John Bigboote Posted February 4, 2005 Posted February 4, 2005 http://www.campbellanimation.com/ We've been talking about BVH Mo-Cap down in the 'reusable motion' forum, and inspired by Zach Brewster-Geisz and Colin Freeman's cool animations and guided by Will Sutton's motion capture tutorial I was able to browse free BVH files thru bvhfiles.com via their 'BVHplayer utility' , import it into A:M and constrain it to my TSM2 rigged character. My character (Gurly Girl) also has long V11 hair so the effect of the hair on the real motion is...I think...pretty cool. But then, I like bus fumes too. If you were to mix MoCAP and hand animation... whooaaa! Have a look...give me some feedback...bad or good...I can take it...just sugarcoat the bad... OH- and I've updated the 'STONES' movie too... http://www.campbellanimation.com/ Quote
Paul Forwood Posted February 5, 2005 Posted February 5, 2005 Hey, Matt, that's really cool! You must have done something to your site because I was able to view all of your clips this time, where in the past my pc would lock up. All interesting and fun, particularly the new Stones short! It's nice to see it reach a satisfactory conclusion though one thing bothered me. If that is Mick stuck in the camera shouldn't your female character be moving forward before you cut to that shot? Great work though! Regarding your site: Just the toon render video refused to load and it may just be me and my tired eyes but some of the text on your site is pretty small and getting smaller. It is interesting to know that the TSM2 rig will work with BVH files. I did some tests a couple of years ago with the Hash rig and it worked well but I never got around to smoothing out my rigging glitches. I'll have to try again with the TSM2 rig. Are there any major hurdles to overcome? Well done with all of your output! I always keep an eye out for your stuff. Quote
Paul Forwood Posted February 5, 2005 Posted February 5, 2005 Oh, wait a minute. I get it now! Don't stop...don't stop...I stopped. Hmmm. Maybe a long side-shot of Mick moving forward and the girl tracking backward would help? Just a thought. Daggnabit! I'll have to go back and watch it again now incase I missed something! Quote
John Bigboote Posted February 5, 2005 Author Posted February 5, 2005 Oh, wait a minute. I get it now! Don't stop...don't stop...I stopped. yuk-yuk-----yuch! Paul- Well I've changed the content of my site but nothing technical has changed. I hope my website is not crashing other peoples computers...heck I may take down the whole grid...well...the internet is more of a 'sphere' than a grid-I imagine... I've learned a cool thing about 'tweeking' mocap action and how A:M makes it quite simple to do: You apply the BVH action to your character in an 'action' and then drop the action on the character in the choreography...but you can still animate your character in the chor, so if you put the chor action setting to 'additive' you will be animating 'on top' of the mocap data. A great way to overemphasize actions or put that 'toon' touch on things. STONES. Yeah, the writing and staging is 'suspect' in this. I've showed it to a handful of folks who laughed at the gag so I figured 'good enough'. Move on. One thing cool in there is the way I was able to use TSM2's new 'stretch' feature...on some of the guitarist's riffs and as the Camera Girl is backing away from the approaching Mick... THAT is a great feature built-in to TSM2. Thanks for reply. Quote
JTalbotski Posted February 5, 2005 Posted February 5, 2005 Cool stuff, Matt! Your Gurly Girl is starting to look a LOT like Tina Turner with those dance moves and hair! Jim P.S.Firefox on my Mac didn't like your site very much but I saw everything fine with IE. Go figure. Quote
cfree68f Posted February 5, 2005 Posted February 5, 2005 Hey Matt! Thats great! all of it. I'm liking the site allot better. Every thing is sharp, smooth and crisp. Good job! My only other comment now would be to import the videos into flash files and load the swfs on clicks.. They'll stream and you won't go to that blank quicktime page. Still though.. its a great site and something to be proud of. Thats a good tip on the additive action stuff. I hadnt thought of that. but it makes sense. That would help with hands and facial animation as well. C Quote
sculptorpro Posted February 5, 2005 Posted February 5, 2005 Matt, was just able to check out your Rolling Stones vid and it looks great, the things I liked about it were those little head flicks of Micks and of course the rythmic motions. One thing I kept looking for were the stilletto heels on the camera woman, must be a habit of mine in real life just to see how sharp they are. Just going to check out the rest of the site. Quote
Paul Forwood Posted February 5, 2005 Posted February 5, 2005 Cool stuff, Matt! Your Gurly Girl is starting to look a LOT like Tina Turner with those dance moves and hair! Yeah. I noticed that too! Quote
Paul Forwood Posted February 5, 2005 Posted February 5, 2005 Oh, Jim, you have got to try some BVH files on some of your characters! That I would love to see! Quote
steve392 Posted February 5, 2005 Posted February 5, 2005 Haha thats great ,terrific carrector ,The Stones just get better and better ,wonderfull stuff Quote
John Bigboote Posted February 5, 2005 Author Posted February 5, 2005 Yeah...JIM! Give it a twirl! Actually I'd like to see more folks discover BVH's... even if you think it is 'cheating' as I did...it's a great way to study motion and it will open new doors... I think it would be helpful for newbies as well. Tina Turner? I don't see it...but thanks! My website is 'evolving' lil X lil... the overall size needs to be twerped 'up' a scoatch. My portfolio is a WIP from 5 years ago...mostly the whole thing is an experiment...a what-if...seems to be holding it's own tho...nobody's complaining about 'I can't open this. or that doesn't work' I will consider Colin's advice about switching from QT to .swf for the movie files...I have a utilty called 'flix-lite' (wildform.com) that will help. I need to consider A) file size to quality comparison with QT ... Playback smoothness (QT is pretty good) C) Overall useability and web conformity... Quote
noah brewer Posted February 7, 2005 Posted February 7, 2005 Nice Stones animation!! Yeah, there are definitely some situations when mocap is the logical way to go. There's just something about putting a bvh motion into a character (esp. that you've created) that shows you how much animation detail we usually miss. It also became apparent to me that while the pelvis is a convenient base for the body's movements, the base actually changes quite frequently depending on what the body is doing. Hence more complicated character rigs... Keep up the good work! Quote
heyvern Posted February 7, 2005 Posted February 7, 2005 WooHooo! I never saw the Stones thing final rendered before! Great job! The BVH sample seemed a bit... stiff to me... a little jerky. I was extremely disturbed when her arm passed through a breast... I actually shuddered! ..wait a sec!... holographic breast enhancement... future technology?.... Comments on the site (Flash content)... I love your artistic style... would really like to see it carried through in the interface design somehow. When the buttons zoom on and off screen... the click is still active so... if the cursor is on the screen the buttons click as they zoom by... if this was on purpose then nevermind. Portfolio section... I kept closing the window by mistake instead of hitting the back button... had to watch the zipper several times... ...don't get me wrong! I love zippers! I have a large collection of zippers I use everday! Would like a way to get past the intro animation stuff though. Very large stuff... Granted, no one but me uses a Mac... and everyone but me has a really really fast processor... but... very slow here on my end. Those women you draw... very naughty... is this a comment? I believe so! Vernon "!" Zehr Quote
John Bigboote Posted February 9, 2005 Author Posted February 9, 2005 HeyVern! Thanks for the comments... glad you like d the 'Stones'... The whole webpage is due for a major design overhaul, the portfolio is 4 or 5 years old done in Flash3. The new webportfolio will have a whole gallery of my doodle-babes.... very naughty indeed. The motion capture has improved as I get my bearings of exactly 'how' to make the TSM2 rig adhere to the BVH skeleton without popping... I'd post a render but the current/latest render has the character naked...for anatomical reasons of course. Respek! Quote
johnl3d Posted February 13, 2005 Posted February 13, 2005 Matt I always enjoy your posts you have a lot of artistic skill Quote
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