Vicon unveils markerless mocap tech

Vicon has launched markerless mocap technology, in partnership with Artanim, the Swiss research institute, and VR group Dreamscape Immersive.

While the first use case to be demonstrated is a VR experience at Siggraph later this month, Vicon is inviting VFX and virtual production companies, among others, to join its VFX Pioneer Program. This will be followed by similar programmes for the engineering and life sciences sectors.

This comes in the same year as other markerless mocap releases, including efforts from Move.ai and Disguise, as well as Pixotope.

Vicon’s release is powered by AI and machine learning, and comes after three years’ of research from a dedicated team led tby CTO Mark Finch at the company’s Oxford R&D centre.

Imogen Moorhouse, Vicon CEO, said: “Today marks the beginning of a new era for motion capture. The ability to capture motion without markers, while maintaining industry leading accuracy and precision, is an incredibly complex feat. After an initial research phase, we have focussed on developing the world class markerless capture algorithms, robust real time tracking, labelling, and solving needed to make this innovation a reality.

“What we are demonstrating at Siggraph is not a one-off concept, or simply a technology demonstrator. It is our first step towards future product launches which will culminate in a first-of-its-kind platform for markerless motion capture.”

Sylvain Chagué, co-founder and CTO of Artanim and Dreamscape, added: “Achieving best in class virtual body ownership and immersion in VR requires both accurate tracking and very low latency. We spent substantial R&D effort evaluating computational performance of ML-based tracking algorithms, implementing and fine-tuning the multi-modal tracking solution, as well as taking the best from the full-body markerless motion capture, and VR headset tracking capabilities.”

Finch commented: “Our markerless motion capture technology is a genuine breakthrough for the industry – but what comes next isn’t just about Vicon. To unlock the full range of exciting multi-modal use cases for motion capture and drive commercially viable, accurate and precision-oriented markerless innovations we need a higher level of collaboration, with all actors, in all relevant sectors.”