Fixing MoCap Data in Motion Builder

#1

Is there a simple way to fix messed up markers in Motion Builder?

We got some weird, unclean data from Vicon IQ and I’m trying – unsuccessfully – to find tutorials on it while simultaneously learning the program.

:argh:

#2

there are some good tips in this book, MoCap for Artists, also make sure you look over the tutorials at http://www.mocapclub.com/
Ricardo has a good site going and I would recomend of course you read over the docs that come with motionbuilder, they have some basic workflow tutorials , look at the filter “butterworth” for helping smooth out spikes with out over smoothing your data (like smooth does, yuk).

Good luck,
Brad

#3

did you guys mocap at ACCAD??? did yea?

#4

Thank you. I’ll try that out.

I’ve seen the MoCap Club stuff already and I didn’t notice any Motion Capture related tutorials but maybe I wasn’t paying attention. And I found another site that showed me how to attach the markers to an actor, it’s just the whole … cleaning everything up thing.

#5

Depending on the weirdness of the data, it might be worth going back to IQ to fix it. Are you importing C3d data into motionbuilder? What are the issues? Noisy data? Sometimes I find the filters in motionbuilder a bit too strong.

Unfortunately finding decent motionbuilder tutorials are hard to come by.

#6

Unfortunately, we don’t have access to IQ and the guy that does seems to not want to have anything to do with us. :sad:

The problem is the markers wig out sometimes and flip around and some just don’t work right at all. I’ve tried only using the good markers in the marker set but then the character/actor doesn’t move. It’d be ok if I knew how to fix the markers but I can’t even figure that out.

#7

Without looking at your data it’s hard to see what’s the issues. Are you suffering from maker swapping or badly labeled data? As you can fix these kind of issues within the optical tool in MB, though it’s a lot easier to fix these in IQ.

Also use rigid bodies to fix bad data.

#8

What happens is some of the markers aren’t placed correctly. Like, I know on one of the takes, the forearm is way down on the hand. Also, some just fly somewhere random then stay there.

This is how it looks after attaching all the markers and running through the animation ( the ending T-Pose)

#9

Judging by the left hand and other parts of the actor in the image, it looks like some of the markers have swapped during the animation. When the markers fly around, do they migrate towards the centre of the scene? As this is a classic result of IQ filling missing data within an automated pipeline.

Sorry to say but it seems the mocap could have done with some manual fixing. It’s a bit concerning the markers haven’t been consistently placed correctly but you can still work it, it just means more work for you as may need to alter the actor setup per take.

The problem with working with badly fixed mocap data in MB, it’s hard to distinguish what’s been fixed incorrectly, you may need to reverse engineer the data and delete the incorrectly filled trajectories.

#10

Sigh. :sad:

Oh well. I think we’re just going to have to scrap our stuff and find some already cleaned MoCap data.

Thank you so much, though!

#11

This will help if you don’t wanna pay for mocap moves:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=4721815#post4721815

hope it helps…

#12

Thank you!

People are so nice on this board.

:3

#13

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