Kat Walker’s Studio I & II Blog

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

Tonight I captured again.  I had some more animated performances and re-positioned myself so that the left calf was visible in most of the captures.  Unfortunately there was still some glitching.  I also just catpured some other actions while wearing the 5 fingered gloves, potentially to use when this project is completed.  I am working with some of the data for class tomorrow morning and will continue to work with it for class 5.  Hopefully for that class I will have some sucessful results.

The capture session on Thursday went well.  Though Vicon is having some issues with crashing, we pulled through and I have several “successful” captures.

T-Pose

Playing

After going through the post processing steps everything appeared to be working well - that is up until MotionBuilder.  It appears that either the skeletal rig I built in Vicon is not proportionate or that I’m so out of proportion myself that I’m having issues lining everything up.  The fingers are schrunching as you can see in the following screenshot.  For Wendesday I hope to troubleshoot and get the problem resolved.

Hand Crunching in MotionBuilder

Playing

I have some progress on the five finger skeleton I’m building in ViconiQ. The skeleton is a modification of the three fingered skeleton. Vicon’s modeling aspect is not particularly user friendly so this took some time. It appears I’ll have to start with the three finger now on the right side as well. I have found no way to mirror it.

Left Side Complete, 5 Finger Skeleton

Left Side Has 5 Fingers

Bones & Markers

Markers

I’ve been keeping a list of motion capture studios in the United States. Here’s the list so far.

ImageMovers - http://imagemoversdigital.com/ - San Rafael, CA
RedEye Studios - http://www.redeye-studio.com/ - Hoffman Estates, IL
Lamb - http://www.lamb.com/ - Minneapolis, MN
House of Moves - http://www.moves.com/ - Los Angeles, CA
Motion Analysis - http://www.motionanalysis.com/ - Santa Rosa, CA
ElektraShock - http://elektrashock.com/ - Venice, CA
Spiritwalk Visioneering Inc - Austin, TX
LocoMotion Studios - Wimberley, TX
Avatar Motion Capture Studios - http://avatarmocap.com/ - New Orleans, LA
Kinetic Impulse - http://www.kinetic-impulse.com/ - ?
Auvis Studios - http://www.auvisstudios.com/ - ?
Alcazar Entertainment - http://www.alcazar-entertainment.com/ - Los Angeles, CA & San Francisco, CA
Critical Moves - http://www.criticalmovesusa.com/ - Detroit, MI
Concept Labs Inc. - http://www.conceptlabsinc.com/ - Jamaica Estates, NY
Cinemanix - http://www.cinemanix.com/ - Presto, PA
CaptiveMotion - http://www.captivemotion.com/ - Tempe, AZ
Black Point Studios - http://www.blackpointstudios.com/ - San Francisco, CA
Elemental Motion - http://www.elementalmotion.com/ - owner now works at game company
Radioactive Labs - http://www.radioactivelabs.com/ - Austin, TX
MODS - http://www.themods.tv/ - Burbank, CA
Motion Analysis Studios - http://www.mastudios.com/ - Hollywood, CA
Meta Motion - http://www.metamotion.com/ - San Francisco, CA
Trilogy Studios - http://www.trilogystudios.com/ - Sherman Oaks, CA

Studio II began yesterday with professor Joe Pasquale. Today I’m working in the studio finding a ’sweet spot’ for the hand motion capture animation. In other words I need to find a spot in which all the markers on my hands can be seen by the cameras with minimal flickering.

To test for an ideal spot I first held out my hands and walked around the boundary box slowly to see which area could see all my fingers as I moved. Then I made a second round where I wiggled my fingers like I was playing a piano.

Hands

Gloves

It appears that the best corner is by cameras #4 and #5. At this corner I’m getting readings from cameras 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12. That’s 9/12 cameras.

Spot by #4 and #5

The second potential spot is directly between cameras #2 and #3. At this location there are actually 11/12 cameras seeing parts of my hands but the number of cams that can see the entire hand is lower. The cameras that can see the hands straight on are critical.

Spot by #2 and #3

A third spot would be directly in front of camera #8. At this spot there are 9/12 cameras that can see my hands.

Spot by #8

I have a capture session scheduled for Thursday at 5pm. I will try all three spots at this time. I also will be playing Fur Elise and Mary Had a Little Lamb for test songs and potentially to replace the song Mad World that I had originally planned to use. I also have a DVX100 camera checked out for this session so that if the capture is successful then I will be able to do a breakdown.

As a secondary idea for when this project is finished, I would like to try more full body captures including the three finger gloves. I’ve contacted an animation major I know to try to get in contact with others that would be interested in sharing their modeled biped characters for me to add motion capture to. If I did this then they would be able to showcase their model while I can have a previously modeled character to animate.

Mocap Studio

Mocap Studio

Now there is a rendered version of the alien dancing. I had issues with the nCloth but hope to resolve them over break. Right now she just has a white blinn and is in a dark background.

This week I’ve been re-rigging the Alien. She has a modified Mia skeleton out of MotionBuilder. I worked with finishing off the dance motion capture and am close to a final product. Below is the image of the skinned alien.

Rigged Alien

This is the dancing alien. She is rigged with the modified Mia skeleton and had a 3 fingered capture attached to her that was captured in ViconiQ.

This weekend I worked with the data I recorded the previous weekend.  To show I have a successful MotionBuilder render of a freestyle dance.

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.