I have been thinking about how I could actually accomplish making "Tar of Zandoria" into a movie. One of the problems is that I'm just one guy... humans and humanoids are difficult to animate convincingly, and if you have lots of characters to animate, then it seems like an impossible task.

But if I were to invest in the equipment, then perhaps I can pull it off, using motion capture. I could capture the movement and record a soundtrack at the same time.

TO that end, I figured I shoould crack open A:M and start experimenting with some canned data from different systems... Here is a test of Mr. Dodo and Knight using data from the OptiTrak system:
http://www.zandoria.com/images/Movies/test2a.mov

I'll continue to post more in this thread

WOW! That's the best I've seen Knight act.

Care to share the nitty gritty of how to go about doing this stuff?

Dhar, it's pretty simple. I did a tutorial for version 8.5 several years ago...
http://www.zandoria.com/motioncapture.htm

I'll probably work on a demonstration for a AM:Technique CD soon.

That's cool. So, are you recording someone acting that, and then somehow you make knight do the same thing? If so, I'm very interested and want to know more.

Here is another test. This one is a .bvh file from TrueBones.com. This one features Homer Simpson

Darkwing,

The short answer is: a .bvh file containes points that are captured from a suit worn by an actor. You constrain bones of your model to these points and tada you have realistic motion.

You can buy or otherwise obtain 'canned' or pre-made .bvh files from various websites.

Will and I were just talking about this Friday, so you can see how quickly you can go from thinking about it to doing it with .bvh files. I have seen some with horse walk cycles which is sweet as it saves so much effort and you don't have to fully understand the movement of a horse to make it look convincing.

Wade

This is looking sweet.... One step closer to TAR the movie.....

Here is another test. This time I set up the constraints and saved it as a pose. Then I created a new action and turned on the pose. Next I clicked on one of the .bvh bones, which made the action object appear in the PWS. Right-click that to capture the data and load the mocap file.
I was very happy with how simple this was to do. I can just make this pose once per character and instantly be able to apply the motion capture data to it

http://www.zandoria.com/images/Movies/test4a.mov

Great examples Will...I only just looked at the optiTrack system and the pricepoint knocked my socks off. Motion capture for the masses
At the moment you need a programmer to implement optitrack don't you? They seem to be selling a point cloud development kit and giving away the rigid body SDK...but the actual user software is still 6 months away?

yep...but 6 months isn't too far. I got a quote today on a Gypsy5 and Gypsy18 system--YIKES! The magnetic systems are out of my budget for sure....

Here's a tut on using the 2D motion tracking ability of After Effects to create motion capture.

It's very badly laid out; scroll bars within scroll bars.

http://starbacon.free.fr/krutyblog/index.p...l-after-effects

It's en francais I'm afraid, so i haven't read it all. But I gather this much...

It's a two camera approach

You manually pair the markers between the two cameras,

track them,

then use the expression ability of After effects to create XYZ info based on the differences between the position of the matching markers in the two camera views.

He has screen shots of the code.

I'm not trying to start a fight but I want to point out that Will is seriously considering $10,000s for motion capture hardware... But I bet he isn't considering $10000 for the software to control it... Yet the software has tremendous R&D costs, and support costs 100 times that of the hardware. I suspect Will expects the software to "come with" it. This is the marketplace we live in.

Does anyone know about single-camera motion tracking? A few days ago I found PF Track It seems like very useful software, but probably not as accurate as three-cam motion capture I think. The only problem of this is... the price of course.
Maybe anyone knows a cheaper solution to do this?
At the moment I'm working on a new converter to import Icarus motion tracking into A:M, and it was so much fun playing with that I'm actually thinking of making something like PF Track myself for use with A:M. Ok, no promises here because I have to have some spare time first... but maybe I will.

Luuk,

I've been playing with motion capture in Syntheyes recently. Examples of face tracking are on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/bendytoons).

These were done with two cameras. The avatar ones were done with a webcam and a digital camera's movie mode. Still two cameras, still twice the tracking, but cheap. The whole hardware/software package has come in under $1000. If you were looking at PF track, definitely check out Syntheyes. It plays well with A:M too.

Ben

The Optitrack cameras are $529 apiece.


They are releasing this software later this year (hopefully), but I don't know the price yet.


The SDK for Optitrack along with sample applications is available here as a free download:
http://www.naturalpoint.com/optitrack/support/downloads.html

Based on their sample files, I think that I will be OK using the .bvh files in A:M. But if there is a programmer who is interested in working on a plug-in for A:M to integrate the Optitrack directly, then please contact me.

Sounds like Will is serious. I hope some aspiring plug-in author contacts him.

I AM serious. using motion capture is the only realistic way that I can turn "Tar of Zandoria" into a movie. I have decided to make it an animation, rather than a graphic novel. I'm on the 3rd revision of the script and am building all of the assets now.

Ben--those are really nice examples! I have Syntheyes, so it looks like I better upgrade it to the 2007 version and start doing some experiments with facial tracking!

Hi Will,
I remembered this article from 3D World a while back on a low cost (for then) system,might be of interest to you.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment
The best thing about is that you can use any good quality Dv camcorder for this.

Jay

I don't think Mocap is evil, but I think that character deserves to be finely animated. Where are you going to get the 500 pound sumo wrestler to do the motion that would be apprpriate?

...well, i'm eating all the krispy kremes I can

Be prepared for all the "negative" feed back using mocap.

I think this is a great idea. I've read about some of the 3D animated weekly TV shows produced using mocap. There is no way they could possibly do it "by hand" with the costs and deadlines involved.

So if you can put up with the criticism from the animation purists I say this is a great idea and wish you great luck with it.

------

Some of the samples seemed "better" than others. Is this due to the original format (bvh or that other kind) of the motion? The first example was the best in my opinion. The Homer Simpson sample seemed kind of "jittery".

-vern

Have you taken a look at Visual Marker?

http://www.cgauction.com/store/product_inf...?products_id=34

It looks like there is a fair amount of manual intervention as you place the markers on the video, but it does export in .bvh, costs only $40.00 US and requires only two web cams.

Might be worth taking a look at....

Al

Upcoming Event: SIGGRAPH 2007
SIGGRAPH 2007 The 34th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques will play home to the public release of NaturalPoint's Full Body Motion Capture package. It will include six cameras, general accessories, and Full Body software for an exceptionally low price of less than $5,000. For an early preview, you can watch video of MoCap in action from an interview at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this past March.
http://on10.net/Blogs/laura/optitrack-offe...and-affordable/

WOW!!

That does look nice. Did you see the videos? Optitrack

Tralfaz,
I'd be very interested in that $40 product you've mentioned. Do you have any first-hand experience with it? Any idea how well it works? I would have no problem with safety-pinning ping pong balls to my clothes if thats what the program requires.

-The Bird Man

Will- GREAT samples!

I had a garage sale last summer, and a guy was looking at an old monitor I had...after we started speaking it turned out he was 'Mr. Bones' of truebones.com and he lives just across the lake from me! Small world! He is a bigtime Calgari Truespace fan and programmer. Did you buy some of his motions?

Also--- Have you considered 'farming out' the motion capture? There is a new place here in Detroit that is a huge soundstage/mocap facility with over 60 of those cameras and dozens of suits. I could get you they're info... I'm just starting to work with them myself.

The true beauty of mocap will be realized when talented animators, as yourself, start 'enhancing' the actions to get a cartoony/surreal feel.

I have no experience with the product at all. However, they do have a demo video that you can download and view.

From what I could gather from the videos, you have two videos (front and side view). You then apply markers on the video using the software. As the video progresses, you then adjust the markers to keep up with the video (this was the manual part I had mentioned). The two views allow you to move the markers in 3D space.

I am really tempted to spend the $40 and give it a try, but just bought a laptop, so money is a bit tight right now.

Al

Sounds good, I'll look into that product. Thanks for bringing that program to my attention.

On a different note, I tried Icarus a few months ago, which lets you track camera motions. Its great for combining real photography and CG. And its completely FREE! The catch is that it was bought out by a big company, so the latest versions cost something. You have to search around a bit to get an old free version. The outdated version works out just great for me.

-The Bird Man

UPDATE: Build your own motion capture studio for under $5,000!
http://www.naturalpoint.com/optitrack/prod...motion-capture/

that does look pretty good.

Query of yall - given that A:M has supported mocap for years, what is the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM additional stuff you have to get to use the feature? I'd put up with pretty crappy mocap, the figures are going to become cartoons anyway.

The ABSOLUTE minimum you'd need is really just your mouse. One truly awesome feature of A:M is that you can do real-time input. For example, I set up a very basic mouth made with a few control points. Then, I can listen to my audio track, and animate the mouth in real-time. I do the same thing with other minor actions, such as head movement, etc. Afterward, you need to go back and "clean up" some of the keyframes (mouse mo-cap makes way to many keyframes), but it's a major time saver. I love, love, love it. As far as more complex rigs involving ping-pong balls glued to your ears - I can't speak to that, but I think Will's $5,000 may be about as low as you'll find for pro-level stuff.

If you don't need full-body tracking but facial or 2d tracking have one or two months patience and I'll be releasing a new motion tracking program with a very decent price...

I own a NaturalPoint Track IR these are the best thing that ever happened to Flight simers like I used to be before AM. I had a reflective dot on my mike head set which tracked my head motion which controles which way the pilot head turn in the game. Before this we had to use switches on your yoy stick or try to turn the view with a mouse while flying a plane with the other hand. Really hard to do! Any ways off topic but I know NaturalPoint makes good stuff if that helps

Hmm. Simple animation with a mouse is nice...I like simple. But it ain't mocap.

Awesome stuff Will, wish I could animate like that. Guess it's just a matter of practise.

The motion capture thingy is a thing I've always dreamt about. Sure, it's expensive, but it would be WAY fun to have.

I've been away a few years Will. I've been burning my braincells on the currency market

Now that I have that whole world under control I've picked A:M back up for some good fun.

It appears you may have already found what you are looking for, as the last post was a couple weeks ago.
Anyways I just wanted to pass along a link to some Free MoCap software that I just found. I have not tried it yet but as I have time I will.

here is the url: http://www.geeware.com/

Zzzippo

BTW does the Atlanta/SE group still meet?

No...we don't meet anymore

But I would like to if we could get more people interested