Sometimes, unexpected things happen. It’s one of those cool things of being a writer – like going to Austria or accidently being in LA when your short film is in theatres. And that’s how I found myself in a photo studio in Kreuzberg doing motion capture for a video game.

Now, you might’ve seen professional motion capture – actors in spandex suits covered with Styrofoam balls, running around and overacting like they’ve just been cast in the next silent comedy.

You know what? Turns out that costs a lot of money!

Until I learned about this:

That’s right. Markerless motion capture with a handful of Playstation cameras. Seriously. The whole thing is probably the nerdiest thing ever – I mean come on, you don’t even have to change out of your Firefly shirt!

This is what the set-up looks like:

The process was pretty straightforward (and that’s coming from someone who barely knows two lines of C): You set it up, calibrate the room, and then start capturing. We ran into a couple of issues distinguishing parts of our bodies from the floor, but after the computer model magically stopped locking its hands to its crotch, everything went swimmingly.

So yeah. Here’s me.

My sick moves have officially been downloaded to the computer. Pretending to run around in a white room might be one of the geekiest things I have ever done – but seeing how I had an absolute blast, I guess I should go full-out geek more often.

At the risk of making this whole post sound like an advertisment: If you wanna know more, here’s a link to their website.