Modeling

After a long weekend of trying to get my piano captures to work, I finally decided to work on a different capture I had done for fun.  I decided to do this capture so that I could see if I could even get a sucessful five finger capture seeing as the piano captures aren’t going well.  I had made a cone man character for my Motion Capture Technology class during Spring of 2008 and I applied to him a five finger capture of me miming.

I’m starting to come to the conclusion that SCAD’s studio is just not set up well enough for such a central thing as a piano performance.

I spoke to a modeler, Kyle Blair, who is going to be modeling a mime for me and also a “Mickey” type skeleton to use for other captures.  I will continue to see if the piano data will work but am thinking that at this point I’m better off getting multiple five finger captures so that I have more for my demo reel than one piano playing performance that took two quarters to do.

Mickey Skeleton

Alien with motion capture of me doing the twist added to it.

This weekend I worked on a variety of things for the project.

To start, I set up a lighting scheme for the piano. Then I worked on texturing the piano and setting it up so the keys would be easily animated. The piano has a basic black phong texture on it and white keys have a blinn. The pivot points of each key has been moved to the top so that they can tilt as they are played realistically.

Piano Key

Piano Key

As you can see above, the key is easily tilted to look like it is being played. The key is middle C. Below is a test render of the piano with basic textures, the floor has a standard wood texture that I will be doing myself when I continue texturing.

Piano

This weekend I spent 5 hours on Saturday and 4 hours Sunday in the motion capture studio at Montgomery Hall. Chad and I attempted to do a hand capture by taping me up in a variety of ways. We tried two different types of markers on my hands while I played a small keyboard.

We had a variety of difficulties with the Day 2 setup.  First, there is not a 5 fingered skeleton in Vicon and it will require me building it.  Second, the cameras are not set up to capture in a small space.  The cameras were having trouble reading the small markers.  I plan on creating my own gloves for the project that may allow me to have a quick setup and have large enough markers that the studio cameras will have no problems picking them up.

Me in my Motion Capture Suit - Day 1

Left Hand - Day 1

Left Hand - Day 1

Right Hand - Day 1

Right Hand - Day 1

Left Hand - Day 2

Right Hand - Day 2

Right Hand - Day 2

This week I will be working on getting the motion capture data into Motionbuilder. I may also have to build a skeleton in Vicon for the 5 finger tests. On Day 1 we used a 3 finger skeleton in Vicon and it was successfully brought into Motionbuilder. However we did not get a chance to build the 5 fingered skeleton in Vicon to bring into Maya. I’m also going to look into the Peelsolver plugin for Maya which allows you to bring in motion capture data straight in and therefor skipping the Motionbuilder step.

Here’s a basic lighting scenario with the piano modeled by Kyle Blair.  I’ll be texturing and continue lighting it over the weekend.

Piano with Basic Lighting

By Josh Walton

Character Concept - Version 2

Color Variations - Version 2

This is the character Josh Walton is designing for the project. Here is version 1.

His updates: Josh’s Studio I Blog

Character Concept - Version 1