In 2025, the Performance Capture studio collaborated with WAAPA's Link Dance Company to experiment with how the company's past performance could be reenvisioned in motion capture. This involved a 16 camera Vicon Motion Capture system and a real time animation stream into the Unreal Engine. The past work was called 'What was Never Lost', choreographed by Evgenia Plotkin Mikhailov with the sound design by Rachael Dease.
The first stage of the project involved introducing the dancers to motion capture technology and discussing the opportunities that existed in the Performance Capture Studio with the Unreal Engine. There were two main performance capture intentions for this work: freeze frame and invisible dancers. Freeze frame experimented with the idea of freezing the live animation at certain points within the movement when the dancers would hit certain spots along the stage. The students were able to freeze dancers in the virtual performance using a video game controller. Invisible dancers were not tracked by the Motion Capture system, allowing them to experiment with how they could influence the performance by interacting with tracked dancers. This allowed the dancers to achieve movement that would not otherwise be possible.
A segment from the original Link Dance performance was selected, with the movements reworked for the Motion Capture system. The resultant project ended up in three dancers being tracked within the volume, with one dancer driving the video game controller and another supporting the dancers as invisible in the motion capture.
Once the segment had been recorded in the Performance Capture Studio, designing the animation took place. Evgenia's original intentions for the performance which were connecting the dance with nature, the vitality of nature and its ability to regenerate, were the main inspiration. The lighting, textures and colours through the scene were also designed to reflect the original performance intentions.
The final track was then used to record a short film using a virtual camera track in the Motion Capture system. Utilising the game functionality of the Unreal Engine, an interactive media installation was produced which gave the public access to the video game controller and the freeze frame mechanics throughout the piece.
See the full 'What was Never Lost' motion capture performance on ECU YouTube channel.