Optical Mapping and Actor Setup Tutorial

#1

Hi,

I thought I’d post a link to a tutorial I’ve written that takes you through setting up an Actor with optical data and using it up to map data to a character.

It covers importing marker data, creating an Actor and aligning it to fit the marker cloud, creating a Marker Set, importing takes and finally, using the Actor to drive a Character. I’ve tried to include a few extra pointers and things to consider along the way, that don’t always appear in tutorials, that will hopefully help you when you’re using the Actor.

All feedback welcome as I’m hoping to do more of these in the future.

Enjoy

http://www.simon-kay.com/Tutorials.php

#2

Actor mapping tuts are always a welcome site. Thanks for sharing, Simon!

This is a good place to bring up a question…

Has anyone seen any issues with the elbows, when you activate? In this tut, we are fortunate enough to have data with a slight, forward bend in the elbow.

I’ve had to work with data, where the performer’s elbows could hyper extend and actually rotate behind him a bit. MotionBuilder was not happy about that and the only way I could find to correct it was by keying offsets. Now, it’s something I try to point out on-stage/pre-shoot to make sure that ‘natural bend’ is in every t-pose.

I’d really like to know if there is a trick someone has come across to better deal with this type of issue. Maybe something in the actor settings or set-up?

#3

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