. One of our current lines of research is the application of virtual reality with motion capture where we have two projects in the initial phase of research. The first one has the goal of researching the problems and possible outcomes for using virtual reality during the process of motion capture, inserting the actor or actress in a virtual environment closest as possible to the animation final product to act and create the animation of the scene. The second project is getting the resulted animation from this process and adapting it to a 3D animation for virtual reality. Both projects will be using a 3D animation project that has been ongoing in our laboratory, the Dias Velho Project, which is an adaptation of a graphic novel for kids that is being adapted to a 3D animation for traditional use and virtual reality. The idea of this article was to present the inspiration to think outside the normal boundaries of the standard uses of motion capture to advance the knowledge in this field of study by thinking of creatives ways of applying it alongside other technologies, bringing new possibilities of research topics and solutions to current ones.