Hello!

I am developing a motion capture application:

http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/

Currently it can output bvh files to be loaded by Poser:

http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/Poser.wmv

Well, If you need a beta tester then you know that I am available.

The poser wmv looks great, by the way.

great project!

Please keep going on this and keep us updated. This is exciting!

-jjsemp

Sure will.  By the way what kind of motions do people want to capture?  How do you intend to use the motions for?  Anyone interested in facial capture also?

Quote - By the way what kind of motions do people want to capture?

Dance motions.

http://www.zippyvideos.com/2447054825293786/risky12b/original

This is the most exciting Poser development in years.  Are you suggesting that it is possible to make Facial-motion capture as well as body motion capture?  If you can pull this thing off you'll be able to retire at a very young age.  Good luck and please keep us all posted.

This really is awesome.  Can't wait to see where it goes from here.  I've said before that DAZ should sell a mo-cap system because the Poser/Daz Studio community would really benefit.

Great work!

Can someone make this a sticky?

The smoothness of the cap in the last .mov is impressive! Those optitrack cams are reasonable as well. Any idea on how close you are to having a 1.0 version?

Quote - Sure will.  By the way what kind of motions do people want to capture?  How do you intend to use the motions for?  Anyone interested in facial capture also?

What I'm most interested in is purchasing your software when you're done and setting up an inexpensive system of my own.

The problem with "canned" motion capture moves-for-sale are that it's hard to find exactly what you're looking for when you need it. I have limited use for dance moves or fighting/kung fu moves, which seems to get all the attention from mocap vendors.

What I really need are little ambient things that nobody ever thinks to sell. A few years ago, for instance, I was on the lookout for a simple walk and 180 degree turn around. Couldn't find a good one anywhere.

So I hope you make your system available for sale at a reasonable price. I'll be first in line to purchase it.

And, yes, facial animation would be fun, but please get the full body mocap finished first, since that's where the real need is in the marketplace.

Great work!

-jjsemp

The wmv looks good.

What kind of motions? I'd like to have a library of short BVH with common actions that could be built up into larger animations. Mostly every day things like walking, start walking, stop walking, turn a street corner, move from wlak to run, run to stop, kneel down place object on floor, pick object up, lay down on bed, lay down on floor, sit on chair, walk up stairs, that sort of thing. The most important point is that the motions should integrate, one BVH moving seemlessly into another. I'm talking about the poses intergrating here, not the spatial locations/orientations, that part can be overcome by repositioning the BODY actor.

Followed by the rest of the Poser Animators, no doubt (according to legend, that's 12 sales right there, as there are only supposed to be 12 animators using Poser... ;) ). Those cams aren't bad at all, pricewise. Does your application support only single figure capture, or more than one? And I agree with jjsemp on the full body functionality first. Facial is going to run into the lack of boning and wide variance of morph behavior in the Poser world real quick.

First goal is non-realtime single person full body capture with relatively small capture area. I have been testing with mostly stand up motions, I'll need to investigate for laying down type of motions where markers will be hidden from the views of camera.

For facial capture, I thnk I can just export the 3D marker positions.  Receiving software will have to assign them to mesh vertices.

yosh, I think they may not have noticed the DIY acronym. apparently they're thinking you will be doing all the mo-caps, then distributing bvh files. is it your intention to write software for which the users would require 6 of those cams? I don't have any of those, but I have others, and they can be rather expensive.

Yes.  They(NaturalPoint) have a sales going on, if you buy 3 or more OptiTrack cameras they are $200 each.  So you are right when you get six of those and other equipments like usb hubs/cables, tripods, total cost might be close to $2000.  That is why I am a little hesitant about releasing my software.  I don't want people to spend that kind of money until my software works perfectly. 

By the way I think it is still much cheaper than current commercial systems.  The cheapest optical mocap system I found was metamotion's MotionCaptor which is like $45,000(http://www.metamotion.com/captor/motion-captor-comparison.htm)

$200 is a good price for the OptiTrack cams. as you know, they also sell software to convert the camera data, but I'm guessing you're using their SDK to write your own, so these people wouldn't have to buy their software. anyway, my experience is that 4 metres is a good maximum range for these things, unless one uses auxiliary IR sources.

Well, I saw it.... :P And 2 grand is -not- hideously expensive, considering that Gypsy is around $12,000 for starters...and the Gypsy Gyro is $20,000 last time I checked. Not to mention you're talking about a mocap rig that could go anywhere in a small suitcase and a laptop bag. Admittedly it would take me a few months to get all the gear together, but to be able to create my own mocap files for those shorts I keep starting (crafting cardboard primitive mockups of Davo's SFCS consoles would be easy for example, giving a solid surface return for the actor. Then it would just be a matter of a little fine tuning on the scaling, and you've got motions that don't float over the console). Yoshi, how are you handling the marker occlusion issue?

that's why there are 6 cameras, dale. if the body wearing the markers were transparent, one would only need 3 cams.

Don't forget, some of the 12 of us are Mac guys...

Before they made me they broke the mold!
http://home.roadrunner.com/~kflach/

bob, don't forget about bootcamp or parallels workstation (at least not until all the reviews are in)

I'm not on one of the newer Macs so those aren't relevant yet. Sigh...

Before they made me they broke the mold!
http://home.roadrunner.com/~kflach/

Quote - how are you handling the marker occlusion issue?

Having more cameras is a good solution as long as the host computer can handle the incoming data.  My PC is Pentium4 3Ghz.  When I have six OptiTrack cameras connected capturing 30 markers it uses about 60 to 70% of CPU. Also having more markers can prevent occlusion.  At least three markers(two if immediate parent bone position/rotation is already known) is needed to define position/rotation

Quote - Don't forget, some of the 12 of us are Mac guys...

Sorry my software won't work on Mac.  This is because there is no OptiTrack driver for Mac and also I am using DirectX for 3D rendering/calculations

 

 

This looks great! Though your software won't work on a Mac, is there any chance it could output Mac-compatible files? As a Mac guy, I've been able to translate certain PC files to Mac just by doing a simple search-replace edit in Word to get rid of some paragraph returns, so it seems like it might be possible to have your software output Mac files. Keep up the good work!--T (apparently one of the 12 Poser animators)

Waaaaaaaaahhhh!!

 

I want it!!

 

When!?!

How much?!?!

Quote - This looks great! Though your software won't work on a Mac, is there any chance it could output Mac-compatible files?

I haven't used Mac version of Poser.  Does it load bvh files like PC version?  If so it should work with output from my software.

 

Quote - Waaaaaaaaahhhh!!  I want it!! 

When!?!

How much?!?!

horndog40, are you Chris?  If so I just responded to your email.

 

 

 

The Mac version of Poser does load bvh files, but bvh files seem to come in many flavors. I've had some that work fine, some that won't work at all, and some that I can mess with a little to make them work, so I was curious if your software would make a Mac compatible bvh. Is there any chance you could make a bvh file available to us Mac users to test?

Thanks--T

PS: what was your response to horndog40? I'm very interested in this system--I've been looking for years for affordable mocap, and am in the middle (well, first 20%) of a long animation project I've been working on for 1.5 years so far. Even purchasing a PC just to run this system would still make it far cheaper than any other system out there.

Quote - Sure will.  By the way what kind of motions do people want to capture?  How do you intend to use the motions for?  Anyone interested in facial capture also?

I have a wide range of motions to capture, from simple turning, walking and stopping to fighting scenes. I would use them in animated narrative films. Facial capture would be awesome, but not critical, because Mimic is available for a lot of that.

I'm also interested in beta testing if and when it happens. Please keep us posted.

Also, I don't know about everyone else, but I would probably NOT pay 2 grand for this system, simply because I could take that 2 thousand and book a mocap facility to get everything I'd need for a particular project. Yes, the other systems you mention are 40 and 50 grand, but that's because their clients are high end gaming companies and corporate movie studios, who will pay for those systems with one production. I don't have those clients and would only be using this for my own personal projects, in much the same way I use Poser, where the possibility of recouping any outlay of money is slim. If a piece of software or a utility isn't extremely reasonable (500-1000 max), I won't be buying it, I don't care if it can make my coffee and cook my breakfast.

 

 

Quote - The problem with "canned" motion capture moves-for-sale are that it's hard to find exactly what you're looking for when you need it. I have limited use for dance moves or fighting/kung fu moves, which seems to get all the attention from mocap vendors.

What I really need are little ambient things that nobody ever thinks to sell. A few years ago, for instance, I was on the lookout for a simple walk and 180 degree turn around. Couldn't find a good one anywhere.

If you use Cinema 4d,  Dosch Design has motion that is precisely what you describe, and I think it's available for other programs as well. Also check out es3d.com's ambient moves which is tailored to Poser characters and works beautifully. They also take requests from vendors.

I guess it might depend on your project. I'm working on a 50+ minute project with very specific interaction between multiple characters--I don't think any mocap facility is going to give me that much mocap for under $2k (actually, if you know of one, let me know!) So, for me, a $2k system might be cost-effective. 

I have used bits of canned moves here and there, but overall they're generally not quite what I need, and I always have to edit the moves. It seems like having a real mocap solution that gave me the moves I wanted from the start would save me a lot of time as well.

--T

 

Quote - It seems like having a real mocap solution that gave me the moves I wanted from the start would save me a lot of time as well.

--T

 

I would love having a real mocap system of my own too, though I'm not sure this one would do multiple characters either. And it seems like there is always some editing of the figures involved, especially if you add speech to the characters.

Yes, the editing is a given--you're never going to get a perfect bvh right away, you'll always have to tweak, not to mention probably do a little cleaning, plus, as you say, adding speech (I use Mimic, a great program). That said, it would still help a lot to have the motions close to what I need to start. In any case, I hope yoshi continues to develop this solution--I'd like to see this succeed. It seems like mocap is one of the last parts of digital animation that's still horribly expensive, so it would be great to see a (relatively) inexpensive solution.--T

That $2000 price was for hardware which I have no control of.  That was about how much it costed when I setup my system.  I got everything brand new(tripods, USB 2.0 hubs, 15ft cables etc), obviously you don't need to pay for those if you already have them.  Also full body capture might work with 4 cameras, that will save another $500, but it will be less accurate, there will be more occlusions and markers will need to be manually identified more often.

I originally started this project when I was working on making a fight video game and manually creating motions was so tedious, it drove me almost crazy.  Even if nothing good comes out of this project, I will at least be able to continue my video game development ;-)

Quote - That $2000 price was for hardware which I have no control of.  That was about how much it costed when I setup my system.  I got everything brand new(tripods, USB 2.0 hubs, 15ft cables etc), obviously you don't need to pay for those if you already have them.  Also full body capture might work with 4 cameras, that will save another $500, but it will be less accurate, there will be more occlusions and markers will need to be manually identified more often.

I originally started this project when I was working on making a fight video game and manually creating motions was so tedious, it drove me almost crazy.  Even if nothing good comes out of this project, I will at least be able to continue my video game development ;-)

Well don't give up...I really feel that the Poser community would be all over this if it comes to fruition. I'm really looking forward to seeing how your final product works!

 

Yes, please stay with it! What you've shown us already looks great. If you get it to work to your satisfaction, you could probably sell it through Optitrack, since it would allow them to offer a complete system.--Tim

Agreed. Although It might be easier on the Poser user to not have to go through Optitrack exclusively to obtain the program. I could see an increase that might move it out of reach of a fair percentage of the DIY'ers. Plus most people want to choose things like tripods themselves.....

Yoshi, it looks like your program is working very well as it is. I saw the videos on your site and I'd say, even if the motion capture was limited (have to manually track some trackers when they move fast), it would still be an awesome piece of software to have. I'm really looking forward to seeing it released, if you choose to do so. You could release it under a beta program and then move to 1.0. I'd be very interested in beta testing this program or buying a copy...I'd get the cameras from optitrack tomorrow if your software was available for purchase or beta!

Any update news on this project....? Oh. And bump.

I've been trying to keep up on this too, so I spoke to someone at Optitrack the other day just to see what their take on software is, and it looks like they're pretty much counting on people like Yoshi to create the user interface(s) for the hardware. The person I spoke to seemed to allude to Yoshi's product as one that was in development. I emailed Yoshi after that, and he indicated that he hopes to have his app finished by the end of the year. Yoshi's site has an update dated 6/19.--Tim

Bump

Glad this was bumped since I didn't see it before. :)

This sounds like a good project and $2k isn't bad for the hardware. Any idea what price range you are looking at for the software?

Also, would you need an indoor studio or would this stuff work outside as well?

I like the fact that you would probably be able to take it anywhere to use and it is sort of in the price range for hobbyists as well.

I'll go out on a limb as say that outside is a very faint -maybe-. The optitrak cameras are infrared detectors; the cluster around the camera lens are hi out IR leds. Your two biggest problems would be consistent light intensities, and bleaching out of IR sources by ambient light (obviously this wouldn't work for anything other than an open [and probably roofed at the least] area. For something like being able to walk in the woods or around actual objects, you would need a lot more cameras and IR spotlights, or something like the Gypsy Gyro suit. Which is, shall we say, costly?). It might work on something like a solidly overcast day, but I would be highly doubtful about any other kind of exterior lighting conditions...

In addition to Dale's points, wind could move the camera from the calibrated positions.  And you don't want dirt or rain on your cameras/pc/usb hubs etc..  I have the cameras setup in my living room.  You don't need special studio or black background, as long as reflective stuff is out of camera's view.

Good point about the wind; there -are- wind resistant tripods (at least to up to 25 mph gusts IIRC), but they =cost=. And they are bulky. That's what's so jazz-worthy about this project. you're talking about 6 low cost digital cameras the size of your hand, 6 tripods that any camera could use. One or two USB 2 hubs and the cables to connect it all to a computer. Aside from the reflectors, all you would need would be said computer, and a supply of drapes to cover any reflective items, and you could take this anywhere. Dojo, dance studio, gym, ect (Although you would probably want to throw at least one standard video camera in the mix, just to have a record to keyframe finger and front of the foot motions from). Yoshi, does your program support multithreading?

yoshi please, you have think about the price of your software ? would be cool sell it here in marketplace ... with a good tutorial too about how setup your yoshi-mocap + optitrack cameras Best Regards; Andygraph

Sorry if I'm coming at this totally out of left field, but you might try a different camera setup. Directly overhead looking down, horizontally from the front, horizontally from the left and 45-degrees from the upper right should provide complete coverage of the space with fewer cameras, less data to process and a less expensive system.

Overall though this is a very exciting and promising endeavor.

Years ago I created a program for the Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital spinal cord injuries department and was heavily into Virtual Reality technology.  Data Gloves provided the ability to manipulate the virtual worlds for those that had some dextrous capabilites and IR tracking technology enabled quadraplegics to move a cursor across the screen just by moving their head while a "puff & sip" tube provided left & right mouse clicks so they could play chess, checkers or even a rudimentary game of tennis (for those of you who may remember REND386). I always felt that there was a therapeutic place for a mocap system to provide a form of visual feedback of limb position for those who couldn't derive that feedback from the nervous system directly. At that time, mocap technology like "Flock of Birds" was pretty slow, extremely  expensive and really glitchy. Primarily due to the extreme cost of the systems we were never able to implement that part of the program.

Perhaps your work will finally be able to bring this capability to some of those who have given so much to their country.

Keep up the good work and please keep me informed of your progress.

Regards,

cinesound@nyc.rr.com

 

<'))###<<

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

bump

And another bump and a new video (posted 0702)! I like that ability to select markers and get the XYZ graphs, yoshi. That is going to make initial cleanup a -lot- easier...

And another bump and a new video (posted 0702)! I like that ability to select markers and get the XYZ graphs, yoshi. That is going to make initial cleanup a -lot- easier...

Looking at the latest video, it looks like some of the markers are offset from the body.

Bug or Intentional? If intentional, why?

Looks to me as if it is either the difference between the size of the armature in the program vs the actual spatial positions of some of the markers, or a deliberate positioning to make it easier to find and identify the markers....

Very insteresting project! I wonder if wearing a suit with different color for each limb could replace the use of reflective markers. The software should calculate the "bounding box" for each colored area and from that calculate the orientation of the limb. ( I know, I'm making things too easy!!! ; )  )

P.S.

I suggest DAZ, as reseller.

My best wishes to yoshi-mocap
Fulvio

 

Quote - This is the most exciting Poser development in years.  Are you suggesting that it is possible to make Facial-motion capture as well as body motion capture?  If you can pull this thing off you'll be able to retire at a very young age.  Good luck and please keep us all posted.

Facial Capture is nothing new. Its been done already. Heck even a logitech webcam thats out does facial capture so you can overly your face with a character while webcaming. But Imagine this guy is looking to create a capture system that is really good yet inexpensive

Wow this is awesome. I want I want. But I'll have to save save and save if I want

Pete

Quote - I suggest DAZ, as reseller.

My best wishes to yoshi-mocap
Fulvio

 

 

Curious Labs or DAZ would probably be very interested in purchasing a license to include it bundled with some new release of Poser or DAZ Studio. This would make these products extremely competitive with Motionbuilder.

This I think is why the initial price should be extremely reasonable, even under 1000. Yoshi won't get rich by selling them one at a time for 2 grand, but will definitely get rich selling the rights to the product to a larger company like Curious Labs. And with less work on his part.

Daz or  or Poser Owners wouldn't I don't think. Since Poser and Daz's [rpduct isn't  pointed at the the professional. I still want it though

PLus it can't be lower than 2k as a total package because the Optitrack lights by themselves cist $1,494 for 6

Yoshi has a couple of new video tests up on his site. Does this mean the app is closer to prime time?

And a big bump a de bump bump! Anyone heard anything from Yoshi about his progress?

If you check out the updated Optitrack Site, it looks like Yoshi and the Optitrack folks got together and Optitrack will be offering Yoshi's software along with their cameras--compare Yoshi's 05/05/06 Poser sample: http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/ (scroll down to the 05/05/06 sample) with the video of the new interface at Optitrack: http://www.naturalpoint.com/optitrack/products/videos.html (scroll down to the "full body" video The interfaces are almost identical, but the movement of the character is absolutely identical. I'm really not surprised--tho I am very pleased--with this development. I've been salivating over Yoshi's updates to his site since the Spring, and actually called Optitrack months ago to ask them about software solutions, and the person I talked to made a reference to somebody who was working on a bvh solution, so, tho they said they didn't have any plans to produce software, it seems like Yoshi was at least already on their radar. Anyway, if they can keep the cost down to around $2000 or so for a complete system, it's going to revolutionize 3D animation as we know it. I know it will revolutionize my life! --Tim http://www.auroratrek.com

Attached Link: V3 Benching Pressing

I watched the 5.7mb quicktime sample Wow! That was very impressive! Thanks! doh! I'm a Mac user ; . ;

I'd be very interested in a low-cost Do It Yourself poser-slanted mocap system.

Budget of, say, $3000? (always gross up and moshi should make plenty, I'd say.)
Acceptable for  this solution.

Dance moves, both classical, like ballet, and modern or even nightclub, important. Since in ballet the dancers move across the stage, this 'small space' could still be used, but you'd have to get crafty.

When the subject of facial mocap arrises, two benchmarks I'd cite would by

Face Robot, from XSI  ($100,000)
http://www.softimage.com/products/face_robot/default.aspx

StretchMark, by Pendulum
http://www.studiopendulum.com/news_markantony.html
They are trying to do what FaceRobot does, but for lower cost. I don't think this is a released product yet.

other links

Dancing bvh at Turbo Squid:
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/187368/Action/FullPreview

Gypsy (mentioned above by DaleB)
http://www.animazoo.com/products/index.htm

Note: for anyone wanting to go very low cost, and also learn a lot about body movement, check out the idea of rotoscope; PhilC has a Poser-based rotoscope enabling system in the marketplace.

$3000 dollars is a bit steep for ordinary users, even $2000 is a lot unless you make videos for tv.

Yes, $2000 is still a lot compared to Poser etc., but it would be an order of magnitude difference compared to the nearest mocap solution, and would put it in the range of a lot of people that couldn't even dream of shelling out $30,000 for a mocap system (okay,  I dreamed, but that's about as far as I got!) For $2000, it seems like if you had a small group of animators chipping in together, they could share the cost. Also, $2000 would put it into the range of many schools who might want to add mocap to their media labs--heck, even a good-sized high school could probably come up with that.--Tim

Oy! I checked back at the Optitrack website, and they admitted a mistake on their website, and now they say that their full body mocap solution won't be available until Fall 2007, instead of Spring 2007. I'm dyin' here! Yoshi had this working for Poser back in March 2006, but they're gonna make us wait for a freakin' year and a half from that??? But, speaking not just for myself, you'd think they'd be thinking about their own sales: I may not be a hardware/software manufacturer, but I do know that technology time is like dog years--6 months is like 6 years in tech time. By not siezing on this opportunity they are running the risk of somebody swooping in and eating their lunch. Already the technology exists were you can calculate mocap from one camera (as seen in the "making of" Pirates of the Carribean II) so it might be just a matter of time before Optitrack's 6 camera array is obsolete. Right now that one-camera tech is really high-end software, but things change very quickly. Maybe it's just me, but if I were Optitrack, I'd get this solution to market ASAP--every day they delay they're just losing money!

Please continue with this.  I do a ton of animations, but they are for my friends and family, and have been doing so for years now.  I would love this software.  $2000 or even $3000 may seem like a lot of money, but I have been wanting something like this for years.  I would gladly pay several thousands of dollars for it.  :)
Please, Please, Please don't stop working on this....  this is very cool.

Keep in mind we don't know the final cost of the software itself; the $2,000 that Yoshi quoted was for the 6 Optitrack cameras, USB 2 hubs, tripods, markers, and halogen spotlights he bought. It may be another 2k, or it could be considerably cheaper. But yah, a nine month lead time is going to be a bit much. But I can think of one reason for it. A good sized manual. Those do take time to write, particularly if you have to pick the brain of a coder for the fiddly details that are 2nd nature to them, but no one else. And if Yoshi is writing it himself, then a good technical editing and clean-up can take just as long. The one thing I wish I knew for certain is that Yoshi's app =is= coming out. That way I could start saving up for the cameras one by one........

Quote - The one thing I wish I knew for certain is that Yoshi's app =is= coming out. That way I could start saving up for the cameras one by one........

 

I feel the same way. I think it's unfortunate that Yoshi started this thread but appears to have abandoned it. A simple message giving us some sort of update would be greatly appreciated.

YOSHI, ARE YOU LISTENING?

I this is a comercial product, I think it would be in the showcase forum...

---

adh3d website

he may have abandoned, and that would be impolite and more than impolite. He may have also struck a deal with the company, and they might have made him commit to not discussing the project in open forums. Still, he should at least come back and say that.

Yoshi, are you listening?

::: og :::

The Optitrack system is definitely Yoshi's software, you only need to look at his site and theirs. I am really glad that they got together, I think that's really much better in terms of support, etc. And I didn't mean to sound negative--okay, maybe I meant to sound somewhat negative--I guess I'm just really frustrated to have mocap dangling in front of me for years, seemingly just out of reach, while at the same time I can't figure out why it's taking them so long to bring it out. I'm generally a patient person--you have to be to animate--but I just want this so badly!

I just perused their site again and see that the earlier version of the camera, the one that was just mounted on a circuit board, is no longer available. Instead they have a boxed version at $350.00 that includes a Sync Splitter box. The timing issue is probably raising it's ugly little head here.

They are touting greyscale sensitivity as well now whereas the earlier camera was 1-pixel threshold only. I'm guessing that this would help eliminate data loss from poor reflectance angles. Since they are calculating the Z-vector algorithmically from a known three-point cluster, not directly, they could ill afford to drop samples. 

I'd personally like to know more about the ILM iMoCap system used in "Dead Man's Chest." They are apparently pulling all the data from just two visual streams, checkered bands and a minimal number of marker balls. I saw some of the original ILM setup & footage at a conference in Montreal in September and they are seriously on to something. (Having a 5000 processor render farm does come in handy.) This must be based upon the system that was used to recreate Parisian architecture from a hot air balloon.

Monster House on the other hand used 200 cameras, 80 markers on the body, another 72 on the face and no real environments at all. Wireframe props galore so markers were not occluded. But then they took it to a whole other level by creating the ability to move the camera around the MoCap-driven action in real time using the equivalent of a Worral head. Just like flying around in a VR environment or first-person shooter. Still had to render everything from there, but they had a database of character MoCap with integrated camera motion control for the render. Everything had originated from a real-time, multistream analog input! No freakin' mousing around one axis at a time for those guys.

Anybody ready to hack Poser to give 6-DOF joystick control of the Dolly Camera?

 
<,"]]$$$><<  
 

I am exhausted just reading that.

Last night I screened Disney's Pochahontas. I became completely convinced that they filmed the large movements of characters and then rotoscoped. Some of the body movements are just too damned perfect, nuanced and elegant to be pure hand-keyed animation.

Sure enough, at the end, down in the credits and by no means conspicuous is a block of credits for "reference movement cast."

My gut tells me they did the facial animation in the old-school disney cell drawing fashion. I may be wrong. There surely was a lot of hand keyframing going on, because there were plenty of "in-betweeners" and "rough inbetweeners" in the credits.

So...mocap? What about just filming actors moving and using them for reference and 'scoping over them? Seems simpler, way less costly, less 'uncanny valley' and more drawing-like.

::::: Opera :::::

It's a little-known fact that Disney Studios has been using rotoscoping since "Snow White". 

Rotoscoping was invented in the late nineteen-twenties by his rivals, Max and Dave Fleischer, for their silent "Out of the Inkwell" cartoons featuring Koko the Clown. The technique was quite advanced by the early thirties. When Disney started working on feature-length cartoons, it was important to animate humans in such a way that they could carry a story dramatically. Disney's animators shot reference film in live-action, using actors (often the ones who provided the characters' voices), for virtually every "human" character, and quite a few non-human ones as well. Much of this reference film still exists in the Disney vaults today.

The studio never called it "rotoscoping" becuse they didn't just trace over the film exactly, the way the Fleichers had. They exaggerated certain movements to give charcaters more of a "cartoony" feeling. So they always referred to it instead as reference film.

But, yeah, Disney animators have been rotoscoping since the very first full-length feature ever animated.

-jjsemp

yes, I sensed that they always "backfill" inexactness, what you call exaggeration.  I first heard about Disney's use of reference and it being all the way back to Snow White was about four years ago, and I remember some small sense of letdown, although I wouldn't call it betrayal. Now that I have attempted to make Poser's models move through space in a natural way, my letdown has vanished! Mercy.

The first time I sensed they were 'lessening' the deliberate cartooniness was with Anastasia. The movement in that film was beautiful. I think they are less cautious about being exact in later days is because of contrast with all the mocap and other 3d effects, which did not seem shy about being so very close to literal. Disney remains 'once removed' still, although I have not seen any Disney from the last four or five years.

And you know, somewhere in the dynamic between highly literal and highly cartoony one might find a "style."

I really liked Pocahontas.

::::: Opera :::::

Yeah, for the hobbiest or the poor film-maker, Rotoscoping is a very legitimate way to go.  Nice thing about Poser is that you can load an animation into the background.

The downside is that you now have to key frame everything yourself and, yes, this can be very time consuming.  The other downside is that your video footage is 2D and when you start moving your camera around to tweak things, your reference is useless.

Still, there is a lot more potential there.  I've got a pretty big project coming up and I've been looking into mocap for a long time.  A big problem I've run into loading up BVH files is that the mocap doesn't always translate joint movements correctly.  A recent test I did resulted in the figure's arms pivoting in an impossible way on the elbow.  Clearly the original actor's arm was twisted, so the action was natural, but the available mocap doesn't differentiate where the bicep and tricep is, for example.

Pretty much every mocap file I've tested would require so much reworking that I'm thinking the rotoscoping approach will be less work!

Attached Link: CLICK HERE FOR "ROTOSCOPER"

You might want to check out Phil Cooke's "Rotoscoper" program. It helps with the whole process of Rotoscoping in Poser. And it's inexpensive.

-jjsemp

Thanks jjsemp!

Scifi action poses. Fantasy action poses. ACTION poses. Things that could used be for battles.

Pistols firing, lightsaber clashes, running while holding a gun.

Eclipse Studios has a few of these, but there is not a lot of versatility from what I have seen so far.

I read that even with all the technology, the Pirates method required a lot of manual cleanup, but  I suppose it was a calculated tradeoff to give them the ability to have all the actors in the shots. Of course, when you've got tons of money and people you can do that. I'd just like a solution that saves me time, so I'm hoping that Optitrack's system is relatively clean and doesn't need a lot of cleanup. Yoshi's sample on his site shows a Poser figure animated with what he says is uncleaned output from his system, and it looks great.

--Tim

The film monster house used all motion capture for the figure animation and they used facial motion capture for the characters` expressions.

The film is not too bad, but it could have been funnier.

Monster House, to me, suffered almost from too much realism for the design of the characters: the backgrounds, lighting, textures  and motions of the characters were so realistic that I thought the cartoony proportions of the characters look weird at times, like people in big-head costumes. I thought they should have stylized the backgrounds & textures more, like in "Incredibles"

I disagree, as I said earlier the only thing I didnt like was that it wasnt very funny.

I was wondering when someone was going to mention PhilC's Rotoscoper.

I think it would be interesting to do a comparison between mocap & rotoscoping.

BVH gets you off the ground faster but requires a lot of clean up and detailing. Rotoscoping requires more work up front. But I wonder which approach actually gets you to the finish line fastest? (Ideally, the "finish line" would be a short, narrative animation sequence with high-quality , realistic motion.  In other words, not just a stripped-down BVH action like "swinging a light saber.")

It would be interesting to see if there IS any difference, and if so how much.

BTW - Anastasia was NOT Disney. It was Don Bluth.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118617/

• Jimdoria  ~@>@

I beta tested philcs rotoscoper, for short animations it is probably faster than actual motion capture but for long animations it might not really be much faster because you have to do each frame individually, though once you get used to philcs rotoscoper it might be easier to do longer animations

xantor, did phil send you video or did you actually set up two cameras and make your own reference film?

"BTW - Anastasia was NOT Disney. It was Don Bluth."<<

Did anybody mention "Anastasia?"

I don't think so.

We were talking about "POCHAHONTAS," which was indeed a DISNEY film.

As for Phil Cookes's ROTOSCOPER, you don't need to do your animation literally frame by frame. You can use Rotoscoper to set up key frames every ten frames or so, depending on the motion. That saves a lot of time.

By the way, here's another COOL TRICK.

Okay now, pay close attention:

There's this program called ENDORPHIN that lets you make all kinds of neat synthesized motions for 3D human figures. The real version of the program saves the motions out as BVH files and such. However, the real version of the program also costs $10,000.00. 

YIKES!

But there's a FREE training version of the program that lets you save your motions as AVI files.

And guess what you can then plug right into ROTOSCOPER?

That's right -- good old AVI files.

So you can use the free version of ENDORPHIN to synthesize motions for use in ROTOSCOPER as a guide for your Poser animations.

See, I just saved you $10,000.00 and I don't even know you.

Here's the link for ENDORPHIN:

http://www.naturalmotion.com/ele.htm

-jjsemp

Has anyone looked at IClone? There might be a way to use their technology both for body movement and with facial. I don't know about it myself, just posing the question. (no pun intended) It would be great if somehow it could be incorprated into Poser. I'm not that smart so somebody with more knowledge than me might be able to figure it out.

I mentioned Anastasia above, early this morning. (Why don't they number these posts, damn it.)

I stand corrected on the studio for that film. I liked it a lot. Thanks for the info.

But damn it, I also mentioned phils rotoscoper in my first post in this thread on Dec26th.  

So.....Pay attention you guys!  Operaguy on board.

Very cool endorphin strategy! I checked them out a while back. It's very exciting tech. but not the 'sweet spot' for me because I am not into action, chases, falls, rag doll, etc. But now that you mention this path...I am going to look again.

::::: Opera :::::

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www.charactermotion.com/products/index.html