Things people ask.

Half a day. That's the floor — anything shorter and the setup-to-capture ratio stops working for either of us. Half-day rates for the Base, Production, and Stunt/Action tiers are published on Capabilities. The Indie tier — for solo creators or anyone shooting on a tighter budget — is priced by conversation, because every indie project is shaped differently. Tell us what you're trying to make and we'll come back with a number.

Day and half-day rates for our standard packages are published on Capabilities, and the full rate sheet (PDF) lays out add-ons, performance-minute allowances, multi-day discounts, and international invoicing. The Indie tier sits below the published cards and is priced by conversation. There's no obligation in getting a quote — tell us what you're trying to shoot and we'll come back with a number.

Yes. Plenty of our shoots start from a paragraph, a storyboard sketch, or a YouTube reference of a fight that looks roughly like the energy you want. Bring whatever clarity you have — we'll structure the day around it. The more specific you are by shoot day, the more you'll leave with, but you don't need a locked script to start a conversation.

Yes. If you've got a stunt double, a lead actor, a dancer, a martial artist, or a friend who moves well, bring them. We'll handle suit-up, calibration, and stage direction; they bring the performance. We do this regularly with clients who have specific people they want on screen.

Yes. The Indie tier is set up for exactly this — solo creators who want to put themselves in the suit. We'll fit you, calibrate, and run the floor with you. It works best for first-person reference work or when you know the movement you want better than anyone else does.

Yes, and we run shoots this way regularly. You join over video, see the live-solved performance on a CG character in real time, and give notes between takes the same way you would in the room. The only thing you can't do remotely is feel the punch land — and our stunt coordinator is on the floor for that part.

You'll know inside ten seconds. Every take is solved live, so you watch the performance on a CG character on a monitor, decide whether it landed, and call the next one. You can run as many takes as you want — at some point you'll hit diminishing returns, but that's your call to make.

The takes that matter are the ones you mark as a buy on the floor. Only bought takes get cleaned, delivered, and counted against your performance-minutes allowance. The ones that didn't land cost you nothing beyond the time on the day.

Yes. The volume fits three performers with props, weapons, or full staging builds in action simultaneously, and we shoot stunt and action work regularly — fights, falls, weapon work, creature movement, crowd performance. The constraint is what the cameras can see: anything large or reflective that occludes a performer's markers can cause tracking issues, so we plan around that during pre-production. Send pictures of anything unusual ahead of the shoot and we'll flag it.

Solved FBX, C3D, BVH, CSV, or TRC, delivered at 24, 25, 30, 60, or 120 fps — drop it straight into Maya, Blender, Unreal, Unity, or MotionBuilder. If your rig needs the data retargeted to a specific character skeleton, we offer that as an add-on, either live in Unreal during the shoot or in post (rates on the rate sheet). For any pipeline we haven't named, ask — we've yet to find a setup that won't take one of those formats.

It depends on scope. Smaller shoots can turn around in a day; bigger or more complex jobs take three or more. As a working rule, plan for up to five working days for clean, solved files on the takes you bought. Retargeting (if you've added it as a post option) sits on top of that, depending on character complexity and how many characters need to be solved. If you've opted for live retargeting in Unreal, the data comes off the floor already on your character.

Yes. Full IP transfer on delivery — the files we send you are yours to use, modify, license, or shelve forever. We retain no rights to the performance data and don't show client work in any reel without written permission.

No — Motion Arcade is its own studio, with its own stage and its own clients. But our founders also work at Wētā FX as individuals (that's where their film credits come from), we contract to Wētā on individual projects, and talent moves between their stage and ours regularly. So the working relationship is active and ongoing — we're just not the same company.

Liminal is the visual development studio Motion Arcade is part of — a Wellington-based studio that helps independent filmmakers shape how their stories look, using a mix of traditional VFX craft and emerging workflows. We share infrastructure, ops, and finance with Liminal, but Motion Arcade runs as its own brand with its own stage and its own client work. If you're a Liminal client who needs mocap, you're already a Motion Arcade client. If you're a Motion Arcade client who could also use help with visual development, Liminal is right there.

No. The OptiTrack volume is a fixed install on our Wellington stage — calibrated cameras, marked floor, the works — and it doesn't travel. Everything we shoot happens here. If you can't make it to Wellington, you can direct the shoot remotely (see above).

NDAs are signed directly between you and the performer(s) on your shoot, rather than with the studio — they're the ones who'll actually see and perform your material. If you don't have a template ready, we can provide one. As a studio, we operate on the assumption that anything you bring to our stage is confidential, with or without a signed agreement.