Motion Capture Tips for Beginners

[jimmie]

motion capture--tips?

Going to be doing some mocap in about a month, for the first time.

Will be using the full bodysuit along with optical sensors.

Have you done it before? Do you have advice to offer? Do you know about 'rigging'?

Thanks for any input

 

[DuncanM]

Sounds interesting.
I am curious: what kind of work will you be doing?

 

[jimmie]

I am producing many simple animations, and need to animate my 3D models, for a website I am creating.

I believe mocap is the way to go for me, because of its quality and speed of development.

For me to rotoscope or keyframe what I need done would require more effort than I am willing to give.

Do you know about rigging, or the process of motion capture?

 

[DuncanM]

I have some experience with active-optical motion capture equipment; however, I have not heard the term "rigging" used when doing a capture session. Perhaps it relates to passive-optical equipment (are you using a passive-optical system? VICON? Motion Analysis?)
Are you affiliated with a university? Usually, the university puts a post-graduate student in charge of equipment like that, freeing up professors to focus on the actual research. Is there not somebody like that available? Or are you just starting up your own facilities?
What animation software will you be using? MotionBuilder would probably set you back about $14000 (made by Kaydara, taken over by Alias, which was recently taken over by Autodesk). Ouch!

 

[dmail]

sounds very interesting, but it seems a lot of expense for web site(depending on who the customer is). how would you be displaying it.

 

[jimmie]

I have not heard the term "rigging" used when doing a capture session

Actually, after I do the mocap, personally 'act-out' the actions needed, for free , at the university, which will in-fact be supervised by the professor and at least 1 of his students, and the data is cleaned and edited with Maya (Motionbuilder might be utilized, not sure), I will use that data and assign it to a 'rig'; a 'model' designed to feature all of the regular moving parts of the human body.

After the data is assigned to the rig, the rig is assigned to the 3D models I have made. That is how I understand the process to be.

The results of the mocap would be displayed only on my website via Flash Video.