For our production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, we explored the use of live motion capture for some of the scenes. At various times, two of the performers wore rigs of 17 sensors under their costumes, with each sensor recording the rotation of one of the major joints in their body. One of the ways we used motion capture was to enable a performer to control computer generated avatars live on stage.
For the “Whitewash Song” in the production, we created a fairly realistic 3D avatar of the performer, Sébastien Heins, using a smart phone for the 3d scanning and some free, open source 3d software. We connected the output from the motion capture suit that Sébastien was wearing under his costume to the ‘skeleton’ of the avatar, so that it mirrored all of his movements. Cues were established in the qLab cue file for the performance to make the avatars appear, to drain them of colour, and to create ever increasing multiples, synchronized to the playback of Eliot Britton’s wonderful music track.
The Lab is particularly grateful to Sébastien for his patience and enthusiasm, and for the great performance in the show!
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