Over the last few decades, performance capture has gone from being a specialist tool used for very specific projects to becoming a key part of how films, TV shows and games are made. The expectations have changed, the technology has changed, and the people working in the field have had to evolve alongside it.
As Centroid approaches its 30th anniversary in 2026, the studio finds itself working across some of the biggest areas of modern entertainment, from film and television to games, including recent projects such as Masters of the Universe and 007: First Light.
For Kathleen Squire, Shoot Supervisor at Centroid, that evolution has been something she has experienced first-hand. Her career has taken her across visual effects, production and performance capture, giving her a unique perspective on how those worlds have become increasingly connected. “I’m Shoot Supervisor, and my whole career has basically been that I work shoots for CG pipelines,” she says.
Squire actually started out at Centroid back in 2009, before leaving for more than a decade to work in visual effects across TV and feature films. “My first VFX job was actually at Centroid back in 2009, and then I went off for a good fourteen years,” she explains. “I then came back to Centroid years later.”
That experience across different parts of the industry gives her an interesting perspective on how much things have changed. Performance capture is increasingly becoming part of the conversation earlier in production, with teams considering the possibilities before shoots begin.
At Centroid, Squire’s role is about helping productions understand what is possible. A director might arrive with a script, some previs and an idea of what they want to achieve, but turning that idea into something practical requires a lot of planning. “We get clients who come in, and they’ve got their previz, and they’ve got their scripts, and my role involves breaking it down for them and explaining how you actually do this stuff,” she says.
That can mean figuring out the right approach for a shoot, making sure the technology fits the project’s needs, managing teams and keeping everything moving. “It is quite a varied role,” she says.
Believable digital characters
One of the biggest changes Squire has seen over her career is the continued push towards realism. “Everyone has always been aiming for photorealism and for things that look real, look cohesive and look natural,” she says. “The tools to be able to do that are just getting better and better.”
But better tools have also changed what audiences expect. A digital character that might have impressed viewers a decade ago can now feel noticeably behind the curve. “As the standards have got higher, so the expectation’s gotten higher,” says Squire.
That has helped transform performance capture into a discipline in its own right. “It used to be very much a niche job that was sort of done on the side of another job, but now there are whole careers in performance capture,” she says.
Centroid has been working in this space for decades, and that experience has led to its own ways of working, from software solutions to practical techniques developed through years of production. “We have things like syncing your video reference so that it’s accurate and coming up with new strategies so that lighting and facial capture is nice and uniform,” says Squire.
The studio also develops its own systems for retargeting and data management, helping productions handle the vast amounts of information generated during capture. But for Squire, experience still matters as much as technology. “You can have the hardware, but you still have to know what is going to be the best way of using it,” she says.
Where games and filmmaking meet
Performance capture is also one of the clearest examples of how film and games are borrowing from each other. Games have become far more cinematic, while film production has embraced more real-time and interactive techniques. “There’s a lot of crossover now,” says Squire.
The two industries still have different challenges. Games require performances that fit within interactive systems and gameplay, while film and TV focus on framing, pacing, and visual storytelling. “Games have foundational needs. They must have certain markers for the game to function in a certain way. Whereas VFX has to look a certain way and there’s an idea in place about how it will frame something.”
But those lines are becoming less defined. Modern games are chasing the kind of realism audiences expect from film, while filmmakers are increasingly using tools and approaches that originated in games.
Centroid has continued to explore new approaches, including Technoprops, a stereo infrared technique that draws on principles from photogrammetry and volumetric capture. “We have used all of our systems so much that we can readily give different options to clients,” says Squire.
Losing the suit entirely?
One of the biggest changes in performance capture could be markerless capture, in which performers can be tracked without traditional suits and markers. The technology is still developing, but Squire sees it becoming increasingly useful. “I think it’s still relatively kind of in its infancy,” she says. “So, I think that probably in the next five years that will get better.”
The biggest impact could be accessibility. Instead of needing a full capture setup every time, smaller teams and productions could experiment more easily. “When you have that kind of virtual production pipeline where you want to be able to do stunt previz, where you just bring the performers in and just knock something out in a couple of hours and they’re not having to put on their suits – it’ll be useful for that.”
That doesn’t mean traditional performance capture disappears. For high-end productions where every detail matters, Squire believes dedicated capture will remain essential. “The quality of the capture will still be the gold standard for when you need stuff that is final-production ready and fully polished.”
The future is likely to be a mixture of approaches, with different levels of capture being used depending on what a production needs. And after all those years working with changing technology, Squire’s view of the industry comes back to something much simpler. “My career has very much been pursuing the thing that really interests me and that I really love, and I think that’s what you have to do.”
That might be the most interesting thing about performance capture. For all the advances in cameras, software and capture technology, what makes a digital character believable still comes down to people – the performers creating the movement and the artists figuring out how to make that movement mean something.
