Hi:

Painting over the skin texture works just fine except at the seams.  I'm looking to get the effect of skin showing through partially applied paint, and this works.  I'm just looking for technical advice on how to deal with matching the seams.  This would still be a problem if I was painting a texture from scratch.  Michael

The market has changed a lot since I first started looking at it a few years ago when mocap rigs started at about $100,000. There are several systems out there now that start at about $10,000 with $15,000 being a good starting point for a complete SIMPLE hw/sw system. That's till too much for me. Luckily, I'm both a mathematician and a programmer, so I can build my own. I figured other mathematician programmers who were into 3D animation could do the same too, and I could share what I've learned with them (and learn more myself). My system is based on slightly older and more expensive technology. I just bought 4 camcorders for less than I paid for my first DV camcorder. The latest thing is using web cams which are much cheaper (like with Visual Marker). I'm sure you could do the same with older analog camcorders (with beta and Hi8 being preferred for their resolution). Regards, Michael

The product here is called VisualMarker. Michael

To add an example, I'm building an optical system. I use DV camcorders,and the models I've recently bought run about $350 each new. I believe the OptiTrack cameras are in the same price ballpark. You need at least 2 cameras to do 3D, and 3 cameras to use Dr. Svoboda's camera calibration software. You can write the image processing routines in Java (free) on your computer (not free - uusally). So, there's hope someone will develop a really cheap setup, and in fact, there's one in the Renderosity Marketplace store, but it doesn't do automatic marker recognition. That means that you have to hand identify every marker in every frame. I own the software, and will use it for small pick up work, but it's too tedious for longer animations. Cheers, Michael

I'm not building a mocap system for sale; I'm just facilitating information exchange between people who build their own. I imagine it's even possible to build a mocap Junkyard Wars version that uses junk hardware. All depends on how handy you are... Michael

Whoops: Forgot the details: Max 4.3 Poser 4.3 Pro Pack (latest service pack installed) Thanks, RJ