Motion Capture

 

In The End

As the subject now has come to a close it has been a really awesome experience and would love to do it again in the future sometime. it was so much fun to see how the computer can be spatially aware of all the markers and pick up the quickest movements. cleaning the motion capture i thought wouldn't take much but to get it right is the real trick. but one of my favorite subjects out of the whole course for sure.As motion builder gets more and more user friendly i truly think that there is no going back to hand animating unless the style calls for it.

 

Cameras

 

I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to put the cameras in a sequence but i finally did work it out and place the cameras just where i wanted. on such a tight schedule it has been very difficult to find the time to work on cleaning up the animation. So i was force to use the one take that took the least amount of clean up for this assignment. but hopefully in the future i will be able to come back to it and actually properly clean it up.

 

Combat Fighting Cleanup

 

Cleaning up the motion capture sequence of two people fighting each other has defiantly been one of the most challenging things because of all the marker screw ups and so on and so forth. but i have really enjoyed the challenge of making it all work together. i am still quite surprised on how well to computer can pick things up even when all the makers get mix matched and so on. Putting the cameras in the right place is probably on of the most difficult parts as to what i want to show and what i want to hide.

 

 

 

Fighting Combat

 

After a well deserved Christmas Break we were back into motion capturing data. But this time thanks to Sahan we were able to get some combat fighting sequence. Which was very cool to watch and highly entertaining at times. especially was the motion capture really struggled to keep the 2 people separate at times. After almost every take there would a mix match of markers everywhere, for example the on guys foot maker would some how end up connected to the other guys head but the end of the take. This confused the computer so much that it wasn't capturing very well at all anymore because of the makers being all messed up.

 

 

 

 

Facial Struggles

After worrying for about 6 weeks, about how in the world we would bring it back into maya to work on the facial animation. The script that Daryl Munton kindly came up with matches all the joints back up to the facial rig has been a real blessing. As facial animation is starting to get put onto the character it looking really awesome to see James really come alive. It is now pretty cool looking back on all the data from the capture work so well in the film we are trying to make is just awesome. Even if we had the motion capture subject all squished up i don't think i would of had it any other way.

 

Parenting

In the scene i was working on it was an old man with a cane which doesn't sound to hard. But when i got up to parenting the cane to the hand and trying to make sure it sticks to the ground at the right point it turned out to be a lot more difficult than i thought. when i first parented the cane cane to the hand it would just go in all different directions. which i thought i could parent tho bottom of the cane to the ground and it would fix it, but no as the bones of the cane would stay the mesh kept going. After a week of just testing to see what would work and what doesn't i finally got it working using 2 different effectors and different points. Once you know how to use the effectors to your advantage the work brilliantly. Even for things that don't necessarily need to be locked down.

 

The Story Mode

The story mode is also a very good tool to use although not as simple as the animation layers. it is very useful if you need to reanimate a whole sequence as the animation has screwed up after the markers didn't get picked up or some other reason. It is really good that you have a choice whether you want the layer to be additive or an over ride track. the only small problem i was having was i was getting way to many tracks that i didn't name so i was lost in what the track was actually doing. So very much learn to name the tracks before it is to late. i would like a way to just merge tracks without having to plot them as when you plot them it never seems to be the same as when it was in the original story mode. But other than that i am quite happy with the way the story mode works as it can easy fix problems that gives you head aches on why it doesn't work.

 

 First Week of true Refining

As the real refining begins it doesn't take very long for you to quickly find out how buggy motion builder is. In saying that though once you know the right way of doing things it will mostly be on your side. but you have to be very careful in what order you do things, cause if you do it in the wrong order it is almost guaranteed to crash. It really does make things a lot easier to work with the animation that is keyed on every frame. The animation layers are really a great tool to fix up and separate the original animation to all your other layers.

MoCap Blending

It was really cool how you can blend takes if you couldn't get what you wanted in one take it is actually pretty simple to blend them. i found it a little annoying that we were only learning motion builder now instead of 2 weeks ago when the mocap was fresh in our minds and we knew exactly what takes were what. But besides that I still really enjoyed cleaning up the mocap considering the bugs and such that come with the program. Although it is a bit annoying to make a key frame before you move the slider as i kept forgetting before i moved on to a different scene and then had to go back and make sure i keyed what i needed to. so all in all i still have a lot to learn but still pretty fun to do. 

 

MoCaping All by Ourselves

Due to cup weekend we had our motion capture class off this time. But that did not stop us from doing it by ourselves as we are getting much better at setting it up as it didn't take very long at all to finish the wanding and start to really get into it. although the actor seemed to have a little bit of trouble understand what we wanted to get out of it. it was still very enjoyable and a lot less stressed out than last time. It was really good to see the difference between actors doing the same motion, as it felt that they were doing a whole different scene. but now we have plenty of takes to choose from for each scene.

Proper MoCap

 Second time setting up and doing motion capture was just as much fun as the first time just a little annoying as it took us forever to set i up which we a little frustrating as we all seemed to know what we were doing. just wasn't getting it done fast enough. but we finished in time which really surprised me. The actor that we had brought it thanks to Luke was brilliant and really knew what we wanted and then added to it which was awesome to see. one thing i really do need to learn is to keep quite when other people are meant to be directing. all in all still a really fun day. Looking back on the capture as well it really does make things much easier if you have the right props to really sell it.

MoCap Refining

Third day of motion capture and it was cleaning up the capture and attempting to put it onto a rig. it sadly didn't seem to work out to well as all the bones were not named correctly. so for good motion builder seems to be to me it feels a little counter intuitive. but hopefully we will be able to bring that data into maya to really work with it. i still wish i could have gotten a lot further in the motion clean than we did though. Still pretty surprised how well the programs were able to handle so much data even with using a laptop.

2nd Motion Capture Day

I was quite surprised on how well it was able to pick up Juan's movement. As it is actually pretty simple to set up but very hard to profect. As all the cameras never seem to be all at the optimum angle. The hubs are a very key part in the cable management. i was also quite surprised on how small the cameras were as most good cameras are much bigger. But the software seemed to be pretty easy to use and straight forward. it was really cool how well the software was able to handle when Juan was out of the capture radius as he just went back into the T pose and it automatically fixed it self up.

First Day Of Motion Capture

As Luke explained the set up it actually seemed pretty simple as long as you got the cameras looking in the right place to begin with. after that it really was just a matter of connecting it up. what i didn't realize is how much motion capture was used for everything it seems like then cut back to make it look like it was hand animated. It really is a very cool tool to use and if done right can save so much time. it also makes a lot of sense where motion capture fits into the production time line. As it still just animation that needs to refined in more detail but many animators still. All in all it is very comforting to know that it is not taking over the job of the animator but really just adding to it.