iPi Soft announced the company’s line of markerless iPi Motion Capture technology will be used in the live-action feature film, The Boy and His Robot, directed by Rich Ho, founder of Singapore-based production company Richmanclub Studios.
According to Ho, The Boy and His Robot aims to create the “look of a Hollywood blockbuster with the budget of a small dramatic film,” thanks to GPU-based and cloud computing technologies from leading international and local technology partners including NVIDIA. The iPi Motion Capture system was selected for its multi-person tracking feature capabilities that allow artists to cost-effectively synchronize natural-looking, intricate movements such as fights, dance and other multi-person action sequences.
The Boy and His Robot is a science-fiction action adventure set in an alternative universe where humans on Earth and Mars are in constant battle for limited resources. War erupts when the leaders on Mars decide to exert totalitarian control over everyone. Although filled with robot battles, the film is rooted in an intimate story about friendship and sacrifice.
The first of three, The Boy and His Robot feature films will be published online later this year and eventually developed into a feature length film for international distribution. The teaser trailer for the first film is now on YouTube, with more content to roll out through 2014.
“We knew we would face critical technical challenges throughout the filmmaking process and were looking for a cost-effective motion capture solution that was technically not prohibitive to the dreamer, but one that could meet the demands of a fast-paced production and also actually worked,” said Ho. “We saw some of the great work being done with iPi Soft’s markerless motion capture software, and after doing extensive research and tests, brought iPi Motion Capture into the pipeline and have not looked back.”
Ho has also assembled a global creative team whose credits include such films and videogames as Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon, Pacific Rim, Star Trek: Into The Darkness, Uncharted 3, Medal of Honor, Kill Zone, and the Iron Man 3 videogame.
“In the past, smaller independent studios like ours, had to struggle with having our vision hampered by the cost and time restrictions from traditional technology in movie making,” said Ho. “Now, with the advent of cloud computing, GPU rendering and markerless motion capture, things might change for the better. With The Boy and His Robot we hope to take the risk, and jump in to find out.”
