Motion capture suit for a dog

Motion capture suit for a dog, made and used by CAMERA staff and worn by Maggie, Staffordshire bull terrier, 2017.

Motion capture (or mo-cap) is a digital animation technique. It is a way of recording actions and using that information to animate digital characters. It can be used to make content for films and games, as well as for research into health care and sports performance.

Engineers at The Centre for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research and Applications (CAMERA) at the University of Bath conducted research into how to make the movements of digital animals as realistic as possible.

To do this, dogs taking part in the research were fitted with coats with individual reflective markers. These markers have infrared light bounced off of them which is scanned by dedicated cameras to record their position and reconstruct it within a virtual environment.