Sometimes I see people shake their heads after a lecture on the wonders of video-based gait analysis of horses. They just don't get it. And admittedly, the lectures can be boring, although Mark Aikens certainly showed how interesting and practical it can be when he spoke at Cornell University's farrier conference two weeks ago. (More information is coming on that presentation!)
But did you know that roughly the same process used to identify gait abnormalities in a clinical setting is used to collect data points of horses for animation? Today's video takes you to a makeshift video studio on a riding arena in England, where a video crew is "filming" a white horse that will later star in a video game.
Here's a rough cut of what the animators were able to re-create from the data points. So the next time you waste an hour playing Oblivion, just ask yourself where that horse got his moves. His moves might just be data points, plucked out of a riding arena by a geeky animation crew that could moonlight at an equine hospital, if they were so inclined.
© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask. Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.
