Introducing "Alma", Our First MoCap Short

Meet "Alma", the first fully motion capture CG short film created at Escape Studios.  Alma was directed by Rola Hafez, Francesco Cordari and Alexandra Megerdichian, and produced by Emmanouil Zervoudakis, and overseen by Escape Studios tutor Amedeo Beretta. 

The MoCap performance was recorded at Escape Studios on a Xsens Awinda MoCap suit, supplied by Escape Studios' tutor and cinematographer Clement Gharini.

"Alma" was completed as part of our MA Animation, in which students must deliver a personal project, which can be done individually or as part of a team. 

"Alma" pulled together 3D and Animation students to deliver a short movie as a team project, using Motion Capture to facilitate the animation.

Alma

You can watch Alma at Vimeo below:

ALMA from Rola Hossam on Vimeo.

MoCap Pipeline

Jake Lee - MoCap Performance

Thanks to the MoCap pipeline the team was able to record all the takes for the short movie, which involves a humanoid robot, in just one day.  Jake Lee, one of our animation "short course" students, donned the MoCap suit and acted out the scenes, while Edoardo Sartori and Karla Rojas, year 3 animation students, helped with managing the software, and video references.   

Iliana Franklin, who teaches storyboarding and previz at Escape Studios, helped out with the acting takes.  Some scenes in the film are full MoCap, some are a blend between MoCap and keyframe animation, and some are fully key framed animation.

Rendering

Software

Rendering was carried out in Redshift and most renders were delivered through CGRU (https://cgru.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#), an open source renderfarm software. 

VPN Network

The system communicated via a VPN network set up with ZeroTier.com, a free service that creates private secure networks.  Renders were written directly onto a shared Google Drive syncing through the Google File Stream app.

Other Software

Compositing was completed in Nuke. Modelling was carried out in Maya and Blender, texturing was done in Substance Painter.  Rigging was based on the Advanced Skeleton add-on, with bespoke parts added as needed.

18 Week Schedule
The project took 18 weeks from the first idea to the final delivery.  

"Alma" Credits

• Rola Hafez - Writer, Director, Producer, Animator
• Francesco Cordari - Writer, Co-Director, Colour Scripts, Supervising TD, Character Artist
• Alexandra Megerdichian - Writer, Co-Director, Lighting & Rendering
• Emmanouil Zervoudakis - Producer
• Austin Hill - Storyboards
• Paloma Zhu - Concept Art
• Mihail Sustov - Sound Design & Foley
• Maria Cortes-Monroy - Original Score
• Alice McCall - Motion Graphics
• Jessica Elias Lopez - Colour Scripts
• Paolo Amadini - Assistant TD, Animator
• Jake Lee - MoCap Actor, Animator 
• Samantha Maiolo - Animator
• Federico Bonato - Compositing 
• Amedeo Beretta - Executive Producer, Animation Director
• Edoardo Sartori - MoCap retargeting

You can find "Alma" listed at the IMDB here.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for our BA/MArt in 3D Animation, follow this link. To apply for our storyboarding evening class, visit this page here. For the next 12 week animation course, click here.