Hi all,

If you want to create a 3d movie (Poser or other 3d app.),
will you buy motion capture animation set for your figures?
Or, just simply using keyframe or frame by frame method to set your motion?

Thanks in advance
:)

I would buy it if it's clean, fairly cheap, and fairly generic (I don't need hoola dancers!).

The trouble with motion capture sets is that they're often very specific. So unless you tailor your animation to the sets you have, then it takes almost as much work to modify it to your needs as it does to animate by keyframes from scratch. Unless you have the resources to have your own mocap sets made for you, in which case this is definitely the way to go. Then aagian, if you have those kind of resources, why are you using Poser? :)

JonTheCelt

It depends on what format the animotion files will be in, and whether they will be any good. I have bought all the motion file sets available for Poser, and many hundreds of others as well, and in most cases the ones made especially for Poser are not half as good as proper motion capture files, and a lot of those I have bought, made especially for Poser, have glitches, feet going through the floor, and other movements that take ages to fix up.

Thank you for your tips, jeffg3,,jonthecelt, Helgard.
:)

I do both. I have purchased some and tweaked them to what I needed, and I have created some from scratch...you can usually tell the difference in my animations (soon to be made available via youtube!)

I usually only by packs that have motions I am having trouble doing myself (as I'm still new to this) like backflips, or sword fighting (still waiting for a brilliant jedi vs jedi one to buy lol) but I recently purchased the M3 talking pack that went on sale recently and it has come in very handy. I always end up tweaking the animations with it to fit the scene and flow with my other animations a bit better, but it shortens the time process in doing those scenes enough to have been worth the money.

I've also done a bit of BVH importing to do my animations, but those usually take up more time than less in getting the animation just right. I only do that when I'm desperate for a movement I just can't seem to get on my own, and it is used more as a guide in doing it.

Thank you, wakingdreams.

BTW, assuming all of motions and face expression of a new 3d movie is completely created with motion capture applying to 3d figures , will you appreciate it? Will you think it is very real?

Thanks in advance

Just look at Beowulf, which had a whole top end studio and millions in budget, and still doesn't look particularly 'very real' Was panned by critics and the audience too. If they couldn't so it with all that skill and money, what chance does the average 3d movies by a regular poser/3d guy have ?

The thing is mocap in certain situations can be a very fast and effective tool eg for fast and broad motion like stunts or fight scenes. But for more deliberate and detailed work, it's either too rough/imprecise or runs straight into the uncanny valley. Which is why rather then pure mocap, 'assisted' mocap works much better. That's where you take raw mocap data then have it massaged by an experienced animator who knows what to clean, what to exaggerate and what to redo by hand. Done this way, mocap can become the basis for very nice (though not always technically 'real') animation. Gollum was a prime example of this and even after these many years of improvement in mocap tech, looks more interesting and believable then anything in Beowulf.

>> Just look at Beowulf, which had a whole top end studio and millions in budget, and still doesn't look particularly 'very real' Was panned by critics and the audience too. If they couldn't so it with all that skill and money, what chance does the average 3d movies by a regular poser/3d guy have ?

BEOWULF was also a product of Robert Zemekis, who couldnt give us anything but Children of the Undead in POLAR EXPRESS. By the same token, if you look at FINAL FANTASY: SPIRITS WITHIN or MONSTER HOUSE, you can see far better applications of mocap than BEOWULF. FF was certainly all about the hair, but the mocap work was way underrated, IMHO. And MONSTER HOUSE was the first time facial mocap was used in tandem with body motion, and you can definitely see the impact it makes.

But mocap is just a tool, like everything else. Even the big studios have to tweak between the mocap and the final film. At the same time, it can be an enormous time saver.

it would be a bummer if everybody bought the same bvh files and then all the animations
we see are just repeats of the same motions.  fortunately that hasn't happened, thanks to the
relative rarity of poser animations displayed here.  apparently it's still too difficult to do animations
in poser for most users, but it's only gonna get more complex and feature-laden in poser pro.

Quote - Thank you, wakingdreams.

BTW, assuming all of motions and face expression of a new 3d movie is completely created with motion capture applying to 3d figures , will you appreciate it? Will you think it is very real?

Thanks in advance

I think I would appriciate it if I didn't know motion cap was used...meaning that the animation just in general looks real. Like someone else said, motion cap can be a good -tool- in animations but some of the best work I have seen was certainly not 100% motion cap. It was tweaked or in some cases done from scratch.

I am by no means great at animation myself, but in my attempts to get better at it, I do try to do as much of it on my own, or when using a tool like mo-cap adjust it to feel a bit less generic.

Now, that said if mo-cap is used for 100% of a film and while watching it I don't feel like I am just watching motion captured movements, that is I am not visually saying to myself "that is motion capture" then I can certainly say I would appriciate it. And of course I'd appriciate it more if the story was worth watching as well.

But if I was watching and it blatently felt like I was watching nothing but a series of motion capture edited to make a film, I think it would lose me a little. I could ignore it if the story was downright amazing, but still I think the goal of anyone using mo-cap for a movie would be to use it as a starting point, not the end all, of a animation sequence.

just my opinion, and I am certainly not great at it myself yet.

Here are a couple examples of my animations (trailers for the fan film animation I am working on) to sort of see where I am at in my animating...though becuase it is in a trailer format it is only quick flashes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HvuudVxaz0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ4qlhhXO_A

I don't really do animation (Only done it a few times) so uh... probably not. :)

Quote - By the same token, if you look at FINAL FANTASY: SPIRITS WITHIN or MONSTER HOUSE, you can see far better applications of mocap than BEOWULF.

As was Gollum (mocapped from the actor Andy Serkis ) My point was that the kind of mocap use the OP is talking about, ie "all of motions and face expression of a new 3d movie [is] completely created with motion capture applying to 3d figures" is usually not a good idea. Or at least not without a couple of experienced animators to help.

BTW i agree about Monster House, though FF i don't like that much. But since they were trying something radically new (full length CG flic with no talking animals and a realistic style) i guess they can be forgiven for not quite meeting their goals.

Hey ya'll if anyone is interested in custom made Mocap files to make a movie please let me know. 

I'm offering a whole day rental for $200 a day.  Where you send the types of movements you want and I get you clean mocap.  A day usually can get you tons of motions. 

If you need an actor with Ninja skills that will be another 150 so I can hire a Ninja! 

If you come on location and record yourself it is $150 a day. 

Also 10 dollar per custom 1 motion. 

LEt me know if you are interested.  I wanted to make it cheap for the Poser community and help you make your movies.

I'll also do trade off on skills.  So if you are a good modeller, texturizer or character rigger I'd be happy to do a trade of services.  :)

email sarms at  austin.rr. com

Thank for for your comments, ghonma,SeanMartin,Miss Nancy,Silke,Flog.
:)