Archive for October, 2008

I spend the majority of my free time in the studio this weekend. Sunday’s capturing session was relatively successful. On Sunday I captured myself playing the piano with a 5 finger capture using the gloves in the previous post. However I do not have a 5 fingered skeleton and the 3 fingered skeleton was getting markers confused in Vicon during post-processing. As a result I decided to first get some working 3 finger captures. Below is the range of motion that I did added to the character Mia.

Test render through MotionBuilder. Default character Mia and the actor with the labeled markers from a 3 fingered skeleton from ViconiQ.

I also worked on animating the keys.

Early this weekend my markers arrived for my custom motion capture gloves.  Many hours later I finally had found decent gloves and arranged all 30 markers in their proper positions on the gloves, specifically for my hands.  I also borrowed a full sized keyboard to play during the capture session this Sunday, 12-5pm.

Left Hand

Right Hand

Both

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

This week I finished texturing the rest of the piano.  I decided to keep the lid closed and added the brass accents.  I also modified the floor plane so that it is no longer wood but a wood colored surface.  Also I’ve been working on developing a technique for animating the piano keys.  All the rotation points are in place and I have a short video with the intro part of the song with the keys animated.  I have a decent and efficient technique down now and the animating should not take quite as long as it did this weekend.

Piano - Final Texturing

I’ve also ordered motion capture markers so that I can create my own gloves.  The ones that came this past week will not work as they are too small.

7/16 inch Hard Marker

Base

There isn’t much to show for this weekend because I spent time trying to figure out how to build a skeleton in Vicon.  The only skeleton has 3 fingers and I am building one that will have 5 fingers.  I’m also going to contact other faculty members that work in Motion Capture to see if they may possibly have a skeleton with 5 fingers already.

I ordered 30 of my own motion capture markers to glue to gloves or to my hands to get a better capture.  They are 3/16″ diameter from NaturalPoint.

Motion Capture Markers

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