Viral Ad’s X-Ray Skeleton Effects Brought to Life with Wireless Motion Capture System

Enschede, The Netherlands –  March 25, 2015 – With 85 million views and counting, " Love Has No Labels" is a bonafide hit. While its message of unbiased love helped make this video go viral, the technical effects were just as potent. Pairing people with  Xsens mocap sensors, experiential design firm  Mindride was able to take their 3D skeletons out for a live event. No strings, no wires, no problem.

Love Has No Labels is a program created by The Ad Council to point out  subconscious biases people have regarding race, age, gender, religion, sexuality, and disabilities. Filmed live on the street, the viral PSA depicts an LED screen where skeletons hug, kiss and dance before revealing themselves as people to the audience. Variations include same sex, elderly and interracial couples, provoking the audience to consider that maybe we are all the same underneath it all.

To create the “Love Has No Labels” X-Ray machine, Mindride developed an entirely new pipeline that leveraged motion capture techniques typically reserved for Hollywood movies and video games. By employing Xsens MVN, a wearable motion capture system, the team could stream the actor’s movements in real-time as live mocap data. That data was then fed into a rendering computer that animated the 3D skeletons.

Helping the characters interact with each other and believably look like they were in the same space was a key priority. To facilitate this, a midi controller was used to control and reposition characters during the performance. This proved useful for situations that involved hugging or hand holding.

“Once we had the data mapped to the skeletons, we became puppeteers, augmenting the gestural nuances of the performers’ hands and jaws,” said Yehuda Duenyas, Chief Creative Officer at Mindride. “The result was a totally live, real-time, magical, X-Ray experience that highlighted the nuance and individuality of each performer.”

Preparations for the project began months in advance, with the team testing the Xsens sensors for live applications. Deciding on 17 sensors, placed over key areas like body joints, arms, legs and the actor’s neck, Mindride found a mix that could give them the motion capture data they needed to make those skeletons pass the people test.

“Ultimately we were trying to figure out how to make the skeletons move in the most human way possible,” added Duenyas. “After rigging the avatars in Maya, and lining them up with MVN data, it quickly became clear that we had the quality we needed.”

Another draw was MVN’s lightweight design and wireless capabilities. “The trackers really aren’t that big; you can hide them under your clothes,” said Michael Todd, Technical Lead at Mindride. “They are easy to take off and put on; don’t require any extensive set-up that has to be fine-tuned and calibrated. The system is just really easy to use.”

With mobility becoming more important to motion capture projects, Xsens’ patented design lies at the forefront of the field.

“MVN opens up a lot of potential for live applications. What we are really doing is digitally translating human behavior and human action. And if we can deliver that in a live capacity, that’s really exciting,” said Duenyas.

A full, making-of featurette can be seen  here.

The “Love Has No Labels” video was produced by Persuade Content and created in collaboration with R/GA.

About Xsens MVN
Xsens MVN is a full-body, 3D inertial motion tracking system that delivers fast, production-ready 3D data to professional animators. With faster set-ups, cleaner data, and tougher materials designed for demanding production environments, the MVN suits are at the cutting-edge of mobile motion capture technology. The new system also marked the debut of a modular price model that makes the systems accessible for studios of all sizes.

About Xsens
Xsens is the leading innovator in 3D motion tracking technology and products. Its sensor fusion technologies enable a seamless interaction between the physical and the digital world in applications such as industrial control and stabilization, health, sports and 3D character animation. Clients and partners include Electronic Arts, NBC Universal, Daimler, Autodesk, ABB, Siemens and various other leading institutes and companies throughout the world.

Xsens is a Fairchild Semiconductor company, an industry icon delivering power solutions for the mobile, industrial, cloud, automotive, lighting, and computing industries. Xsens has offices in Enschede, the Netherlands and Los Angeles, California. Please contact us on the web at  https://www.xsens.com.

About Mindride
Mindride creates startlingly unique immersive experiences. We combine a deeply human creative vision with a bleeding edge technological perspective. Our hybrid techniques for next-gen story-telling emerge from our passion and our 20+ years of experience in the arenas of immersive theater, large-scale events, interactive technology, ride-design, gaming, virtual and augmented reality, neuroscience, and physical computing. To conjure the most transcendent human experiences, we are cutting into the fabric of the possible, venturing a step beyond into the impossible. 

We have created award-winning immersive installations in NYC, to events for brands and advertising, to a mind-controlled ride called The Ascent, to a mind-controlled gameshow pilot with MGM/UA. We are excited by human/machine interfaces, augmented and virtual reality, intelligence amplification, computer vision, networking, and perceptual computing.  www.mindride.co.