When Rokoko launched in 2015, their affordable motion capture tools quickly became the secret weapon of thousands of indie studios and creators. Now, over 30,000 people use at least one of their tools to create games, animated videos, and Hollywood films. Today, Rokoko has announced the next generation of motion capture tech, the Smartsuit Pro II, that has opened up for pre-order for January 2022 shipment.
“Although we have many of the world’s biggest studios as customers, more than 60% of our user base is made up by one-man-army creators. There’s no better feeling than enabling them to punch above their weight.” – Rokoko CEO Jakob Balslev
What can you do with the Smartsuit Pro II?
Simply put, endless creativity is on the cards. The Smartsuit Pro II gives you, your team, and any creator the ability to animate characters in real-time, at studio-quality, via a simple wifi connection. Creators can record, clean, and edit motion data in seconds and stream it live into dozens of tools, including Unreal, Unity, Blender, Maya, and iClone for instantaneous feedback.
Rokoko fully supports a real-time pipeline for your character animation. Motion recorded by the Smartsuit Pro II is sent over WiFi connected to your computer or smart device. As your suited actor moves, you can control your recordings in Rokoko Studio and stream the movement data directly onto your models with any popular 3D program.
Animating characters has never been so simple. And the Smartsuit Pro II packs a wealth of improvements on top of the Smartsuit Pro.
What’s been upgraded in the Smartsuit Pro II?
Rokoko’s original Smartsuit Pro was built to be a robust multi-purpose mocap system. It’s durable, accurate, and affordable. Ease of use and simplicity was prioritised, so much so that Wired Magazine said Rokoko was “bringing motion capture to the masses”. And with Smartsuit Pro II, that simplicity sees a massive performance and accuracy upgrade.
In the next generation, you’ll experience richer movement with a faster, more powerful workflow. One thing that’s stayed the same; a lightning-fast one-minute calibration setup.
Key performance upgrades include:
• Ready for Multi-Level Tracking, so you can track elevation movement on stairs, ladders, and along the y-axis.
• Optimized for high impact use so punching, fighting, and falling doesn’t compromise data quality.
• Better locomotion accuracy over time, catering for a significant reduction in drift, meaning more reliable and longer streaming times.
• Native integration into the Rokoko Smartgloves, so only one portable USB-C battery is required to power your entire motion capture system.
“We’ve spoken with thousands of our users to identify what matters most and I’m confident that Smartsuit Pro II is improved on the points that add the most value for them and take their motion capture to the next level,” says Jakob Balslev, CEO and Founder of Rokoko. “Reducing drift, allowing for more high impact tracking, and unlocking multi-level tracking might not mean a lot to the outside world, but will mean the world to our users.”
As the cherry on top, we’ve extended general performance all around. Sensors have been upgraded, bringing the maximum recorded frames per second up from 100fps to 200fps.
Twiddling thumbs with Smartgloves
Hands. They just take so much time to get right. But when you use Rokoko’s Smartgloves, you’ll never have to set keyframes for hand animation again. Just pop the gloves on, calibrate them in one minute flat, and twiddle those thumbs!
Like the Smartsuit Pro II, the motion data is instantly available for your software of choice and applied in real-time to your characters. Thanks to the Smartsuit Pro II’s native integration with the Smartgloves, you only need one battery to power both the Hub and Smartgloves.
Rokoko Studio
Rokoko Studio is the bridge between the physical and digital. Here, you can record, clean, and edit mocap data and export as .fbx, .bvh, and .csv to use elsewhere if you decide not to stream directly via a plugin. Inside, you’ll also find the world’s largest library of motion capture animations (and you can download 150 assets for free). From Rokoko Studio, you can stream animation into a variety of integrated 3D software. These include:
• Unreal Engine
• Unity
• Blender
• Cinema 4D
• Maya
• Motionbuilder
• And more….
So how much does the Smartsuit Pro II cost?
The Smartsuit Pro II will be released in January 2022 for just $2,745. Only a fraction more than the first generation Smartsuit. However, the Full Performance Capture bundle will remain at $3995, so by purchasing a bundle you’ll be saving much more than previous and your suit will come pre-calibrated and set up for the Smartgloves integration, so you don’t have to do that yourself.
The suit and gloves are available worldwide and come standard with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. The accompanying software Rokoko Studio is available for both Windows and Mac.
Spoiler alert: Mocap isn’t just for movies
Previously, you needed a studio, specialty cameras and rigs, a suit, advanced software to translate data, and hours of animation time to clean it up into usable movement. Rokoko’s put all that in one simple, affordable suit and software to accompany it that you can set up in your bedroom.
As more emerging creators live off their channels, contributing to the ever-booming creator economy, Rokoko has solidified their mission to support creators by making animation and mocap faster, cheaper, and more accessible.
From VTubers to Patreon artists, streamers to independent filmmakers, and to Hollywood, the variety of uses for mocap is incredible. Jakob elaborates, “Every day we’re seeing new use cases of our tools. Especially the rapidly growing segment of “internet creators” who are just finding such creative ways to tell their stories. We’re proud to be their tool of choice.”
