DigiPen Institute of Technology Singapore

The students at DigiPen Institute of Technology Singapore have incorporated the Smartsuit Pro into the core of their animation pipeline and are creating extremely impressive results. In this user story they explain how it only took just a brief introduction from their lecturer to teach them how to use the suit, and how it has now transformed their workflow.

"It only took about one or two hours for the lecturer in charge to teach us how to actually use the suit. It has saved us an immeasurable amount of time."

After a quick introduction by a lecturer, the students were able to take control of the suit and software on their own and get to work. Before doing any hand-key animation they would map out the scenes and do a full previsualization of the shots. They could then evaluate the animation and storytelling of the scenes based on the previs and that way work iteratively and creatively with the animation instead being the restricted by the old linear and inflexible animation workflow.

Pang Kai Lun and Joshua Ang are students at DigiPen (Singapore). They worked together on the graduation project, The Way Home, which is a 12 minute animated short film with two characters, the astronaut Ana and her alien friend Crawley. The film is an extraordinary visual achievement and animation at a level that you very rarely see in student or indie projects. The project was done entirely inside of the Unreal Engine and seeks to push the boundaries of stylized animation and define the potential of an animation pipeline in a game engine. Joshua emphasizes how the speed of setup and quality of output of the Smartsuit Pro drastically increased the production time and how that was very key to the success of the project.

"If it wasn't for the Smartsuit Pro we wouldn't have been able to complete the previsualization on time."

There are three main reasons that so many schools and universities have decided to switch to using the Smartsuit Pro and Rokoko tools:

• Ease of use: The students can quickly learn how to use the tools on their own and won’t need staff to operate them
• Can be used anywhere: The school doesn’t need to find a dedicated motion capture stage, but can use a regular classroom or any free space to shoot
• Price: Given the low price of the system, the schools are more comfortable letting the students experiment and work with the suits without supervision. They can also have many systems at the school and have different projects working simultaneously.

DigiPen (Singapore) is a perfect example of an institution that took advantage of all three of these points.

Watch the full short film "The Way Home" below