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MillimeterDog and Dinosaur
Jun 1, 1999 12:00 PM, Michael Goldman
When BBC producers decided to create virtual characters for Dog & Dinosaur-a talk show "hosted" by two animated characters who interact with live guests-they turned to budget performance capture.
The Dog and Dinosaur characters were created by San Francisco-based Protozoa, which produced the first 20 episodes at its San Francisco studio in realtime. Protozoa used its proprietary ALIVE performance animation software in conjunction with the magnetic Ascension Motion Star motion-capture system to animate the show live to tape. Eventually, production will switch to the BBC's London headquarters and the "amazingly inexpensive" Protozoa system will go with it, says Jeremy Daldry, a producer for BBC Choice, the network that hosts Dog & Dinosaur.
"The BBC chose this technology because of their economic dynamic," says Brad deGraf, founder of Protozoa and an early pioneer of digital performance animation. "The system allowed them to produce 20-plus episodes, with the two characters on screen for more than 15 minutes per episode, at a very low cost. We did 10 complete episodes in two weeks, averaging about 200 shots a day. The reason this is possible is because, once the character models have been built, there is no more hand animation involved other than occasional tweaking."
Protozoa used Nicheman animation software to build the initial models of the two characters. The company then used ALIVE to "wire" the models so that they responded instantly to data from the motion-capture stage as one actor performed most of each character's movements. Protozoa was able to animate the two characters in realtime and combine them with live-action guests appearing on video screens to "chat" with the hosts using a crew of just six to seven people. ALIVE instantly renders the animation and uses phonetic recognition technology to provide instant lip-synch.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
