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Performance Animation
Introduction to Mocap
Vicon Setup
Calibration
Recording
In todays lesson I learned about motion capture and what measures everyone have to take to get a good motion capture.
Placing 53 markers on the suit.
The markers should be placed as you see in the image.
Vicon Eclipse and Vicon Shogun live are used to calibrate the Vicon cameras and record session steps.
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Eclipse will store and manage camera calibration, actors movements and different Mocap session(morning/afternoon)
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Shogun Live will capture everything within the recording area.
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To calibrate the camera the wand needs to be waved around the area that is going to be capture. Everything needs to be green if some cameras show colors like orange, something might be disrupting them.
An origin needs to be set to make sure the cameras are positioned correctly.
The wand should be in a T position on the floor. Set origin should be click then stopped once is finished.
Five markers should be placed to set the floor plane.
Actor should stand in A position so the subject can be created.
The cameras will pick up if there is anything reflective in the scene.
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Make sure to mask all , that way the system will ignore them.
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Once the scene is calibrated they should only pick up the placed markers.
The actor should do different motions for subject calibration.
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After that make sure capture name is Take01 and that capture processor is on so you can start recording.
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when the recording is done import the file saved from the Shogun live to Shogun post then export it as a FBX so it can be re-target to your own mesh, through HIK.
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I selected the mesh then inside HIK menu I click on quick rig tool, choose Set-By-Step then click on add.
Ad geometries
Select polygon soup and click on create/update.
Placed everything on the correct place.
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I only focus on one side because I could mirror the other after I moved one.
Selected skeleton only then I was able to create a rig for my skull.
I then imported the Mocap FBX file.
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Put all the rotation to 0 then put X to 90.
Changed character to none and created character definition.
I assign everything correctly , then changed source to control rig (renamed the character and source).
Result
Project 1
Once the group was created everyone was assigned to a position. My job was to do the acting for the group
We got everything ready on the computer then used the wand to calibrate the cameras.
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We had to make sure that every camera was picking up the markers.
Once all the camera had green next to it that means that the are all ready to record.
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The wand was placed in the middle and small tapes were place opposite each other in 4 corners of the room and the wand was then replaced with a tape.
He had to add 53 markers around parts of my body.
Here we are doing different motion to make sure that the camera was capturing everything properly and the skeleton created was holding up depending on the motion.
We also had to make sure there was no shine material around the scene because the camera would capture it.
This videos are some of many takes we recorded for the project.
They are the ones I chose to add to my character.
After everything was filmed the files were then exported as a FBX and Imported back into Maya.
I created a quick-rig for my mesh.
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The mesh was added inside the geometry then I selected polygon soup and pressed create/update after that I arranged the points and selected skeleton only.
Once I checked and everything was the way I wanted the skeleton was created.
I selected my mocap skeleton then selected hierachy to arrange the skeleton so I could put it in a T position. After that I rotate it to 90 percent.
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Here I created a character definition for the mocap.
I assigned all valuable parts to the right place.
My final Renders
I placed QuickRig on the character section and the mocap on source.
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I also baked my QuickRig so I could control the rig.
After that I clean up my mocap by adding a new animation layer based on selection so I did not have to animated around all the keys created from the mocap.
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I went through the animation fixing everything that did not look right.
Time Editor – Interface Basics
We looked at what the time editor is used for and the tools that are used to edit clips.
To import the animation I selected the root joint then the hierarchy.
Then I pressed add selected content from the scene.
I imported a animation clip by right clicking next to the first animation.
I was then able to blend the characters, put the trim and scale tools to use. I also relocated parts of a character to mach the other's position.
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Mo cap tracking sheet is used to track what is being recorded. You will find descriptions of what is being done, name, any types of error and more.
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Allows you to easily identify what you are looking for.
Traditional cinematography techniques used in film
Camera shot types – Types of shot
We learned about Camera Shot types, Angles and Motion.
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By using the types of shots shown in the image we can get the audience to react or feel a certain way.
Camera shot types – Number of subjects
This shots are defined by the number of people in a scene.
We also talked about different camera motion used for storytelling.
We used the camera in maya to learn how to set them up and make good use of them.
I looked at different cameras and how to get the best of them.
I learned that in the camera sequencer you can get tools to layout and manage camera shots.
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If there are multiple cameras in the scene they can be put together with uber cam to generate a single camera with all the shots from the other cameras.
Depth of field can be used to focus in a whole room or a subject. The depth of field can be affected by the focus distance and F Stop.
If the F Stop is high the focus will by spread across instead of focusing more on a subject.
Render setup can be used to render different cameras shots and everything that can be used to composite the scene outside maya.
PROJECT 3
I used QuickRig to create joints for my Mesh, then added my motion capture.
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For the motion capture joints, I selected it with hierarchy to allow me to use the rotation to put the joints into a T position.
Character definition was used to connect the joints to the characters controls so the motion could be used as source.
Here I am baking controls to my mesh so I could edit the motion if there was any problems.
By selecting the controls and creating a new layer, I was able fix parts in the animation that were not right with different layers.
After I was happy with the motion the layers were merged.
Then baked.
The mesh and rig reference was selected and exported as a FBX file.
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The same process was used for two more motion captures.
Simply demonstration.
I changed the workspace to animation then imported the first animation by selecting all the joints and pressed import from selected.
To import other animation I just right clicked and pressed on import animation clip.
Here I match relocators so the movements would match.
I used 3 motion capture on the same characters. I blended the motions split the some on the clips and deleted unwanted ones.
I then selected all of the joints in the scene and added a liner tangents to make sure the motion was consistent.
Created a simply mesh, then added a mash to it.
The mesh of the main character was added into the input mesh of the mash.
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The settings were changed to meet my needs.
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By enabling the scaling and putting the scale multiplier to one each cube created by the mash will scale depending on the size of the faces.
I added a off set and changed the scale of the cubes and the rotation on the x axis.
Another offset was added and the Y axis was changed to 1.
Falloff was created for both offset so I could see how the nodes were affecting the meshes.
First falloff settings
Second falloff settings.
They were both grouped, so I could animate them together.
I added a color node, changed the color and the background color.
I dragged and dropped the first falloff while holding alt so I clone the falloff (the color will change depending on the position of the fall off).
I animated the group so I could get the effect I was looking for.
I created another mash network, added a translate so I could have freedom to animate it. A color node was also added to the second mash.
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I also cloned the first color falloff of the first mash and added it to the second mash color falloff so my ball mesh would be affected when it comes into contact with the the whole falloff.
To see the color in Arnold render I had to assign new Aisurface shader material.
Added a aiUserDataColor to the emission.
I selected the Repomesh then the color set editor to see the name of the color attribute.
The color Per Vertex and export Vertex colors had to be on for the colors to be visible in the render viewer.
I animated all my cameras one by one.
Used the camera sequencer to create a new shot.
Here I framed the shot.
Button to create shot.
Button to frame shot.
Here I added cameras to my shot.
Slip the shot.
Used Ubercam to put all the shots in a single camera.
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That is the camera I used for the final render.
In after effects I only slip the shot so I could use time stretch to slow down a small part of the shot.
FINAL RENDER
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