Why I'm building ODD Stage

Why I'm building ODD Stage

10. Nov. 2026 · @Ugur Yuksel

This is the first post of my devlog. Here I'll share what I'm building, what breaks along the way, and how I fix it.

Who I am

I'm Ugur, a software engineer based in Berlin. It was always my dream to work in animation or game development. Along the way I noticed that what really excites me is computer graphics, and anything connected to it.

Then my sister became an animator. I wanted to support her art with my tools, so together we started our own studio, ODD Heron. We build the tools we need ourselves, to keep our workflow simple and produce faster. ODD Stage is the first of them.

The problem

Motion capture is still hard to get into. Today your options look roughly like this:

• Suits and marker setups: accurate, but expensive and they need space.
• Cloud AI tools: cheaper, but you upload your footage, wait in a queue, and pay every month.
• Keyframing by hand: free, but a few seconds of natural movement can take days.

For an indie game dev or a solo animator, none of these feel right. I wanted something in between: good results from cheap, everyday cameras, with no special hardware, running on your own computer.

What ODD Stage does

ODD Stage turns ordinary video into animation you can use in Blender, Unity, Unreal, or any tool that reads BVH or FBX.

• One regular camera. No multi-camera rig, no special hardware.
• Cleanup built in. Feet stay planted on the floor, gaps are filled smoothly when a hand disappears behind your body, and your character's proportions stay steady.
• An editor to polish the motion before you export it.
• Retargeting to your own character.

Everything runs on your machine. Your footage never leaves your computer.

More than mocap

ODD Stage started as a motion capture tool. While building it, it grew into the idea of a motion design suite. Now I'm working toward a full studio tool: a production animation engine where you capture, clean up and shape motion in one place.

Every day I'm designing new features for it, and I'll share them here as they take shape.

Buy once, own it

ODD Stage works offline, and you buy the license once. No subscription and no cloud credits.

As an indie developer, I don't like subscriptions. Most of us already own hardware that can run this kind of software, so paying every month just to keep using it doesn't make sense to me.

A one-time license is also a sustainable way to run a small studio. It lets us keep making our own work, and help other artists make theirs.

For studios

Besides building our own tools, I also offer pipeline engineering for professional studios: custom tools and automation that fit into your existing pipeline. If that sounds useful, get in touch.

What's next

ODD Stage is planned for release in early 2027. Until then I'll post here regularly, one feature or problem per post, with before/after clips.

Next up: fixing "ice-skating feet". Why feet slide in mocap, and how ODD Stage keeps them on the floor.

Want to follow along? Add ODD Stage to your wishlist and subscribe on YouTube, where I post short clips of new features.