| MEDIA ALERT | |
| DATE: | February 8, 2006 |
| CONTACT: | Dr. Claudia Johnston, Associate Vice President for Special Projects (361) 825-2712; Melissa Goonan, Public Affairs, (361) 825-2337 |
*****************************PHOTO/MEDIA OPPORTUNITY*************************** WHAT: Motion Capture WHEN: Thursday, February 9 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. WHERE: Natural Resource Building, Room 2108 Virtual Learning Space Project to Use Motion Capture Technique to Digitally Record MovementsProject will eventually enable virtual reality healthcare instruction |
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The motion capture program will be used to record the facial movements and expressions of a student from the theatre department. The student will wear a black costume with white dots and act or move in front of a camera. The image transfers from the camera into a computer containing a motion capture program. The motion capture program only sees the white dots which connect with lines. The dots serve as the joints and the lines serve as the bones. The stick figure becomes the skeleton of a computer animated character that will copy the exact movements of the actor. This technique will create more natural and realistic movements that will be used to design the software system for the teaching tool known as PULSE!!.
PULSE!! is a lifelike, interactive virtual environment where health care students and practitioners can acquire and practice clinical skills.
The teaching tool will create and use cutting-edge game-based technologies unifying virtual healthcare with an extensive patient simulation modeling system to prepare first-responders for a range of healthcare issues, including injuries from terrorism and bioterrorism.
The project is housed on the A&M-Corpus Christi campus, where national experts from the serious games industry will be based to develop the effort.