Students at Newcastle College University Centre (NCUC) will soon be getting to grips with new wireless motion capture suits, purchased as part of a £2million investment into STEM equipment.
The portable suits, developed by Danish motion capture experts Rokoko, record the movements of a person and send the data to a computer program where they can be applied to digital characters. Digital Technologies students will be able to capture and manipulate data to create industry-standard animation and computer games.
The new equipment will also be used by students from across a wide range of disciplines including sport, dance and performing arts.
Digital Technologies Programme Leader, Murray Lambert explained: “Our Digital Technology students will be trained on how to operate the equipment, analyse and clean up data, and create animations or games footage.
“I also see this as a great opportunity to develop cross-departmental projects, and we plan to work with our wonderful students from dance and performing arts to create the performances that we capture. We’ve even got plans to work with sports students to create simulations for injury treatment.
“This equipment takes the students’ learning to the next level; a lot of our courses already include traditional animation, but the students will be expected to know how to handle motion capture suits, so it’s fantastic that we can now incorporate this into our curriculum.”
The portable suits can also be used outside of the classroom, and the team plans to take them out to local businesses and schools so they can be used in collaborative projects and showcased to future learners.
The motion capture suits are just one part of a £2million investment into leading-edge STEM facilities for degree students at NCUC, following a funding award from the Office for Students (OfS). It follows the unveiling of an interactive Powerwall - the first of its kind in the UK’s education sector – within NCUC’s Digital Technologies department, which is revolutionising the student learning experience.
Find out more about Digital Technology Courses at Newcastle College University Centre