All I Want For Christmas Is...a shiny new website!

Just in time for the festive season, the new and improved Centroid website launches like a robin into the blue blue skies of the internet!

The new site has everything - details of services, including full performance body and face capture; mobile studios and bespoke arrangements; a casting section to help select talent; and most importantly, a picture of me.

Come and have a look-see, at http://www.centroid3d.com/

Thank you interweb, for this joyous gift!

Pleasing to the eye...

Face, body, hands, knees and boomps-a-daisies!

As part of Centroid's ongoing mission to boldly go where no one has gone before, we spent a day in the studio testing camera setups with a combined face, hands and body shoot. It's not exactly punching a Klingon in the face, but sometimes you have to make you're own entertainment!

Utilising the thespian powers of resident performer Brian Herring, we shot numerous takes pushing the system and set-up as far as we could. There's a joke in there along the lines of 'she can't take no more capt'n', but the Star Trek thing has gone a bit far now.

The results have proved a great success with clients, and have led to other R&D projects, including controlling face and hand blendshapes with live marker data. Engage!

They never come off you know...

And you're back in the room...

It's a puppet!

Towards the end of 2008, Mr. Brian Herring joined Centroid for three months as our resident performer. In that time, as well as shooting large amounts of library data, we also dabbled with various different R&D tests (firing a cat into space was our most spectacular failure).

Being ex-Henson's, and also having a closet fetish for putting his forearm up things, Brian brought in one of his puppets and we began experimenting with live performance capture. Check it out!

Neville the puppet.

Strange insertion...

Centroid demo week!

During September 2008, Centroid opened the doors of it's Pinewood studio and invited companies from the film, television and games industries to see what we can do!

On show were numerous live pre-vis demos, including full face and body, a puppet (called Neville) and a spectacular martial arts set piece featuring a flying rig, a big gun, space and a small furry creature of unspecific origin. Behold!

The pre-vis cast.

The human cast, from left to right, Dave, Tamlyn and Brian.

Mike and Neville (with forearm supplied by Brian).

Tamlyn with the Flying FX guys.