It's hard to look away from "Three Rooms," a nontraditional work of digital art that's part of a new show opening in Mt. Lebanon.

Moshe Mahler, a senior animation designer for the Carnegie Mellon University graphics lab, has installed two works of art involving a 3-D computer technique known as motion capture, or "mocap."

A third work involves the process of rotoscoping and a child's toy that allows viewers to change the animation in a fun, creative way.

The exhibition, Motion Pictures, opens Saturday at The Art Loft on Washington Road.

"Moshe grew up in Mt. Lebanon; I gave him drawing lessons," said Sally Gehl, gallery owner.

A CMU alumna, she followed his career.

"He said 'How would you feel about having animation?' I thought it would be great, so that's how we got to this point."

At first glance, "Three Rooms" resembles three white digital photo frames spaced 2 feet apart, far enough that the visual and audio components don't interfere with each other, but close enough to form an odd journey into repetition that is ultimately mesmerizing.

On one side, 3-D animation shows a grumpy, overweight man in a kitchen. He has a cup of coffee, which is alternately too hot or too cold, so he shuffles between the fridge and a microwave.

Another frame shows a slight, elderly man gleefully being bounced on the knee of his much-larger wife.

In the middle, a teenager with limbs of rubber practices the trombone.

"It's all very calculated; you control every pixel," Mr. Mahler said.

"But it's not as freehand as picking up a paintbrush or a piece of charcoal."

Motion capture usually requires a model -- in this case, mostly actors from the Pittsburgh area or CMU's drama department --who will be covered all over the body or in key places with sensors.

Movement is "captured" by the sensors and translated into a 3-D model on computer. In the case of rotoscoping, actors are filmed in a traditional sense but that footage is copied freehand and then computerized.

"Motion capture is not just a tool to obtain motion," he said. "It is an opportunity for the artist."

Mr. Mahler served as the coffee man model. To exaggerate the waddling from one side of the kitchen to another, he went back and forth on his knees, with the shoe sensors attached there.

The rest of his legs didn't register.

The bouncing couple was modeled by a CMU football player, and a small girl played the old man.

Even though the girl was attached to a bungee-cord apparatus hung from overhead, and the whole process took only a few minutes; [the football player] was pretty tired afterward," Mr. Mahler said.

The trombone boy was a compilation of three separate mocaps: one for the arms, one for the legs, one for the torso. This allows the gangly youth to move in ways rarely seen outside of Cirque du Soleil.

The action in each frame is synchronized to allow an animated fly to flit through a scene, "travel" into the next, then back again.

"It's an endless cycle," Mr. Mahler said of the piece.

Not so with "Walk N' Say," a piece that begins with the projection of a man walking. A team of animators came up with different drawings of farmyard animals to match those on Fisher-Price's classic Seen' Say toy.

Viewers can pick up the toy, dial to a certain animal, and the animation on the screen will show the man morphing, briefly, in the creature of their choice.

Last week, as a small crew helped Mr. Mahler set up the installation, Ronit Slyper, a CMU graduate student in the graphics lab, cracked open the toy's bright yellow plastic lid to reveal a remote device.

So when the viewer chooses an animal's picture on the Seen' Say, the remote sends the computer a prompt to run the animation clip.

Others on hand to work on the installation included James Chan, a CMU art student, Justin Macey, a CMU motion capture research associate, and Ben Reicher, an Upper St. Clair High School sophomore involved in the lab through a work-study program.

It takes many hands, and months, to create computer animation, and there will be tech support available until the July 17 end of the show's run. But no one expects it will be necessary.

Others involved in the CMU project include Jessica Hodgins, professor of computer science and robotics, CMU school of art professor Jim Duesing, Laurel Bancroft, Bum Lee, Jay O'Berski, Sang Il Park, David Tinapple and Elise Walton.

A creation of Mr. Duesing's is featured in the third animated work, titled "Oral Fixations."

Seven artists worked on the 2005 animated film, which runs for seven hours. Over the course of time, an androgynous character dances around a room, fastidiously flossing its very large front teeth.

A succession of fresh hams arrive via conveyor belt. The creature takes one bite, then tosses the ham into the back of the room. By the end of the film, hundreds of hams are piled into a rotting heap.

"He kind of obsesses with keeping his teeth clean, but ignores the squalor around him," Mr. Mahler said.

The works in Motion Picture were produced at CMU, which owns the intellectual property. Although they, and some stills that are part of the installation, are not for sale, The Art Loft will have some still captures available for purchase.

Original hand-drawn rotoscope pictures from "Walk N' Say" will be suspended by wire high along the wall of the gallery.

"I think people want to see the process," Ms. Gehl said. "There is some real cutting-edge animation going on at CMU, so I think this [show] is something really interesting for the city."