Action scenes are changing fast.
For stunt performer and fight coordinator Ryan Gray, that change sits between physical performance, motion capture, real-time previs, and VFX. His work across productions such as Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Rebel Moon, Atlas, Lethal Weapon, The Gray Man, The Suicide Squad, and Fallout has given him a clear view of what action needs on set.
It needs to feel physical. It needs to read on camera. And when digital characters, creatures, or robots enter the frame, it needs to translate into a workflow that still carries the energy of the performer.
That is where Xsens became part of his toolkit.
Keeping real stunt energy in digital workflows
Ryan started in stunts in 2004, with a background in martial arts and capoeira. Over time, his career moved from stunt doubling and creature performance into fight coordination and stunt visualization.
As more productions began combining live action with CG characters, Ryan saw a gap. Stunt teams could design strong physical action, but the digital workflow did not always capture the same timing, weight, and intent.
Motion capture offered a way to close that gap.
After seeing stunt teams use Xsens for production-focused mocap previs, Ryan visited Xsens for a demo. He performed a few movements in the suit, took the test data home, tracked a live-action shot, and tested a CG character inside the scene.
“This is the real thing,” Ryan recalls. “I can do this.”
Soon after, he bought his first Xsens suit and started building his own pipeline.
A practical pipeline for stunt-driven production
Ryan’s early workflow was hands-on and self-built. He tested mocap data in After Effects, worked with OBJ sequences, and later moved deeper into Unreal Engine.
That experience became valuable when productions needed someone who understood both stunts and mocap. On Rebel Moon, Ryan was asked to fight coordinate a sequence involving mocap and Unreal Engine. His mix of stunt experience, fight coordination experience, and mocap experience gave him a practical edge.
“That’s pretty much why I got that job,” Ryan says. “I was the only one that had stunt experience, fight coordinating experience, and mocap experience.”
That combination became part of Ryan’s professional edge. He was not only bringing stunt and fight coordination experience to a production. He was also bringing a practical mocap workflow that could help teams explore action, test ideas, and connect physical performance to digital characters.
For productions with CG robots, monsters, creatures, or digital doubles, that combination matters. The stunt team can explore ideas, capture physical performances, and test action before committing to the final shoot.
With Xsens, Ryan can also bring mocap into real production environments. Whether he is on location, in a studio, or working in a temporary space, he can bring the suit in a case, set up quickly, and start capturing.
I just bring my little Pelican case and show up,” Ryan says. “Within an hour, we’re capturing.”
Ryan Gray captures close-contact stunt movement with the Xsens Link suit.
Capturing the action cameras can miss
Stunts put pressure on any mocap workflow. Running, falling, tumbling, tackling, grappling, and close-quarter combat are difficult because bodies overlap, performers collide, and movement is rarely clean or predictable.
That is where Ryan sees a practical advantage in Xsens.
Because Xsens is an inertial system, performers do not need to stay visible to a camera array for the movement to be captured. That gives Ryan more freedom to work with the type of physical action stunt teams actually perform.
“I’ve done so many scenes where people are wrestling and grappling and close-quarter combat,” Ryan says. “All these things that other systems can’t do, Xsens can.”
For stunt-driven VFX, that freedom matters. The motion needs to feel physical and believable when it is later combined with camera tracking, live-action plates, or CG characters.
Data that can handle heavy movement
Stunt work is demanding on both hardware and data. Ryan has put his suits through repeated hits, falls, and physical performances.
“I’ve put my suits through some heavy hits, over and over again,” Ryan says. “No reduction in fidelity or quality whatsoever.”
He also points to the value of Xsens software when working with demanding stunt data. With crashes, falls, and aggressive movement, inertial data can sometimes look difficult at first. For Ryan, reprocessing is an important part of the workflow.
“The real magic is in the reprocessing,” he says. “I’ve used it over and over again for data that doesn’t look usable, and it just brings everything back to normal.”
That gives him confidence to push movement further, knowing the workflow can help recover and refine the data after capture.
Bringing live action and CG closer together
Ryan’s current creative focus is the space between live action and CG characters. He is not trying to replace performers with animation. He is trying to keep real performance inside shots that include digital creatures, robots, and futuristic action.
One example came from stunt visualization work for Fallout. During previs, Ryan explored how a CG creature could be integrated into live-action plates. He captured creature movement himself in the Xsens suit, tracked the camera, lit the character, and dropped it into the scene.
“You have a real person in the suit and a real person in the scene,” Ryan explains. “You put the two together, and it instantly has the same kind of energy.”
That is the value Xsens brings into his workflow. It helps him bridge physical stunt performance and digital character work without losing the timing, weight, and intent of the performer.
A practical tool for the next generation of filmmaking
Ryan sees mocap, Unreal Engine, and real-time tools becoming more important in film production. For stunt teams, VFX teams, and filmmakers, they can help visualize action earlier, test complex physical interactions, and bring digital characters closer to the energy of the live-action scene.
For Ryan, Xsens sits in the middle of that shift.
It gives him the freedom to capture physical performance in real production environments. It gives him data that can handle stunt work. And it helps him move between live action, mocap, Unreal Engine, and CG character integration without needing a large team or permanent mocap stage.
For Ryan Gray, Xsens is not just a mocap system. It is a practical bridge between stunt performance and the future of real-time filmmaking.
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