Motion & Performance Capture Lab at AUT

21/05/2024

Senior Technician (Virtual Production Lab) position
AUT - Auckland University of Technology

The new AUT Virtual Production Lab is looking for an experienced Virtual Production Technician to join our team supporting students and staff across the schools of the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, and the wider university. The Virtual Production lab is located at the AUT City Campus in Auckland City. The role is a full-time permanent position.

This is a varied role with one key focus being operational support of undergraduate and postgraduate students throughout the Design and Creative Technologies faculty. We are looking for a creative confident person with an expert working knowledge of virtual production, including Unreal Engine and 3D modeling software, cinematography, and lighting, who is able to support and encourage our students to learn and develop good virtual production skills by demonstrating industry-standard practice.

Another key part of the role will be to support our research staff and post-grad students in areas such as Digital Media, Motion Capture, Game Design, 3D animation and modelling, VFX, Cinematic production, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Virtual Production so our ideal candidate will possess good technical software and hardware experience, and have a definite interest in exploring future trends and expanding their technical knowledge.

We are looking for someone who can oversee and continue to develop real-time animation and virtual production practice in the studio, by assisting with the improvement and integration of tools, techniques, processes, and plug-ins to solve virtual production challenges and optimising the pipelines for students, staff, and industry clients.

The Virtual Production Lab is a highly complex technical area and the technician requires specialised technical skills to be able to perform in the role competently; including knowledge of:

Unreal Engine, particularly the aspects that relate to virtual production
3D Animation software such as Maya and Blender
Experience with Network architecture and protocols
Excellent familiarity with current industry animation standards + practice
An understanding of virtual stage and lighting practices
Experience with virtual staging software is desirable
Cinematography and lighting
It is expected that technical staff will show initiative and be prepared to work with staff and students to update skills and technical competency across all areas of digital media production, particularly as it relates to 3D content creation and virtual production practice. The technician will also be willing to participate in discussions surrounding future hardware and technical needs.

You must have excellent interpersonal skills, be able to work well in a team and be able to multi-task and balance different capture requirements during a busy week. You must be able to communicate in a clear and friendly manner with academic staff, students, clients, and team colleagues at all times.

You will be intelligent, proactive, energetic, organised, and pragmatic; able to demonstrate a mature outlook and sound judgment in responding to staff, students, and industry clients in our facility. In addition, you will have excellent command of written and spoken English and demonstrated abilities

AUT is a contemporary university delivering a unique student experience, through an active, stimulating, and transforming education.

So, if you have a professional yet flexible approach, remain calm under pressure, are organised and proactive with high levels of initiative, and have excellent 3D animation/production skills then we want to hear from you!

Salary Range: $70,000 - $96,000 (dependent on experience and qualifications)

Ref: 88899

Closing date: 4th June 2024, at 11:55 pm.

*Full-time denotes 37.5 hours per week

16/12/2023

So great to have presented with Hossein Nj our paper ‘Pedagogical strategies for teaching Virtual Production pipelines’ (co-authored with Lee Jackson-Hunter) at the SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Educator's Forum session: ‘AI, VTubers And Virtual Production: Curriculum Design Strategies For Emerging Technologies’.

14/12/2023

So great to bump into AUT Visual Effects/Motion Capture graduate Peter Hillier SIGGRAPH Asia now working as FX Technical Director at Industrial Light & Magic Sydney.

09/05/2023

Senior Technician MOCAP, Auckland University of Technology
https://lnkd.in/gj_uPRx8
The AUT Motion Capture Lab is looking for an experienced Motion Capture Technician to join our team supporting students and staff across the schools of the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, and wider university. The Motion Capture Lab is located at the AUT City Campus in Auckland City. The role is a full-time permanent position.
This is a varied role with one key focus being operational support of undergraduate and postgraduate students including the AUT Bachelor of Design Motion Capture Minor, with approx. 140 students across 3 years of study. We are looking for a creative confident person with an expert working knowledge of motion capture pipelines for body and facial capture, who is able to support and encourage our students to learn and develop good motion capture skills by demonstrating industry-standard practice. Recent developments in lab capability also includes live streaming Mocap data into Unreal Engine, so a working knowledge of Unreal Engine is also essential.
Another key part of the role will be to support our research staff and post grad students in areas such as: Digital Media, Motion Capture, Game Design, 3D animation and modelling, VFX, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Virtual Production so our ideal candidate will possess good technical software and hardware experience and have a definite interest in exploring future trends and expanding their technical knowledge.
We are looking for someone who can oversee and continue to develop real-time animation and motion capture practice in the studio.
The Motion Capture Lab is a highly complex technical area, and the technician requires specialised technical skills to be able to perform in the role competently, including a knowledge of:
3D Animation software such as Autodesk Maya & Motion Builder
Gaming Software such as Unreal Engine & Unity
Experience with Network architecture and protocols
Excellent familiarity with current industry animation standard + practice
Sustained workplace experience in animation editing/retargeting/rigging areas
It is expected that technical staff will show initiative and be prepared to work with staff and student to update skills and technical competency across all areas of digital media production, particularly as it relates to 3D animation, visual effects, and game design production practice, and be willing to participate in discussions surrounding future hardware and technical needs.
You must have excellent inter-personal skills, be able to work well in a team, and be able to multi-task and balance different capture requirements during a busy week. You must be able to communicate in a clear and friendly manner with academic staff, students, clients, and team colleagues at all times. #

Find current job vacancies at AUT. Browse academic, professional and temp roles or search for a job vacancy by position type.

06/01/2023

Huge congratulations to AUT Digital Design Major and AUT Motion Capture Minor alumni who worked on Avatar: The Way of Water in the Weta Digital Performance Capture team: Celine Chan, Cherry Chu, Briana Greally, Photon Lee, Vaughn Low, Janet Lu, Pinkesh Mistry, Matthew Phillips-Rudowski, and Amanda Williams, and also to Gareth Prosser who worked on the Onset Simulcam, Virtual Camera and Mocap teams.

22/09/2021

The Motion Capture minor at AUT can be taken alongside your undergraduate Major. It consists of four courses which run from year 1 through to year 3 of your undergraduate studies. The Motion Capture Minor introduces you to all aspects of Motion and Performance capture from body and facial capture to the virtual camera and virtual production. You will experience hands-on MoCap production in the Motion & Performance Capture Lab at AUT, and post-production processes such as Mocap data clean-up, retargeting and motion editing for a range of applications in animation, visual effects and game design. You commence study in this Minor in semester 2 of year 1. Many of our graduates have gone on to careers in the motion capture field in companies such as Weta Digital and Imaginarium Studios.

21/03/2021

Huge congratulations to Digital Design Senior Lecturer and Head of our Animation Pathway Dr Jason Kennedy who graduated with his PhD last week! Jason's thesis explores acting and performance capture: 'Acting and its double : a practice-led investigation of the nature of acting within performance capture': This research deepens our understanding, as animators, actors, audiences, and academics, of how we see the practice of acting in performance capture (PeCap). While exploring the intersections between acting and animation, a central question emerges: what does acting become when the product of acting starts as data and finishes as computer-generated images that preserve the source-actor's "original" performance to varying degrees? This primary question is interrogated through a practice-led inquiry in the form of 3D animation experiments that seek to clarify the following sub-questions: • What is the nature of acting within the contexts of animation and performance capture? • What is the potential for a knowledge of acting to have on the practice of animating, and for a knowledge of animation to have on the practice of acting? • What is the role of the animator in interpreting an actor's performance data and how does this affect our understanding of the authorship of a given performance? This thesis is interdisciplinary and sits at the intersection between theories of acting, animation, film, and psychology. Additionally, this thesis engages with phenomenology and auto-ethnography to explore acting in performance capture from the perspective of a single individual as the actor, PeCap artist, and animator. This type of first-person experience-based insight is often missing from purely theoretical discussions about acting in performance capture and animation, and helps to provide a clearer understanding of the contributions of each creative role to the final PeCap result. This research provides a strong basis for the necessity of a paradigm revision for how acting is produced within a PeCap context.

14/09/2020

vimeo.com/showcase/autmotioncapture

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10/09/2020

Check out some of the student work created in the Motion Capture Minor at AUT.

Student work from the Motion Capture Minor, Bachelor of Design, School of Art & Design, AUT. https://www.aut.ac.nz/study/study-options/art-and-design/courses/minors-for-bachelor-of-design-and-bachelor-of-visual-arts