Why Use Motion Capture?

#1

[left]What is Motion Capture?[/left]

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[left]Motion capture, also known as “MoCap”, is a technique of digitally recording the human body movement (or other movement) for analysis and playback. Motion capture for computer character animation involves the mapping of human motion onto the motion of a computer character.[/left]

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[left]Why use Motion Capture?[/left]

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[left]Motion Capture:[/left]

[ul]
[li]Saves Time! [/li][li]Makes the animation process much easier! [/li][li]Allows animators to begin from a higher level of completion than pure keyframing does, giving the animator more time and flexibility to create truly spectacular and artistic animations! [/li][li]Streamlines your production pipeline and delivers animation with photo-realistic subtlety and nuance! [/li][li]Is a proven to be a unique tool in the artist’s palate for producing photo-realistic animation![/li][/ul][left]3dStep.com[/left]

#2

AgreedBut what is this post for?

#3

AgreedBut what is this post for?

#4

Mocap, or “how to make all your characters look exactly the same”

“Final fantasy-spirits within” was a great example of great motion capture…utterly boring & bland characters…

Anyone see “The Incredibles”?!?..not an ounce of it there

#5

Thats funny. Is that the MoCaps fault, or the developer and publisher not using a variety of actors to make each character look unique? Cause that can be done, you just gotta get diff actors to do diff movements.

#6

Good movies are more about using the tools well (and using the right tools for the job) than any one technique being entirely good or bad. Mocapped characters like Golum and King Kong have been totally unique in how they looked and moved, so I don’t see why movies with more of those kind of mocap based characters couldn’t be successful in the future.

There haven’t been many mo-capped animated features yet, but the few that have been made are making progress. I found Monster House much more watchable than Polar Express or Final Fantasy. Sure, none of them are The Incredibles, but The Incredibles isn’t The Lord of The Rings either, it’s just horses for courses.

Tedious

#7

motion was the least of final fantasy’s problems. Motion capture is all the things it says above, but i do agree you shouldent just ‘copy/paste’ Mocap.

#8

Golem and King Kong were exceptions because they were the only cg characters with complex personalities the production had to worry about. Personnally I think mocap lacks the energy, charicature and life that hand animated characters have. I also think mocap is a dumb cop out of having to hire animators. A pose is very different from performance recorded in a studio and facial animation pasted on top of it. “MoCap is more fluid and nuanced and blah, blah blah…” is one way to see it. But nothing sticks, nothing reads.

The “why use mocap in a cg production” leads to “why do cg at all” when you consider that the mocap actors are replaced by hand animated characters, much like live action productions, when its time for stunts.

Why is this thread here anyway?

#9

this thread is here because of the advertising. --> 3dStep.com
Thanks for your info anyway.

#10

Thats one hell of a plug… as they say all press is good press…

#11

Well I have a friend who worked on both, and from what he told me the Mocap was augmented ALOT with keyframe stuff…he said on Kong 80% of the mocap was’nt usable…and was used merely as a guide for the keyframers…

SO if you smoke a pipe, I suggest you stick that in it and smoke it;)

#12

Have you seen avant children? It makes the incredibles look like an episode of one of Hanna Barbara’s sitcoms! { No disrespect for Pixar, just an example! } But I do give Pixar props, because Hollywood, is not about steering too far from the established “norm” Had Pixar had it’s way, we would’ve been treated with more adult-themed content.{Not porno, of course!}And NOT only the limited genre of family films… :stuck_out_tongue:

BTW: If you want a great example of cheezy MoCDap, or rotoscoping, just look to the animated vers of the hobbit! :rofl:

#13

hahaha, this is the silliest thread on cgtalk.
but anyway, let me add to it…

I’m an animator but I think animation is changing because of mocap and fancier technologies like Optasia or Endorphin. we might, one day, have to animate… who knows what, ideas, behaviours, abstract processes… or we might have to really become actors.

I think there will still be a need for people with knowledge in body mechanics and functional anatomy. The need for clean up is rather primitive, and I’m sure it will soon be replaced with much more accurate and usable mocap.

But I see a difference in another direction - realistic movement needs to be generated or mocaped, not hand-animated. Animators are trained as cartoon animators, and realistic motion… well, there isn’t any school where you’d be learning such a thing (that I’ve heard of)… maybe ILM. Realistic movement & deformations are really hard to animate by hand anyway, and most of all - not fun to do. Cartoon animation is more free and creative, it makes sense to me to want to animate in the cartoon (or surreal, etc, artistic) medium, but for realistic animation to work with real-world data as much as possible.

Last thing - from what I can see, animators tend to be not-so-good actors, and from a director/filmmaker’s point of view… this is bad. Why not have a real actor drive the character’s movement and facial stuff? I think animators should be encouraged (by the technology first of all) to be actors, mostly - to be able to create a real time performance, create character, be natural, etc, and only then break it all down and recreate that performance with an animated character.

#14

This thread is meaningless…
ask a question and answer yourself? :argh:

#15

Just use video reference then… tahts an empty room in a studio the actor and a camera. Instead of a fancy mocap setup. No I dont smoke. But I bet you have a printer. So you can print that and eat it.

#16

I have been working as motion capture and Animation Director for 3 years and know a little about the subject. I have been an Animator much before the time of computers and then it was called rotoscoping when animators traced of the movements of actors directly.

All animators doing this kind of work noticed a phenomena that the animation died. Even the perfect movement was there in all detail, nicely traced off the movie, yet the expression of animation was dead. Disney then, used rotoscop as a help but didn’t trace the animation. The same applies for mocap. If you use it right, it is great. If you only take it as it is, it dies.

Problems with mocap are: 1. You need a great Director
2. You need a great actor

Why? Because shit in shit out. You cant work with shitty acting in animation. Its all there in the movement. As there are not many good mocap artist out there, the result is that you see so much crap. Not everyone having a photo camera is a good photographer either. Right?

on top of it you will need a good keyframe animator using the great mocap, selecting, exaggerating, stretching, changing timing, cutting etc etc until the scene starts to be full of life.

In that way mocap get quite expensive too. As you need a great and professional studio too. I was shooting one time as a quick fix in a terrible studio and we suffered greatly. Even using great actors, the technical team and the cameras sucked big time as they where handled un-professional.

Understand me right, I love to work with Mocap but I believe it is overrated when it comes to cost. Its only a tool and used right its great, used badly its terrible.

cheers
Abbe

#17

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