Motion Capture Session Video
Because the motion of the powwow dancer was was not adequately captured by the 3D animator, we turned to Quantum Digital Arts for help. They suited-up three powwow dancers so that we may digitally record the locations and rotations of each dancer's body parts as they perform the dance. While we kept all of this data, so far we have only been able to apply it to an animation of a Jingle Dress dancer.

Dancers that performed were: Bob St. John, Andrea St. John, and Emma Malnourie - World Champion Teen Dancer.

Below is a short video showing the motion capture process. You may view it in one of the following streaming video formats at a variety of download speeds:

Motion Capture Video

3D Avatar Jingle Dress Dancer
This is a video render of the 3D motion capture data obtained through one of Emma Malnourie's jingle dress dance motion capture sessions. The data was imported into Maya Unlimited and mapped on to a 3D model of jingle dress dancer created by Christina Johnson from the conceptual storyboard art of Ken Greywind. While the motion seems to be an improvement over the original hand-animated versions, demonstrated by the Shockwave3D demo, the animation is not perfect. About halfway through the video we see the results of magnetic interference that we were not able to remove using Maya. This problem will be addressed in the future by the use of optical motion capture devices.

Below is a short video showing a 3D model jingle dress dancer animation created from the motion capture data. You may view it in one of the following streaming video formats at a variety of download speeds:

Rendered Jingle Dress Dancer Video*