Refactor Games

How Refactor Games Uses mocopi Professional mode + Unity SDK(mocopi receiver plugin for Unity) to Power Real-Time Sports Animation.

The Challenge

For Refactor Games—the developers behind Football Simulator—authentic movement is core to gameplay. Their title emphasizes emergent, physics-driven sports action: tackles, dives, catches, recoveries, and spontaneous celebrations.

The team had already licensed multiple animation packs and third-party motion content—but found themselves hitting a creative ceiling. The motions didn’t reflect the unique, unscripted feel they wanted. Even with a full library of stock animations, they lacked the ability to iterate quickly, capture new ideas, or tune motion to match gameplay responsiveness.

They needed an in-house solution that could:

Generate custom, high-impact movement on demand
Keep pace with rapid iteration cycles
Integrate directly into Unity without pipeline friction
Capture everything from grounded tackles to expressive gestures with accuracy

The Solution

Refactor adopted mocopi Professional Mode, Sony’s 12-sensor wireless motion capture system, and built their workflow using the mocopi Unity SDK.

The 12-sensor setup offered extended tracking coverage by simply combining two already available 6 sensor packs—especially for the upper body, which is essential for capturing sports-specific animations like:

Chest-driven tackles and collisions
Throwing and catching mechanics
Full-arm celebrations and reaction poses
Jumping, diving, and turning with leg and hip articulation

Setup required minimal space and time, making creating animations simple. Motion was recorded in-office or on-location with a mobile device and transferred directly into Unity. The team could prototype movement ideas and test them in-game within the same work session.

The Outcome

Faster Development
- Capture and test motion in-engine in the same day.

Creative Flexibility
- New animations created as needed—without relying on external content or vendors.

Better Gameplay Feel
- Movement aligned with the studio’s unique game physics and systems.

Scalable Workflow
- mocopi became a repeatable tool across development, previsualization, and animation polish.

“With mocopi, it’s super straightforward. We put on the bands, record our animations, and it gives us the live animations straight to the system. Within 20 minutes, we can re-record, import and test content at the studio, or at home.”
— Nathan Burba, CEO, Refactor Games

What’s Next

Refactor Games continues to use mocopi to build gameplay-critical animations that aren’t available in stock libraries. As their title evolves, they’re also exploring how mocopi can enable player-driven animation—allowing users to create and share personalized movement in-game.

For studios working at indie scale, mocopi delivers a powerful alternative to external capture or canned motion—a system that supports custom content at the speed of development.