Hi all,
Crispin Broadhurst - Mocap Supervisor and Technical Director at Motus Digital and MotionCaptureOnline.com
A little background on me!
My Dad (www.frankbroadhurst.com) was a fine commercial artist and illustrator, and had a light table and animation disc; showed me the ways of animation early on. I started making flip books and stop action films when I was nine years old, continued through high school. I’ve always loved animation, film making and all things technical.
Music was always a passion, I ended up at University of North Texas studying jazz piano, drums and percussion. I made a successful career out of music - piano, playing and programming synthesizers, writing, producing, recording - till I got very tired of doing it for a living. My childhood passion had become a “job”, it happens.
Enter the early 90’s. I was always fascinated with computer animation, and post “Jurassic Park” tech was trickling 3D animation software onto desktop computers, including my Mac I used for music programming. I soaked it all up like a sponge creating music, animation and programming with a computer based training company in all my spare time. Taught myself everything I could get my hands on and whatever they showed me, as well as personal creative projects. I didn’t sleep much. Shortly after that my reel got me an intern gig at an animation studio working on client projects, I did more and everything ten times better than I was asked to, and nine months later I was a Supervisor and Technical Director. They handed me a Vicon motion capture system and Filmbox 1.5 and told me “You figure it out.” The rest is history as they say. :-)
I’ve worked on many projects for TV, film, music videos and video games - Fox Television, Retro Studios, Digital Anvil, The Animation Farm, Midway, Acclaim Entertainment, Ubisoft, Wideload Games, Gearbox, Id Software, and others. I love a challenge and figuring out clever solutions to difficult problems, as well as the art of producing visuals and the animation itself. One of the biggest and most fun challenges was developing our real time puppet celebrity “Larry the Zombie” and our other characters for broadcast.
Motionbuilder is one of my main areas of expertise. I do the majority of all animation asset editing and creation for MotionCaptureOnline, and deal with getting them into Unity Asset Store and Unreal Engine Marketplace. If there are animation and/or technical questions, I am usually the best person to address them. I am not a Unity or Unreal Engine expert on all topics, but I am very familiar with all of our animations and their basic engine implementation, so give me a shout if there are any issues.
Cheers,
Cris
The Role of a Technical Director in Motion Capture
A Technical Director in a motion capture studio bridges the gap between the artistic vision and the technical systems that make it possible. At MoCap Online, this role encompasses maintaining capture hardware, optimizing processing pipelines, ensuring consistent data quality across all animation packs, and solving the inevitable technical challenges that arise during capture sessions.
The motion capture pipeline involves multiple interconnected stages: system calibration, marker placement, performance capture, solving (converting marker data to skeleton motion), cleanup (removing artifacts and ensuring clean curves), and export to multiple formats. Each stage requires specialized technical knowledge, and errors at any point propagate downstream. A strong TD ensures quality at every stage so the final FBX, BIP, Unreal, Unity, and Blender exports meet professional standards.
Behind the Scenes at MoCap Online
Our capture facility uses professional Vicon optical motion capture systems — the same technology employed by major film studios and AAA game developers. These systems track retroreflective markers attached to the performer at sub-millimeter accuracy, producing clean raw data that translates into the smooth, natural movement our customers depend on.
Every animation pack in our library goes through a rigorous quality control process before release. Clips are reviewed for clean contact points (feet not sliding through the ground plane), proper bone rotations (no flipping or gimbal issues), seamless loop points for cyclical animations, and correct root motion data for game engine integration. Read about our animation quality on the MoCap Online about page.