Conjure immersive theatre with Sensosis

Role

Technical Animator and Motion Capture with Sensosis

Technologies

• Unity Engine

  • Animator

  • State Machines

• Animation

  • Xsens MVN

  • Stretchsense

  • MotionBuilder

This project really showed my ability to scale to projects of any size. For this one, she wanted to keep extraneous costs as low as possible. Usually, a motion capture performance might be done in a warehouse-style building suited more for multiple performers. But Anna just wanted to deliver a passionate monologue straight to the viewer in VR. She didn’t need the massive studio - either the size or the cost!

So why incur the expense of space rental? I travelled down to record her performance from her living room. A few takes later, the mocap suit was back in the bag and I was back to Liverpool to process the data.

We worked with a 3D modelling company to retarget the animation data from our capture to an alien creature purpose-built for the experience. This involved both the simpler task of body cleanup and retargeting, as well as full facial retargeting with lip-sync.

This latter point was really important to get across the tone of the piece - as Anna comes from a theatre background she wanted a performance, rather than just a straight retarget. This was especially relevant for a heartfelt Shakespearean performance near the end of the piece.