Products: Animazoo

Over the years, motion capture systems have become easier to use. Better capture camera systems, more sensitive magnetic tracking, and savvier software to clean up the results have helped make the technology a popular way to capture movement.

But they're still far from simple to deploy. The systems aren't cheap, either, while actors face limits to how far they can range. Data cleanup still chews up production time.

UK-based Animazoo thinks it has a solution to all that. Its GypsyGyro-18, which debuted at SIGGRAPH, is a breakthrough. By using miniature, solid-state gyroscopes in place of the usual ping-pong ball markers or magnetic trackers attached to suits, suddenly actors have no bounds.

By employing gyros — a radio system continuously sends an actor's position data — one or more actors can do just about anything a director wants. At SIGGRAPH, actors walked around the hall, moving however they wanted, and everything was captured back at the booth. www.metamotion.com