As I mentioned earlier today, my family just got back from a trip to Disneyland. As we were getting ready to leave home, I decided to leave my laptop, shut my brain off, and just not think about video technology for a while. I was doing pretty well, until my wife and I sat down to something called "Turtle Talk with Crush" at Disney's California Adventure.

Audiences sit in an auditorium with a large screen featuring and animated ocean scene. A host with a microphone explains what we are about to see, and invites Crush (the turtle form Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo) to enter. The animated turtle swims onto the screen, and the magic begins.

A few audience members are selected by Crush to answer questions, then the turtle asks a few questions of his own. What it amounts to is a puppet show where the dummy has been replaced by a computer animation. I get that someone is talking into a microphone to supply the voice, and probably even using cameras to see the audience. What blew me away was what appeared to be quality animation being rendered on the fly. The mouth was in sync with the words, and gestures seemed totally random.

I attended the show twice, just to make sure, and was treated to a completely different experience, with children asking very different questions. I concluded that some sort of motion capture technology is at use, however no amount of prodding could persuade the host to "pull back the curtain."

If anyone has any insider info for this attraction, or even a good guess as to how it could be done, I would love to hear it. It also begs the question "how long will it be until animation is just captured from an actor's movement, and rendered on the fly?"

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