The Coalition, the award-winning development team responsible for managing the billion-dollar Gears of War franchise at Xbox Game Studios is using Lectrosonics wireless R400a receivers fed by SMV and LMb transmitters for its motion capture sessions of actors clad in sensor-covered bodysuits.
The Coalition’s audio director, John Morgan knew that the audio component needed to be close, clean, and follow actors through many acrobatics.
“Motion capture, or performance capture, is the process of recording sound and motion for a virtual world. We use it mainly for our cinematics,” explains Morgan, referring to the scenes that move the story forward in between periods of gameplay. “Boom and room mics are meant to give you the perspective of the camera, which is appropriate for a traditional film scene. In motion capture, the ‘cameras’ can be anywhere, and the whole point is that you need to capture a 3D, 360-degree perspective around the actors to accommodate any direction the game might go. So, fitting the actors with lavs and body packs is essential.”
The first thing about the SMV and LMB transmitters that helps this process is simple: They’re very compact and light.
“The actors need to have complete freedom of movement,” explains Morgan’s colleague, The Coalition’s sound designer, Edward Bauman. “The bodysuits are tight because we need an accurately body-shaped network of sensors for the camera array to pick up. The Lectrosonics packs Velcro inside them without being distracting to the actors, which is important when someone might be doing wire work and hanging upside down 20 feet off the ground.”