Arctic Game Lab
Arctic Game Lab is Northern Europe’s fastest growing game industry cluster. Situated in northern Sweden, the group works to strengthen the regional game industry in the municipalities Umeå, Skellefteå, Piteå, Luleå and Boden.
Together they create meeting places, Game Jams, lectures, business development, collaborations between game development companies and educational facilities – in order to build a stronger gaming industry, with more game companies and better selling games.
A mocap service
As a service to the game companies in the region, Arctic Game Lab has built a Motion Capture studio at Campus Skellefteå using Qualisys M3 cameras. In order to cut rental costs, the space is shared with one of the best martial arts centers outside Japan: Skellefteå Budokan, where six clubs provide more than ten traditional Japanese Budo sports.
Large volume coverage
One of their dojos (for aikido, jujutsu and judo) has been modified with truss, M3 cameras and a 23 square meters or 250 square feet, Virtual Production LED wall so that it can work as a motion capture studio during business hours (budo practice is done only on evenings and weekends). This way the utilization rate is now much higher, benefiting all parties.
The studio itself is a 160 square meter / 1,700 square foot mocap recording area of 11 x 8 meters (35 x 25 feet) and 3 meters (10 feet) in height. In total Skellefteå Budokan is around 1000 square meters or 11,000 square feet, so there are plenty of additional rooms for storage, recreation, rehearsal, review, rest, dressing, post mocap sauna, etc.
Educating the industry
The group focuses on educating key personnel and providing access to educations. One of the first projects that put the system to the test was having students from the local VFX-artist education “Visual Magic” documenting aikido, kendo, iaido and karate with the help of martial artists from Skellefteå Budokan – further linking the two tenants.
Together with local companies such as North Kingdom, Seize the Frame, Autotech Teknikinformation, Tarvalley and Hello Future, Arctic Lab has started a few smaller projects that examines the synergies between mocap and different technologies such as Volumetric Capture (using Ouster lidar radar sensors), Virtual Production and multiuser XR.
Future plans involves mocap for game development (more than 70 companies in the region) and health care/medtech (together with RISE, Mindforce Game Lab, etc.).
Qualisys has delivered a system that exceeds our expectations, both in terms of hassle-free setup and quality of output. Both initial contact with sales and support organization has been extremely helpful, tailoring everything to our needs and helping us get the studio up and running. A scalable system that just works.
Magnus Johansson
In September 2021 (if the pandemic allows) there will be an official opening ceremony where regional companies and organizations are invited to see and test the possibilities provided by this mocap studio – and how it can work together with the other Qualisys mocap studio on Skellefteå Campus, which is mostly targeted towards research and education.
Want to know more?
Learn more about Arctic Game Lab and the motion capture work and services they perform by clicking the link below.