Motion capture is one of the cornerstones of modern animation. By recording real human movement and translating it to digital characters, animators can create lifelike performances without drawing every frame by hand. This saves enormous production time and delivers the nuance audiences expect in film, TV, and games.
Today’s animation tracking workflows did not appear overnight. They are the result of more than a century of experimentation in photography, biomechanics, and computer science.
Animation tracking is the process of recording a performer’s movement and mapping it onto a digital character. Modern animation tracking is powered by motion capture systems that detect joint rotation, body dynamics, and expressive motion. The goal is simple, capture authentic movement so artists can focus on storytelling instead of cleanup.
More than one hundred years before modern mocap systems, artists were already trying to understand movement. In 1878, photographer Eadweard Muybridge captured The Horse in Motion by lining up cameras along a racetrack. The cameras fired in rapid sequence and revealed that a horse lifts all four hooves off the ground during a gallop.
In 1882, Étienne-Jules Marey introduced a camera that captured twelve frames a second. He layered these images to study movement and designed early outfits with marked points to make the body easier to track. These were the earliest foundations of animation tracking.
The early 1900s brought rapid growth in film technology. Animators searched for tools that could help them animate more efficiently and with greater accuracy.
In 1910, Max Fleischer introduced the Rotoscope. By projecting filmed movement onto glass, artists could trace realistic actions frame by frame. His project Koko the Clown used his brother’s acting as the reference. Disney later adopted similar techniques for its feature films. The results were convincing, but the process was still slow and labor heavy.
A major leap arrived in 1959. Animator Lee Harrison III created Animac, the first suit designed to record human movement directly. The suit used potentiometers to measure joint rotation. Animac is recognized as the origin point for inertial motion capture, the same principle now used in professional systems like Xsens.
As mocap matured, researchers in other fields began to adopt the technology. In 1983, professor Tom Calvert built a system to track patient rehabilitation. It used an exoskeleton with sensors to measure joint angles and range of motion. Soon after, this approach entered film production and became a practical tool for lower budget projects as well.
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, optical motion capture became central to blockbuster filmmaking. Multiple cameras captured markers placed on an actor’s suit and delivered performances that drove digital characters with far greater realism.
One of the defining early examples was Andy Serkis as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in 2002. His facial and body performance showed how fully animated characters could exist alongside real actors.
In 2004, Robert Zemeckis pushed motion capture further with The Polar Express. It was one of the first feature films built entirely around performance capture. Actor and Executive Producer Tom Hanks played multiple characters, which showed how mocap could handle complex storytelling.
In 2009, Avatar set a new benchmark. James Cameron and Vince Pace created a virtual camera system that allowed Cameron to see CG characters inside the Pandora environment during the performance. It changed expectations for an entire generation of filmmakers.
The growth of animation tracking has expanded the creative possibilities for all types of productions. Markerless and AI driven mocap has become popular for indie projects. Optical mocap remains essential for large studio stages. Inertial mocap, such as Xsens, has become the most versatile choice because it does not depend on cameras and can be used anywhere.
Animation teams in film, TV, live entertainment, virtual production, and games rely on inertial mocap for clean data, natural body dynamics, and mobile workflows.
Inertial motion capture sensors by Xsens.
The leap in quality between The Polar Express and Avatar happened in only five years. Progress has not slowed since then. The industry is moving toward faster motion capture, more accurate tracking, cleaner real-time data, and smarter tools that reduce manual cleanup.
For animators and technical teams, the direction is clear, animation tracking will continue to become more intuitive, more accurate, and more accessible. The next wave of tools will help productions capture stronger performances in less time.
Explore the possibilities of animation tracking with Xsens mocap technology.