When and How Did Motion Capture Start?

Snow White Rotoscoping

The first recorded version of motion capture was in the feature film Snow White in 1937. The version of motion capture that Disney used was called rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is when someone traces over real footage frame by frame and then uses the drawings in an animation, they capture the movement that happens in the video footage and then apply that movement to a character in a cartoon. The scene in Snow White where Snow White is dancing with the dwarfs was made using rotoscoping, the animators of Disney recorded a man and a women dance exactly how they visioned Snow white would dance with the dwarfs and then they traced over the video footage frame by frame replacing the people dancing with Snow White and the dwarf. 

Waldo

During the 1980s a couple of students in University designed and developed the first ever motion capture suit and named it Waldo. Waldo was then used in the Nintendo's Mario trade show to create an exciting experience for the fans of Nintendo, there was a giant screen with a projection on it and Waldo was linked up to the giant Mario that would appear on the screen and then an actor behind the scenes would  make Mario move and interact with the audience.

Rise of the Robots (1994)

In 1994 a game came out on the Sega Mega Drive called Rise of the Robots and it was the first game to attempt to create the movement of characters in motion capture. The game was a fighting game one player stood on the left and the other player on the right and they would fight until one of the players health completely depleted. Games at the time were made and animated using pixels because video games were animated frame by frame but because this game used motion capture it couldn't use pixels as captured motion can't be applied to pixels, so the game developers used sprites which is when the character is morphed from an object to an object and not created from scratch. The game received mixed feedback with good reviews about the how the game's movement looks really real and fluid however the bad reviews came from the games gameplay that most people found too simple which overall made the game boring to play.

  

Jar Jar Binks (Star Wars The Phantom Menace)

In 1999 the first prequel of the Star Wars saga was released and it was the first live action movie to create a character in CGI using motion capture. On the set of the Star Wars movie an actor was wearing a motion capture suit and at the same time wearing a costume of the character Jar Jar Binks, the motion capture suit was used to digitally capture the movement of the actors during his scenes while his character costume was to remind the actors which character he was playing. After the filming was done the motion caught from the Jar Jar Binks actor was applied to a computer generated Jar Jar Binks that would replace the actor on set in the movie.

Reference List

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/a-brief-history-of-motion- capture-in-the-movies-91372735717.html

https://www.engadget.com/2014/07/14/motion-capture- explainer/

http://www.xsens.com/products/xsens-mvn/

http://listverse.com/2010/06/30/15-more-firsts-in-video- 

game-history/