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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/3dsMaxHowTos8/2/2019 1500 Word Essay Optical-Mocap
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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=wwyuoISYpxE8/2/2019 1500 Word Essay Optical-Mocap
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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
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