1500 Word Essay Optical-Mocap

8/2/2019 1500 Word Essay Optical-Mocap

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Optical Motion Capture 1500 word essay

Contents Page

Page 2: Introduction to Motion Capture

Page 3:Pre-Production Considerations of Motion Capture

Page 4: Appropriateness and Suitability of Techniques

Page 5-6: MotionBuilder

Page 7: 3DS Max & Skinning

Page 8: Unreal Development Editor

Page 9: Final Animations

Page 10: Bibliography


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Motion Capture Introduction

Motion Capture technology stems from the medical industry and military going back over 40

years. In the 1970s the CGI Industry was beginning to take an interest in Mo-Cap technology

which was used for the first time in 1985 for a Commercial called Brilliance which was aired at

the super Bowl.

In 1990 the first movie to try and use Motion Capture was unsuccessful by Metrolight Studios in

the production of the movie Total Recall.

The motions or actions of simple everyday movements like running, walking and combat moves

were applied using Motion Capture to better the realism of characters in a 1995 game called FX

Fighter. Not long after the accomplishment of FX Fighter various other Gaming companies started

to apply the use of Motion Capture in their games.

Prior to Motion Capture being introduced in to Motion Pictures motion in its self became more

apparent in the 18th century one of with was a process that took 6 years to determine with a

experiment performed by Edward Muybridge at the age of 49.

Edward Muybridge was a San Francisco landscape photographer who used twelve cameras to take

a sequence of pictures of a horse in order to prove that at some point within the sequence all the

horses legs at the same time lift from the surface thus settling a $25.000 bet given by Leland

Stanford Founder of Stanford University.

Motion Capture is also used in many other fields like sports and martial arts with its final analyse

is known to give improvements such as preventing injuries and improvement in performance.

Artists and students of similar professions have used Motion Capture technology in order to keep

the movements of actors and dancers for future educational references such as the 1991 mime that

was performed at Ohio State University by Marcel Marceau at the age of 68.

Eadweard Muybridge (Mahomet)Horses Running. (1879)

In 1879 one of the worlds first motion picture

devises was created by Edward Muybridge it was

named the Zoopraxiscope which creates motion by

rapidly projecting a sequence of images.

Motion Capture History Above: see Bibliography


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Pre-Production Considerations of Motion Capture

Storyboard sketching issues on deciding to ether draw the main actors as they are performing the

motions for data Capture or to draw the 3d characters that the actors represent which there data

will be applied to for the final compiled peace in the Games Engine Unreal.

In the end it does not matter which one is drawn as they both represent the same motions and

actions to be captured although the use of sound effects or possible narration with camera anglesand scene transitions are also main elements in a Storyboard.

Also objects are a part of the storyboards main elements structure an example of this is shown on

page one frames 5 to 8 of the storyboard shown below.

This particular object is some sort of plank or pole that even though will not be there physically in

the Motion Capture procedure the actors have acted like it is for the Object Interactivity scene to

work correctly and the object will be created in 3Ds Max Later.

The Uses of the storyboard compared to other pre-production Motion Capture procedures like

Motion Lists/Optimised Motion Lists, Shot Lists, flowcharts and Motion Diagrams also Scripts all

have their slight differences that can affect the final Motion Capture Results.

For instance Storyboards do not usually show timing of each individual clip or frame from one

transition or clip to a other while Motion Lists, Shot Lists and Flow Charts do show timing down

to each separate move with description of necessary props.

When it came to the main capture session the time displayed on the Motion List and Shot List was

not followed to its timed accuracy, although it still served as a guide if needed, as in the brief there

was non specific timing to each motion capture shot making it more flexible.

Without the aid of Flow Charts and a Motion Diagram, using the motion lists and Shot list seemed

adequate enough to get the Motion Capture done with no major noticeable issues in this

procedure.


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Appropriateness and Suitability of Techniques

During the Object Interactivity and Jumping capture sessions a crash matt was used of which was

not entirely thought out in terms of position of the character before leaping or jumping including

high level.

As the actor was raised higher to an equal height of the crash matt so in the final capture it would

look like he is falling on the same straight levelled out surface.

As on the first take the headband of the actor flung of out of the sight of the camera sensors giving

the impression that he lost his head in the motion data, which actually turns out to be quite good

as it could work out for a performed motion of death scene.

Also expressing human emotions through acting out reactions took more preparation than

expected because for it to work correctly the actor had to test it out first to get the hang of it, this

included bodily direction and position of head/hands and feet.

Three of the labels had different names to link to the markers so when it came to naming the

back R10 marker as shown on the marker Example Sheet shown on the left below, it was

actually named (RBAC) as R10 was not an option in the Marker list in Motion Builder.

Only after applying the other markers to their rightful Labels, reviled the other two remaining

different named unapplied labels called RFRM & LFRM which are for two markers facing

inwards from the shoes which are not displayed on the marker diagram.


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Getting used to editing the direction of the characters body parts for each Cycle took some

getting used to, first to remembering to change the characters input type to (Control Rig) and

the Layer type to (layer 1) enabling the use of Keyframe.

Thus starting the editing procedure by adjusting the control rig which are the red sapphires

acting as a joint shown in the second snapshot below.

One main problem that kept accruing is hands would pass though the mesh of a characters leg

and editing/ adjusting the position of the hand with Keyframes solved that issue shown below.

Its also a good idea to (plot character) so the Edited/ Enhanced data can be

saved and carried across to 3Ds Max, otherwise the data of the character will not

update.


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3DS Max & Skinning

Skinning a character in 3ds max is one of the most time-consuming and tedious jobs,

Characters ZAPMAN and Lara where the most successful in using the Skin modifier,

with the final payoff shows off in the animation renders.

Lara being the most effective when moved by the Motion Capture data, as unlike the other

characters this was broken into 5 or more separate meshes making it slightly easier to

change the value of the envelops.

Looking at the different ways of exporting characters from 3Ds Max to MotionBuilder is

odd as exporting them out as a FBF file then bringing them back in later with the motion

capture data changes the Biped skeleton structure to Bones?

While following a tutorial from Youtube (3dsMaxHowTos)see bibliography, shows that theman teaching still manages to keep the biped skeleton when importing the data back to 3Ds

Max.

The Punch cycle Video below shows the arm going too far in to the shoulder; this was

adjusted with Keyframes in MotionBuilder then reapplied in 3Ds max to better get rid of the

fold.

Original: Embedded Video above, Just Click picture

to play

Enhanced with keys: Embedded Video above, Just Click

picture to play

Also the Fingers were animated using Keyframes to make the character look like shes

unclenching her fist.
http://www.youtube.com/user/3dsMaxHowToshttp://www.youtube.com/user/3dsMaxHowToshttp://www.youtube.com/user/3dsMaxHowToshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOxm7N2gTu0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwyuoISYpxEhttp://www.youtube.com/user/3dsMaxHowTos


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Unreal Development EditorLearning to Create and save a External UDK Package is crucial as it can crash quite a bit,

learning it import the animation, Mesh, Textures and Geometry separately then compiling it

together in Unreels many Editors.

Like using the Unreal AnimSet Editor to merge the animation and Texture, as the animationworks but the texture would not show rightly.

So by selecting the texture related to the character in browser then going to the Properties panel,

under mesh and clicking use selected object in content browser should do the trick after

importing it separately as a Taga File but apparently not as the colours are red and yellow but

they show as blue and black, even after creating a new material? As shown below.

The animation worked fine in playback but could not find a way to import it into the main

Viewport with the animation.

Getting the geometry into the viewport was difficult as well, maybe be its better to make the

scenery in UDK instead of importing it from 3Ds Max could have helped and is something to

consider for future projects.


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Final Animations

Even though there was difficulty merging them together in UDK, rendering them out in 3ds

max helped to display the 5 Motions shown below.

As a final thought the textures of the Modules would not show up in the Material Editor in

3Ds Max so they were found and applied to a Shader using the Pick from Object tool to beexported to UDK Shown Below.

Embedded Video Link to Jump Cycle Above, just

click on picture

Embedded Video Link to Attack (Punch) Cycle above, just

click on picture

Embedded Video Link to Object interactivity Cycle above,

just click on picture

Embedded Video Link to Run/Walk Cycle above, just click

on picture

Embedded Video Link to Stand Idle Cycle above, just click

on picture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXA1PMBD9Twhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M02DnB6i_Oohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO_qiRnVWGshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnHatNPNXR4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwyuoISYpxE


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Bibliography:

Motion Capture History (MoCap for Artists Book, Workflow & Techniques for

Motion Capture) by Midori Kitagawa, Brian Windsor, British Library Cataloguing-in-

publication data, ISBN: 978-0240-81000-3-[OFFLINE] Publisher Services Manager: George

Morrison, Acquisitions Editor; Paul Temme (Pages 2-7)

3dsMaxHowTos: (Using 3ds Max with Motionbuilder - Part 3 - Biped

Skeletons) [ONLINE]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2vswaL8mQI&list=PL97BF509A

217DF43B&index=19&feature=plpp_video

Eadweard Muybridge Studies of Foreshortenings. Horses. Running. Mahomet. (1879) [ONLINE] AT:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmn5o5QGEz1qbmgeto1_1280.jpg?AWSAcce

ssKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1329775895&Signature=LHAMbLS5No0Mun

aCXdWmDjiG2yM%3D
http://www.youtube.com/user/3dsMaxHowToshttp://www.youtube.com/user/3dsMaxHowToshttp://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmn5o5QGEz1qbmgeto1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1329775895&Signature=LHAMbLS5No0MunaCXdWmDjiG2yM%3Dhttp://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmn5o5QGEz1qbmgeto1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1329775895&Signature=LHAMbLS5No0MunaCXdWmDjiG2yM%3Dhttp://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmn5o5QGEz1qbmgeto1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1329775895&Signature=LHAMbLS5No0MunaCXdWmDjiG2yM%3Dhttp://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmn5o5QGEz1qbmgeto1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1329775895&Signature=LHAMbLS5No0MunaCXdWmDjiG2yM%3Dhttp://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmn5o5QGEz1qbmgeto1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1329775895&Signature=LHAMbLS5No0MunaCXdWmDjiG2yM%3Dhttp://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmn5o5QGEz1qbmgeto1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1329775895&Signature=LHAMbLS5No0MunaCXdWmDjiG2yM%3Dhttp://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmn5o5QGEz1qbmgeto1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1329775895&Signature=LHAMbLS5No0MunaCXdWmDjiG2yM%3Dhttp://www.youtube.com/user/3dsMaxHowTos


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1500 Word Essay Optical-Mocap

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