Act One was a prototype for an interactive virtual theater created at the Art Lab at Kulturtanken - Arts for Young Audiences in collaboration with Riksteatret and Det andre teatret in Oslo, Norway in 2020 and 2021.
Recording from the first improv performance of Act One with actors Mats Eldøen and Olli Wermskog from Det Andre Teatret (Norwegian). Video edit by Torgeir Engen, courtesy of Kulturtanken.
For the first phase of Act One we had planned to use a mix of Lighthouse based VR equipment for full-body tracking and Manus VR gloves combined with tracking of facial expressions using the Vive Pro Eye and Lip Tracker from HTC. For the audience we wanted a true stereo window into the set using our stereo projector.
We ended up with a mix of Lighthouse based VR equipment for full-body tracking using Vive Trackers for the main actor, the Valve Index controllers for hands combined with the Live Link Face app on an Apple iPhone for tracking the facial expressions of both actors. We had to make do with a regular 2D video feed to the audience.
Eventually we secured a full body motion capture suit that combined with a professional head rig with the iPhone Mini made for a much more comfortable rig for the main actor. We were still stuck with a mono output for the audience.
The audience space contained a large screen run by a stereo 3D projector and a video camera providing a live audio and video feed to the actors that allowed a two way communication between the two spaces.
The virtual actor - a blue cat - was designed, modeled and rigged by tech artist Rikke Jansen. The large head and eyes helped with communicating facial expressions. A stylized body and a head that was not attached to the body avoided many challenges with inverse kinematics and rigging.