What are the pros and cons of MoCap

[Auteur]

I've seen some youtubers use mocap for sfm before and i am wondering if it is a good investment to make. I already have one kinect avalibale to use and many webcams

[marty]

kinect mocap is only worth it if you have 2 or more, because you wanna pick up more sides of the motion from other angles otherwise it's just going to look very bad.

alot of people stomp on mocap and say it's for lazy people with no effort, but they're mentally deficient so dont worry. any filmmaker can use mocap when needed to speed up the process.

the only con i can mention is this: mocap creates an awkwardly realistic movement. when this is put into sfm, it's not exactly movement that you would have for blocking characters out or really letting contrapposto and personalities visually shine,

i recommend it for when you can't animate every individual in a crowd or when its necessary for a close-up walking shot of a character, because then u have the lower walking and weight/timing mostly dealt with, and you can counteract the awkwardness of mocap because you're now looking at their face and shoulders (which im sure u can readjust to be cooler)

[Auteur]

Originally posted by LochLen Academy Winner:

kinect mocap is only worth it if you have 2 or more, because you wanna pick up more sides of the motion from other angles otherwise it's just going to look very bad.

alot of people stomp on mocap and say it's for lazy people with no effort, but they're mentally deficient so dont worry. any filmmaker can use mocap when needed to speed up the process.

the only con i can mention is this: mocap creates an awkwardly realistic movement. when this is put into sfm, it's not exactly movement that you would have for blocking characters out or really letting contrapposto and personalities visually shine,

i recommend it for when you can't animate every individual in a crowd or when its necessary for a close-up walking shot of a character, because then u have the lower walking and weight/timing mostly dealt with, and you can counteract the awkwardness of mocap because you're now looking at their face and shoulders (which im sure u can readjust to be cooler)

How much do you think I will be able to acheive in 5 months as a beginner?

[Capt Fuzzy]

Originally posted by The Marseille Turn:

Originally posted by LochLen Academy Winner:

kinect mocap is only worth it if you have 2 or more, because you wanna pick up more sides of the motion from other angles otherwise it's just going to look very bad.

alot of people stomp on mocap and say it's for lazy people with no effort, but they're mentally deficient so dont worry. any filmmaker can use mocap when needed to speed up the process.

the only con i can mention is this: mocap creates an awkwardly realistic movement. when this is put into sfm, it's not exactly movement that you would have for blocking characters out or really letting contrapposto and personalities visually shine,

i recommend it for when you can't animate every individual in a crowd or when its necessary for a close-up walking shot of a character, because then u have the lower walking and weight/timing mostly dealt with, and you can counteract the awkwardness of mocap because you're now looking at their face and shoulders (which im sure u can readjust to be cooler)

How much do you think I will be able to acheive in 5 months as a beginner?

Depends on how well you know the software that you will be working with, SFM included...

[white Demoman]

I've never done mocap or tried it (I don't even have a kinect). However, I noticed that Blender has some mocap functions in it. You can import .bvh files (moction capture files) into Blender. This means that if you export your mocap "animation" to a .bvh file, Blender can read the movement and you can apply the animation to a specific model or something.

This is all speculation and it probably won't work. However, it's worth a shot if you have a kinect lying around.

[episoder]

pro is you don't need to animate anything by hand. con is mocap if done with subpar equipment may still need some fixes on the data. faulty areas. or the capture "shadows". kinect is prone to that. it only creates 2dimensional + depth data. what's hidden behind something is insufficient data to create motion. it's maybe good for flat motion. works if you got a fixed front capture area. you can do walkcycles from the side or generic screen posing and 'in the frame' motion. this ipisoft is pretty good to guesstimate or smoothen out missing stuff. due to precision you still may have to fix a bunch of things.

if you really wanna start using the term mocap you gotta have atleast 4 cameras in a rectangular config. 3 would be enough to triangulate the markers, but 4 are better in terms of all around space coverage and capture "shadow" angles. in terms of kinect you could maybe get away with 2 in a hemispehere config. or you do 4 in a tetraeder config. that could theoretically capture a sphere. :)

[Mittens]

Don't rely too much on it. It's good for background characters and all that

[Fluid Script Studios]

I use motion capture in my animations (You can check them out for yourself on my steam profile)

Here are the pros and cons:

Pros :
-Animations that would have taken days...even weeks to create, take only a single recording (a couple hours) to achieve great results. Walking, idle-ing, fighting, dancing, and nuanced movements are all a breeze.

-Motion capture can be used in many ways, including the ability to make REAL shaky cam/handheld camera movement.

-Motion capture is based on skeleton framework in SFM. So if you export a mo-cap animation onto a valve skeleton, it will work on nearly all valve based skeletons.

-Motion capture also allows you to work with models that would otherwise be a major pain in the ass due to how the skeleton is structured, or super complex models.

Cons:
-Some motion capture is just impossible to do. Anything that defies real life physics will of course not be possible to motion capture.

-Movement is confined to the space you record it in. So you cant make a run animation very far for example

-Artifacts happen in motion capture, sometimes they can't be cleaned up. This is mostly due to occlusion, which is when one part of the body blocks another part of your body in view of the cameras. Things such as sleeping horizontally on the ground are very difficult.

-My specific setup can't capture head movement properly. Which is fine for me since i like to animate my head movements by hand. Motion capture also doesn't capture finger movement (for me at least)

So in my opinion? Yes it's definitely worth it. It will save you a lot of time and energy.

[Auteur]

Originally posted by TheNCourt:

I use motion capture in my animations (You can check them out for yourself on my steam profile)

Here are the pros and cons:

Pros :
-Animations that would have taken days...even weeks to create, take only a single recording (a couple hours) to achieve great results. Walking, idle-ing, fighting, dancing, and nuanced movements are all a breeze.

-Motion capture can be used in many ways, including the ability to make REAL shaky cam/handheld camera movement.

-Motion capture is based on skeleton framework in SFM. So if you export a mo-cap animation onto a valve skeleton, it will work on nearly all valve based skeletons.

-Motion capture also allows you to work with models that would otherwise be a major pain in the ass due to how the skeleton is structured, or super complex models.

Cons:
-Some motion capture is just impossible to do. Anything that defies real life physics will of course not be possible to motion capture.

-Movement is confined to the space you record it in. So you cant make a run animation very far for example

-Artifacts happen in motion capture, sometimes they can't be cleaned up. This is mostly due to occlusion, which is when one part of the body blocks another part of your body in view of the cameras. Things such as sleeping horizontally on the ground are very difficult.

-My specific setup can't capture head movement properly. Which is fine for me since i like to animate my head movements by hand. Motion capture also doesn't capture finger movement (for me at least)

So in my opinion? Yes it's definitely worth it. It will save you a lot of time and energy.

if i were to make a run animation i'd have to use the motion editor or graph editor right? Do you have any tutorials on running animtaions?

[Fluid Script Studios]

Originally posted by Captain Jean Luc Picard:

if i were to make a run animation i'd have to use the motion editor or graph editor right? Do you have any tutorials on running animtaions?

You can make a running animation in motion capture, but it'd be bloody difficult if you don't have enough space to do so. So ya you'd have to hand animate anything you can't feasibly do in motion capture.

There's a bunch of animation tutorials out there, just Google/Youtube it and you''ll find stuff.

Personally, Running animations already exist in the form of sequences. Why bother re-inventing the wheel, when it's already available to you? But to each his own.