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

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. 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

Eadweard Muybridge (Mahomet) Horses Running. (1879)

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.

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 angles and 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.

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.

MotionBuilder

One odd event is the marker dated swinging its self out from its assigned Rigid-bodies as the timeline plays on, and some of them start to scatter shown above. Some possible reasons for this can be the cameras are not calibrated enough, or a good data cleaning could sort it out. Also noticing that the top Left head band marker is missing, even though the first 90 frames of the animation have the majority of the Rigid Bodys and Marker Data joined together shown below.

This was never resolved, although there was still a sufficient amount of other useful AC3 data that worked fine.

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.

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 the man 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.

Unreal Development Editor

Learning 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 animation works 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.

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 be exported 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

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

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