Square Enix’s mocap studio can capture and display an actor’s movements in real time

TOKYO — Video games like Final Fantasy XV have stunningly realistic visuals of human faces and bodies. Drawing those kinds of images by hand and animating them could take years, but video game publisher Square Enix has created a way to automate the creation of animated humans.

Many studios can do this kind of “motion capture,” but Square Enix has a large “mocap” studio with 68 cameras. And this studio can take the captured image of an actor and immediately convert it to an animation in real time. That means that the data processing has been automated to such a degree that film and cinematic directors can immediately see if the shot they imagined will really work.