#MOTION CAPTURE
We here at Mondo Media/Mechadues are wading through the stacks of stuff on
Motion Capture hardware/software. We may buy a hardware system in order to
ultimately speed up some time-intensive character animation. Would anyone who
has/is using M.C. care to shed some light on a couple questions?
1: What are the ups and downs of Optical vs Magnetic? Optical is more $$ and
more mobility, but seems to have less accuracy due to occlusion of the sensors.
Magnetic has no occlusion problems, is cheaper, captures rotation info, but
lacks mobility due to the cables. Anyone have favorites yet?
2: What's the best way to do lip/voice MC? I'd like to speed up lip-synching 3D
animation to actors' voices by capturing either lip movements or use
voice-recognition to drive morph objects in 3DStudio. Doesn't Softimage have
some sort of voice-recog. driving animations? If we got voice-recog. output
from someone's software, we would link that to morphs of phonemes in 3DStudio.
Anyone know of voice-recognition out there and who to contact?
3: Can you edit previously-captured motion to re-use it for
differently-proportioned skeletons? Like editing human motion to use for a
12-foot armed alien.
4: Can anyone divulge wisdom about the stage needs, like a hanging/bungee setup
for holding the cables hooked up to the capturees (kind of like the cords that
hold up gas pump lines); magnetic interference problems; etc?
5: Are there ELF health issues related to magnetic capture systems?
6: Does anyone know the BBS # for Schreiber?
Thanks in advance!
Eric Chadwick
Mechadeus/Mondo Media