Creating Hollywood-inspired Action Sequences for ActorCore

Hollywood disaster movies have always topped the box office, from Independence Day in the ’90s to The Wandering Earth II this year. These blockbusters center on ordinary people dealing with catastrophic events, giving avid moviegoers like us the adrenaline rush we crave. Time after time, we are thrilled by apocalyptic scenes of airplane crashes, massive explosions, rampaging monsters, and, of course, people running amok on the big screen.

Creating chaotic scenes for disaster movies with real people and props on actual sites is extremely complicated and costly to produce, and many studios across the globe are turning to CGI for this very reason. Unfortunately, CGI isn’t a magic bullet as it presents its own set of challenges, especially when it comes to generating a large crowd of realistic digital actors in varying shapes and sizes. Animators must ensure that each character has a distinct personality while in action so that they don’t end up with repetitive animations that are a telltale sign of computer-generated rendering.

ActorCore was created specifically to address these issues in production. In fact, animating 3D characters in disaster scenes has never been easier, thanks to the latest 3D motion content pack, “Run for Your Life“. This pack consists of 68 motion-captured animation clips, including surprised encounters, panicked responses, dynamic runs, jumps, climbs, falls, and even heated interactions during moments of chaos. Combined with ActorCore’s collection of fully-rigged 3D characters, this pack can expand the cinematic scope of any project in Maya, Max, iClone, and Blender. It is even fully compatible with game engines like Unity and Unreal.

Behind the Scenes: Run for Your Life

Monkey Chow Animation Studios, a company based in Orlando with extensive experience in 3D motion capture and a wealth of creative ideas, developed the “Run for Your Life” 3D motion pack. The content pack underwent a rigorous design process to ensure the highest quality of motion and accessibility, making it suitable for any project theme while exceeding all expectations.

Take a look at the process behind creating these incredible 3D motions.

AAA Studio Production

Monkey Chow Animation Studios, with its sister company, Motion Capture Orlando, was founded by Jeff Scheetz, a veteran in 3D animations and the co-founder of The Digital Animation & Visual Effects (DAVE) School at Universal Studios Orlando in Florida. Monkey Chow offers a full service for animation and VFX production. Over the years the company has been involved with many projects for Universal Studios, Walt Disney World, and theme parks around the world. They recently wrapped work on a new movie for Netflix and Season 2 of HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones.

Action-Oriented Content Inspired by Hollywood

As a fan of big-budget disaster movies, Jeff came up with an idea for an “action movie” series to sell on the ActorCore 3D store. The pack’s goal is to help users create chaotic scenes that match the style and production value of Hollywood’s most thrilling disaster flicks. These scenes typically feature hordes of people scrambling to escape malevolent robots, monsters, or catastrophic asteroids. The pack is also very versatile because it complements ActorCore’s diverse selection of 3D characters from all walks of life.

*ActorCore 3D Motions “Run for Your Life”*

Eye-Catching Killer Stunts

To enhance the realism of mocap animations for crowded and chaotic scenes, Monkey Chow enlisted the expertise of veteran stunt choreographer Joop Kanata from The Stunt Collective. With a track record of collaborating with top companies in the film, TV, and live broadcast industries, including Aascar Films, Renaissance Entertainment, Innovative Entertainment Services (IES), Resorts World, and CRU, The Stunt Collective is a highly renowned team. Joop works closely with his crew of professional stunt performers to capture runs, tumbles, falls, and near-misses, which are sure to keep audiences engaged and on the edge of their seats.

*Motion captured with* stunt choreographer Joop Kanata

Creating this ‘Run for Your Life’ motion pack was a great opportunity to test out our newest motion capture system while paying homage to Hollywood’s disaster movies. It is such a pleasure to partner with Reallusion on themed content creation.
Jeff Scheetz, CEO of Monkey Chow Animation Studios

Motion Data Optimization with iClone

Having become familiar with its powerful features, Monkey Chow chose iClone as their primary tool for refining raw mocap data due to its impressive capabilities in 3D real-time animation. The studio’s motion data optimization team was particularly impressed by the software’s user-friendly interface, which streamlined the process of applying motions to characters without the need for complex, multi-step procedures common in other programs. And, unlike these other programs, which often involve convoluted processes like importing data, matching poses, linking joints, characterizing target characters, and making intricate adjustments, iClone simplifies the process by providing high-speed real-time animations with fast motion correction, animation editing, smooth blending, and accurate interactions between the actor’s body and objects in the scene.

*Achieve natural character interactions with the environment using iClone*

*Enhance the drama and excitement of your animations with iClone’s Time Warp*

iClone won’t do everything Motion Builder does, but it does everything MOST people are using Motion Builder to do, with a fast workflow and even a faster learning curve.
Jeff Scheetz

More Action Motions to Come for Quick Previz and Game

ActorCore offers a variety of motion packs for different scenarios, including daily life, common conversations, combat, historical reenactments, and fun-filled cartoons. And now with the “Run for Your Life” content pack, you can also create Hollywood-inspired blockbuster action scenes. There are more content packs in the works by Monkey Chow Animation Studios which are perfectly suited to other popular themes like “Bank Heist” and “Street Riot”, and for users to create projects for game trailers, previsualization, or even big-budget movies.

Visit ActorCore 3D Store and check them out.