Motion capture
tracking procedure which makes it possible to detect any type of movement and convert it to a digital format
Motion capture (sometimes referred to as mocap or mo-cap, for short) is the process of recording high-resolution movement of objects or people into a computer system. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robots.
In films, television shows and video games, motion capture refers to recording actions of human actors and using that information to animate digital character models in 2D or 3D computer animation. When it includes face and fingers or captures subtle expressions or voices, it is often referred to as performance capture. In many fields, motion capture is sometimes called motion tracking, but in filmmaking and games, motion tracking usually refers more to match moving.
In motion capture sessions, movements of one or more actors are sampled many times per second. Whereas early techniques used images from multiple cameras to calculate 3D positions, often the purpose of motion capture is to record only the movements of the actor, not their visual appearance. This animation data is mapped to a 3D model so that the model performs the same actions as the actor. This process may be contrasted with the older technique of rotoscoping.
Camera movements can also be motion captured so that a virtual camera in the scene will pan, tilt or dolly around the stage driven by a camera operator while the actor is performing.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Motion capture” as tracking procedure which makes it possible to detect any type of movement and convert it to a digital format. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as tracking procedure which makes it possible to detect any type of movement and convert it to a digital format. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q676252. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Motion capture” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.