#MOTION CAPTURE
12 messages in this thread
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
Wow you are asking a lot of VERY good questions. This setup can be Very
expensive and is in the experimental stages now. I think the best way is to
have a moition capture service do your work for you. I am working with
Wavefront's Kinemation and it works very well with importing moition capture
files. -Brandon
Eric,
2. You are thinking of the KISS module from SoftImage. It's not voice
recognition but rather a program that analyses typed in text and breaks it down
into english or french phonemes. Those phonemes are then linked to a set of
lips chosen from a library or modeled fresh which you integrate into the
animated charater. The phoneme list then drives the lip-sync animation, plus
you can play with the timing of the animated lips and digitized audio to make
it all work within the Digital Studio environment. This is powerful stuff but
definitly not cheap.
Bruce N. Goren
I can't say who's working on it, but a 3rd party is doing an IPAS routine that
does exactly the same thing.
Sorry to tease, but I couldn't help it.
– G
Gary,
Thanks for the tease…. Any idea when this'd be out?
Eric
Sorry, but I probably shouldn't have even mentioned it in the first place. Next
year sometime? Earlier? By the end of the decade? Century?
– G
Well, it'll probably be a while. Seems like tough material to get working
right. Have you seen the Saturday AM cartoon "Reboot?" Looks like Softimage
with their KISS animation module. Any idea how many phonemes they used?
Eric Chadwick, Mechadeus
You don't really need many phonemes. In fact, Schreiber instruments sells a
set of Steve Sherer models that are already set up for all the phonemes you'd
need for such a routine. (conveniently…)
– G
The folks at BioVision can answer ALL of this stuff for you, I think, Eric.
Give 'em a call at 904/733/8034.
-Alan
Eric,
>> We may buy a hardware system in order to ultimately speed up some
time-intensive character animation.
Aren't you in the San Francisco Bay area? If you are, and are interested in
seeing Schreiber's Puppeteer software in combination with Flock of Birds motion
capture hardware, and also asking some questions, you ought to stop by one of
Schreiber's road shows this week. If you aren't already signed up for one, give
us a call at 415-459-1050. We'll be doing a seminar with them in San Rafael on
Friday morning, Sept. 23.
John (AEC Technologies)
John, could you please sign me up for friday?
thanks,
John Tissavary (LUNA cie, inc)