Lo and behold, Pixar's latest filing, published on November 10, is for "light field [plenoptic] lenses" that can be used with "conventional cameras (e.g., digital or photographic/film, image and video/movie cameras) to create light field imaging systems".
Similar applications dating from 2010 were published* by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) earlier in the year and somehow managed to stay under the radar.
The applications state that "data collected by these light field imaging systems can then be used to produce 2D images [or] right eye/left eye 3D images... as well as to render and manipulate images using a computer graphics rendering engine and compositing tools."
Cameras that capture the entire light field—instead of a single plane of light like conventional cameras—have been around for years in research settings, but only now are beginning to find real-world uses. (The Lytro is the first consumer product to hit the market.)
It's long been known that data from an advanced light field surveillance camera, for example, could be used to create a photorealistic CG model of a suspect. It seems that Pixar is looking into applying a similar technique with moving images.
Such a system could conceivably capture all of a performer's complex facial expressions in stereoscopic 3-D. The greatest limitation of current mocap systems, which track select muscle groups, is, of course, that they can only capture some movements.
The Disney Research website confirms that David DiFrancesco, one the inventors named in the applications, is currently "researching instrumentation to capture lightfields for use in 3D cinematography and videography" at the Pixar Research Group in Emeryville.
The stated purpose of the Pixar Research Group is to develop new technologies that can be applied specifically to Pixar's films.
*United States Patent Applications 20110169994, 20110249341, 20110273609.
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8 comments:
awesome.
bring on the future!
Hopefully they don't make the characters too realistic.
Light field cameras have no shortage of uses that have nothing to do with motion capture. They'd be extremely useful for capturing reference. It's also possible that the light field technology came about more or less incidentally out of research into rendering.
I'd be very surprised if Pixar is planning to do anything with motion capture, especially not photoreal motion capture.
Mocap is not animation, even with this new technology. Since Pixar is an animation studio based on John Lasseter's idea to use the traditional principles of hand-drawn animation in CG, they won't use mocap in any case for character animation.
Anyway, mocap can be used for other things. I can't imagine which things, but am sure Pixar can :)
Interesting, but I still don't think this has anything to do with Motion Capture specifically. Pixar has talked about moving into live action filmmaking in the past, right? This patent would seem more applicable to advancements stereoscopic photography.
As far as I know this is meant to capture stereo with a single camera and lens, meant to do smaller stereo rigs.
Interesting. What on earth would Pixar be doing with motion capture technology....?
~Lisa~
Since I saw motion capture in a video game called 'Enslaved: Odyssey To The West' I've been awed by it ever since. Motion capture really brings the expressions and human body language that even for animators still isn't possible to create. It really brings life into a character, seperating them from a animated model to something believable and alive.
If Pixar pull motion capture off like in Enslaved and the new Tintin film then I am all for it. But I still think the usual way of animating should be kept too for things like Toy Story or other films that are meant to look cartoonish. Then again that could be an art form that could die like 2D handdrawn animation, but considering the pluses of motion capture is I'd rather see that move forward.
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