STUTTGART, GERMANY — At FMX 2018, here, Vicon (www.vicon.com) released Shōgun 1.2, the latest update to its motion capture software solution. Shōgun 1.2 arrives with 11 new features and improvements, including SDI video support, custom prop and skeleton solving, and an improved Shōgun Post workflow that will help users deliver a high level of skeletal data in a matter of hours.
With Shōgun 1.2, mocap teams can add and record up to two HD SDI video camera devices for easy overlays of 3D footage. Blackmagic cameras and capture cards are now supported, with more options planned for the future.
There are a number of other new features, including the ability to create custom skeletons from meshes within Shōgun Post. Newly created custom rigs, complete with mesh and textures, can be loaded into Shōgun Live and applied to the capture pipeline, allowing game and film rigs to be driven directly using Vicon’s full-body solver.
Shōgun Live now supports prop creation with mesh and gives users the ability to modify the position and orientation, which ensures that elements like virtual cameras line up exactly. The Post workflow also now allows artists to validate skeleton solves in Maya and MotionBuilder, through seamless exporting of undistorted video and camera positions via FBX.
“Being able to solve and animate directly onto a game or film rig using Shōgun has been our number one feature request,” says Tim Doubleday, VFX product manager at Vicon. “Users want to be able to see their characters in realtime, in engine, without the need of additional retargeting software.”