Does anyone need Mocap moves for animations?

Camille

Hi,
I’m interested in knowing if anyone needs mocap data?
We are considering inviting a Karate world champion for a mocap shoot as well as a professional dancer and are interested in knowing if anyone here needs mocap movements?
Do you all animate with keyframes or with do your own mocap with a Kinect or do you buy mocap data?
What kind of Mocap data would you need most?

Thank you
Camille

Toyen

I guess it depends on what you want to do.

If I had a mocap studio and equipment at home and knew how to operate it and make animations with it, I would sure go for it : D

I think it takes skill to achieve realistic animation without mocap but it´s not impossible.

You just gotta practice : )

Video reference is also very important. I think that´s something all animators use. If you look at behind the scenes of animation of Disney movies like Frozen or Tangled, you will see that they always have a video reference of how the characters should move and then they animate it by hand (no mocap).

I know that disney cartoons arent supposed to be exactly realistic but still, those body movements are very well done and not mocaped : )

a-sennov

I'm using mocap mostly for locomotion and still it requires many alterations before it 100% fit my requirements for particular scene. Also it tends to be shaky and you spend a lot of time cleaning it up. Another problem is difference in skeletons between common mocap rigs and DAZ models, especially Genesis (1 and 2).

There are a lot of martial art mocap on the net and even in the DAZ store.

So, what I need? Something like 'Walk construction kit' but for G2 and not only for walks but for full range of locomotion (stand, crawl, crouch, walk, jog, run, sprint), transitions between them, changing direction (360 degrees) range and all of that for people of different constitution (skinny, normal, fat) and mood (sad, angry, determined, happy etc.). All of this well organized, cleaned of motion noise and cheap :)

Steve K

I use mocap files a lot for short animations done in Carrara, mostly with M4, V4, & K4. So, yeah, I'm not on the "bleeding edge" of the character technology, and so may not be your best source of marketing info. But FWIW, I greatly prefer Poser Animated Pose files (PZ2), such as those available here (and for sale at DAZ):

http://www.posermocap.com/

The combination of Gen4 characters, PZ2 mocaps, and Carrara seems to be the least buggy for me. Other combinations usually require more glitch removal.

I would probably not be interested in martial arts or dance. In my short animations, the "everyday" stuff is more useful - looking around, sitting while doing ___, sneaking, etc. Mocaps which require interaction with another person or prop can be difficult to set up, but also more interesting. I finally decided to try one that involves M4 jumping and catching onto a passing aircraft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez3oyjgMk4I

It took some fiddling, but came out OK, I think.

teknostorm

I would love aniblocks for dance moves for children songs. Currently all the dance mocaps I have purchased are club dance, hiphop etc. I need a lot of moves for children to copy, preschool or kindergarten children since I make videos for children ("A is for apple A A apple" etc) and I have to rig them manually. Any simple dance moves would fit as I will string them together, but the available ones are too hard for children to copy (breakdance waves, head stands etc).

Damanyo

I saw some really cool moves at: http://www.motioncaptureonline.com/#!life-animation/c1zhi , they are called 'Life Moves". Those don't seem to be available for DAZ; but the price is reasonable. If those types of MoCap animations were available for DAZ at those prices, I'd buy them! Thanks for asking! :)

BTW: cool video Steve K! :-)

Ivy

camille1908 said:

Hi,
I’m interested in knowing if anyone needs mocap data?
We are considering inviting a Karate world champion for a mocap shoot as well as a professional dancer and are interested in knowing if anyone here needs mocap movements?
Do you all animate with keyframes or with do your own mocap with a Kinect or do you buy mocap data?
What kind of Mocap data would you need most?

Thank you
Camille

Hi Camille
I would be very interested in the mocaps or aniblocks you make , But I would lke to tell you what my needs would be. The Motion-capture files would need to be saved as either BVH or aniblocks, that are saved centered on the stage and the character don't drop below the floor level.. I say that because some mocaps i have used were saved off center , which makes it harder to align or match characters position using them, as they tend to want to gravitate back to the original position was when they were saved.. that be the only requirements that I would have to keep me from buying them. I have a on going Karate girl Anime cartoon series and I am always looking for Karate type Motion-capture BVH or aniblocks
I use Karate type Ani-blocks & mocaps a lot in my Karate girl cartoons, and have a large investment in motion captures files someof which I have created myself for lack of not being able to purchase what I need.
You can see what type of moves I use to give you some ideas. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0BED8C486F8E9C55
So I will say yes I would be very interested in some Karate type ani-blocks.

Steve K

DiggrDude said:

...

BTW: cool video Steve K! :-)

Thanks. I avoided that particular mocap for a long time, thinking it would be too complicated to match the aircraft and the character. With Carrara's sequencer, it wasn't that bad, just kept fiddling ...:P

BC Rice

Always need mocaps. But honestly, karate and dancing is not what I think is lacking in the marketplace. Those are actually the simplest to recreate because they're often fast movements that favor short bursts of cutting. The more subtle movements -- a variety of different kinds of walk cycles, different kinds of idles, etc. Those are the more challenging bits to animate by hand.

So if you're doing karate and dance mocaps, I'd like to request a focus also on a lot of the subtle everyday stuff. It seems like every conversation mocap is someone waving their hands around and bobbing their head. Just lots of little subtle, normal, everyday things would be nice.

(PZ2 preferred!)

skydat

I just bought the Genesis 2 Run and Turn - it's good. I don't know if that's your company or another. The biggest problem I'm having is finding a non-retarded walk.

For example the V4 aniblock simply does not work that well on G5,G6, *even with the foot correction*. It still walks funny, and on G5 the hands clip though the thighs.

I tried maybe a dozen CMU BVH files, and they're all terrible, even after decimating and cleanup they tend to walk like some clod hopping farmer!

Then there's the high heel walk for G6. Great, but how about just regular walking? There's not a single normal walk for G5, G6 on the entire Daz site. In summary walking, standing, sitting, climbing stairs, basic stuff. Also something to help animate the *face* and *head*. I spent ages animating someone walking down stairs, it looks terrible because I can't animate the subtle ways the head moves and facial expressions, *particularly around the eyes*.

As for kung fu moves, by using puppeteer between poses, you can make some pretty decent kicks and chops. Hope my feedback helps, do others feel the same way?

Toyen

Skydat, maybe you could try using walk designer in Poser if you have poser to create a basic normal walk with G2 and then export it somehow into DS.

It will need to be tweaked though because the walk designer walks don´t look very natural either it can give you a nice base animation to work with.

Ivy

skydat said:

I just bought the Genesis 2 Run and Turn - it's good. I don't know if that's your company or another. The biggest problem I'm having is finding a non-retarded walk.

For example the V4 aniblock simply does not work that well on G5,G6, *even with the foot correction*. It still walks funny, and on G5 the hands clip though the thighs.

I tried maybe a dozen CMU BVH files, and they're all terrible, even after decimating and cleanup they tend to walk like some clod hopping farmer!

Then there's the high heel walk for G6. Great, but how about just regular walking? There's not a single normal walk for G5, G6 on the entire Daz site. In summary walking, standing, sitting, climbing stairs, basic stuff. Also something to help animate the *face* and *head*. I spent ages animating someone walking down stairs, it looks terrible because I can't animate the subtle ways the head moves and facial expressions, *particularly around the eyes*.

As for kung fu moves, by using puppeteer between poses, you can make some pretty decent kicks and chops. Hope my feedback helps, do others feel the same way?

I found that most aniblocks are just for base movements. you will need to customize almost anything you find.
Helpful trick though ,If you right-click the animate2 timeline you can bake the aniblock your using and then tweak the movements key-frame by key-frame to to make the ani block the way you want it.& then when your finished right-click the timeline again & re bake your custom motion to the timeline and then right click & save the motion you custom created out of the base one in either BVH or Aniblock format.. this works pretty well for walks and other things. its just time consuming having to go key-frame by key-frame to make the corrections,. and with g2f hand corrections are made with the pose controls under the perimeters tab. you can even create custom hand movements the way I described, and save them using a blank aniblock.

try it I hope it helps :)

JessLo

I agree with skydat ,

What is lacking is normal conversation movements, Idles, sitting and talking , etc, for Genesis 2  male and female,

You  can buy more decent animations for Daz and Poser is here : http://www.flipbookmarket.com/Daz3D-Poser

Files formats are  BVH and Pz2 files,

Also you can find animations in  FBX  here : http://www.flipbookmarket.com/Maya-MB

 

 

 

hphoenix

Another thing that is lacking is PARTIAL blocks.  Waist-down and waist-up blocks that can be combined.  Arm/hand blocks that allow the character to be posed, then animate their hands/arms.  Head/Face blocks.

Then you can load a walk cycle from the waist down, a 'draw gun' block for the upper body, and then a head/face block to generate the reaction/expression the character needs.

I see lots of complete blocks out there.....but they overwrite each other, so I'm left choosing one or the other, then trying to manually do the rest.

 

Ruphuss

skydat said:

I just bought the Genesis 2 Run and Turn - it's good. I don't know if that's your company or another. The biggest problem I'm having is finding a non-retarded walk.

For example the V4 aniblock simply does not work that well on G5,G6, *even with the foot correction*. It still walks funny, and on G5 the hands clip though the thighs.

I tried maybe a dozen CMU BVH files, and they're all terrible, even after decimating and cleanup they tend to walk like some clod hopping farmer!

Then there's the high heel walk for G6. Great, but how about just regular walking? There's not a single normal walk for G5, G6 on the entire Daz site. In summary walking, standing, sitting, climbing stairs, basic stuff. Also something to help animate the *face* and *head*. I spent ages animating someone walking down stairs, it looks terrible because I can't animate the subtle ways the head moves and facial expressions, *particularly around the eyes*.

As for kung fu moves, by using puppeteer between poses, you can make some pretty decent kicks and chops. Hope my feedback helps, do others feel the same way?

you speak my words about the lack of normal walking animations