Recreate the Fur-Man Dancer from Major Lazer (Cinema4D Tutorial)

Published on October 15, 2021

Cinema4D Tutorials

cinema 4d, hair simulation, major lazer, mixamo, Motion Capture

Major Lazer – Light it Up

As you know for Copycat we always look for new and trending visuals effect which we can recreate in a way that everybody else can do too. But sometimes we take a different approach, just like for this video. We are taking a look at an older video which was released 5 years ago but has currently a whopping 474 MILLION views! So I’m pretty sure you know this effect.

In the Music Video Light it up of Major Lazer you see different talents perform a dance. But what’s interesting here is that they gave it a fun twist by adding different objects to them. Some dancers are made of strings while others are made of particles that fall apart over time.

Motion Capture

To achieve these types of effects the first thing you’ll need is a dancer in your 3D scene. To do this you’ll need to capture the motion of one in real life. Luckily we already have some amazing technology which can help you out at any budget range you got.

The first and most expensive one is a motion capture suit. These are suits that you put on which have a multiple motion tracking sensors spread out over the body. So every move you make gets recorded. Depending on how advanced the suit is these can range from $500-$10,000. If you have a VR setup at home you could also use this. But you’ll need some extra software to record that data.

A second method is Moves by Maxon. This is a free app you can use while you have an active maxon subscription. This app makes use of the lidar scanner on your phone. It uses a mix of pictures and the depth sensor to determent the movement that’s going on. Since it’s still new, you are fairly limited with what you can do if you don’t want to put in a lot of effort when cleaning up those keyframes.

A third option is using AI. Currently you have a lot of free to use beta software that can receive video as an input and magically spit out a 3D rig. The results are fairly similar to moves by maxon, but they have this added benefit that you don’t need a phone with lidar.

A fourth method which is not motion capturing someone yourself but still worth mentioning. You have libraries like Mixamo with a ton of motion captures ready for you to download and use in your next project. A huge benefit if you don’t have other tools that work for what you want to achieve.

As you can see there are a lot of possibilities on how to record your own movement. Just pay attention to the limitations of each method and you should be able to get some usable motioncapture.

Storyblocks

Big thanks to Storyblocks for their support. If you ever need stock footage for your video head over to them! Next to the 4K stock clips, they also have After Effects templates, Premiere Pro presets, overlay effects and so much more. Download unlimited video assets for a single price per year.