Motion capture for Source mods

[DonPunch]

thats what the 30 day trail is for

[jeantyu]

Indeed, but you have some annoying limitations : you are limited to 4 cameras and you can't export more than 5sec of animation.

[ScarT]

thats what the 30 day trail is for

I'd still have to invest $100 in a piece of hardware that its unlikely I'll enjoy using. However I did buy one last night, and plan on making a setup using MotionBuilder instead of ipisoft's software.

[jeantyu]

I'm back with some first results. Because of space issues I have only been able to test (quite briefly) the Kinect Capture, full rig test samples will follow in a few days.

Car scene - exported BVH from the motion capture software, just imported into blender as a *.BVH : http://youtu.be/L7cGwPrZjh4?hd=1

Man ape from 2001 (or sort of!), screencast of the software. You can see a combine model, this is because the MoCap software handles motion transfer. I can directly export the animation a a smd or export it with the skeleton you use for you to do further tweaking if you want : http://youtu.be/YogWKpsI6qM?hd=1

Doing some MoCap with Kinect is great because it is fast and easy to set up and doesn't require a lot of space. But there are drawbacks compared to the full rig : the capture space is limited to 2m*2m, occlusion can be problematic for certain moves and the framerate is limited to 30fps.

[Dr. Delta]

I'm back with some first results. Because of space issues I have only been able to test (quite briefly) the Kinect Capture, full rig test samples will follow in a few days.

Car scene - exported BVH from the motion capture software, just imported into blender as a *.BVH : http://youtu.be/L7cGwPrZjh4?hd=1

Man ape from 2001 (or sort of!), screencast of the software. You can see a combine model, this is because the MoCap software handles motion transfer. I can directly export the animation a a smd or export it with the skeleton you use for you to do further tweaking if you want : http://youtu.be/YogWKpsI6qM?hd=1

Doing some MoCap with Kinect is great because it is fast and easy to set up and doesn't require a lot of space. But there are drawbacks compared to the full rig : the capture space is limited to 2m*2m, occlusion can be problematic for certain moves and the framerate is limited to 30fps.

The car sequences looks really cool! :O Would it be possible to see the raw capture video, I'm quite interested in how it translated into the animation; and how you filmed it.

[jeantyu]

Well instead of uploading the RAW capture video let me upload a still. Since it is captured from the kinect the "video" is only capturing depth information, which is then reinterpreted by the MoCap software as a point cloud to allow proper tracking.

[jeantyu]

Hoy.

I shot this firday and I had some time to look at the recorded datas saturday (over 100gb...).
Anyway, here is a quick teaser to give you an idea of the rig and how it performs : http://youtu.be/Bku5mIJEvx4.

[ScarT]

I thought you were using the Kinect for this ?

[jeantyu]

I use both. Depending of the type of movements/quality I want to achieve I use the 6-cams rig or the Kinect. As you can see in the video the capture space is way bigger, plus you have cameras all around the actor so occlusion is no longer a problem.

[ScarT]

Yes, I'm quite envious at your setup ! I recently got my own Kinect and I've been messing a bit around with it. However I'm having trouble getting iPisofts motion capture studio to detect my body correctly

[jeantyu]

Well you have to leave two sec at the start of each capture with nobody in the background, everything should be still in the fram. Then, always start you movements not too far away from the Kinect, otherwise the software won't have any 3D data to work on.

And finally, keep in mind the main limitations : try to always face the Kinect, stay within the Kinect's reach and avoid really fast moves.

By following those guidelines 90% of what I capture with Kinect is perfectly processed.

[dissonance]

Waitwaitwait, all it needs for input data is a 4D pointcloud?

[DonPunch]

well that is a definition of keyframe animation, a set of 3d coordinates over a timeline(4th d)

[jeantyu]

MoCap data directly applied in-game : http://youtu.be/80vbzE0zVX8?hd=1

MoCap data is not supposed to be applied directly in-game, an animator is supposed to clean it and tweak it to fit to the game - but as you can see, the result is quite good even with RAW data and doesn't not need much tweaking.

[jeantyu]

I'm still studying the pricing and how I will manage those. What I'm sure of is that I can offer different type of services, at difference costs - so that it fits the size of the project and the budget of the studio/client.

I really like the idea of a subscription based system but I really have to evaluate the costs/time of production on my side first - it requires a lot of time to capture the movements and then process them.