hey sup,
I'm getting kind of tired of always trying to simulate real life animations and thought of how great it would be to get a mocap studio around to get my animations done that quick and that reallife. I was just wondering if you guys ever used this technology and how well does it work with autodesk maya and such. I was wondering on getting one but they were a bit pricy for my studio. So I don't really know if its completely worth it.

-Dan

ps-sorry i wanted to post this on the members lounge but couldnt move my post.

Its an expensive set up, I've used a bit of mo cap data but not in maya (although I have got it in there) and I'm just starting to get some things together using it and other software (need to get some characters etc)

If I were you I would have a look on turbo squid, theres quite a bit of free mocap data that you can download and have a play with to see if you thinkk its worth it in the end for you.

You could make/ get hold of a mo cap suit and use markers that you can then follow using keyframes for animation for a psuado mo cap on the cheap!

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"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

thanks for the turbosquid link i think its a great place to start. Now as you mentioned you said you didnt work much with this with maya but would u know where I go from the .fbx to getting the animations on my joints? or do you know a place where I can get some information on that i seem to have some trouble going from there. thanks a lot man,
Dan.

The Maya Help files are pretty good, have a search for Motion Capture and you should find some info out.

Cheers

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"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

Mocap is way expensive and probably not a good idea to buy for yourself. Maybe you could use a program called Poser. You can import your rigged Maya characters into and animate them. It has a really good run animation setup.

You could make a cheap mocap suit pretty easily with some aluminum foil and some fabric...

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw - Man and Superman

You dont need poser to do animate with mo cap data, maya can hold its own with it.


So how would you go about making a mocap suit form some fabric and tin foil?

Its quite precise in the plecement of the markers as they have to corrispond to joints pretty exactly (depending on how accurate you want of course.

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"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

great! thanks for the help

To be honest. MOCAP is not a freelancers answer or a quick solution. You can be looking at £1000's to get entry into a studio that supports it. Learn to improve your own animation is the answer.

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Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
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yea thats probably what its gonna come down to. but the other day when i was looking at how fluent and perfectly realistic those skeleton animations were from mocap i was just like "DANG i gotta get my hands on that!!"
but oh well