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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

Wookies can dance too


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Wookie Dance

 

This just uses the same .bvh mocap ZachBG posted in the resuable motion forum. Since it worked with 2001 skeletons I just had to try it out on the wookie. It's not perfect (the arm passes through his face/body a couple times) but this is about the best I've been able to get hair to render in an animation. Plus a wookie dancing to some MJ is just plain funny.

 

Kevin

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George Lucas is rolling over in his grave right now...

 

..wait...

 

George Lucas isn't dead!

 

He will be after he sees this of course....

 

Holy cow! Wouldn't Chewie be like a young kid around the time of Episode 3? Maybe they could get this in there somewhere...

 

"Episode 3... Star Wars Babies!"

 

Vernon "!" Zehr

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HAHAHA!! That's awesome!! And it really showcases the hair. Do you have a larger render of it?

 

This animation really helps show my problem with mocap on non-human characters. It looks more like a guy in a suit than a living creature.

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This animation really helps show my problem with mocap on non-human characters. It looks more like a guy in a suit than a living creature.

Without setting up the mocap to suit the character this is true. IE the proportions should be "recalculated" to account for the bigger head etc. Then there are weight issues. Ah well....it gives a good starting point. But you know all about it anyway.

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Awesome!!!. I gotta say it would have been better with beat it or thriller, imagine chewy doing the thriller dance. Anyhow its awesome, except for the hands and legs going through each other or the face its awesome, the dance is a little dull though, kinda repetitive but awesome nonetheless.

 

If you have time you could maybe do a song like smooth criminal or beat it with the spins and the moonwalk!!!.

 

Anyhow a lot of props for that and the chewy model is just amazing, i just laughed before i even played the movie.

 

KEEP IT UP

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...It looks more like a guy in a suit than a living creature.

Guy in a suit! Guy in a suit!

 

You see how amazingly realistic AM is!?!? It is so realistic and powerfull it can capture and portray the subtle details of a REAL life man in a big hairy costume...

 

p.s. I really think you should TRY to get sued... imagine the publicity... AND this animation will end up on every news show, late night talk show... you would become famous.

 

If the lawsuit starts to go bad for you... I am sure we can all pitch in and... oh... have to go phone's ringing...

 

 

Vernon "NOT a lawyer" Zehr

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Yup. THATS FUNNY!

 

MoCAP is making some people think!

 

MY only critique is to add a fill light behind him...those shadows are overpowering. AND it would possibly add to the humor if you gave the eyeball bones an 'aim-at' to the camera...

 

NICE SAMPLE!

 

VERN--- It's "Fat guy in a little suit-fat guy in a little suit!" -Chris Farley

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If you have time you could maybe do a song like smooth criminal or beat it with the spins and the moonwalk!!!.

Man, he's just a WOOKIE. You're expecting far too much. He's probably never even heard of the moon.....maybe EndorWalk. :D

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Wookiee not Wookie

 

Holy cow! Wouldn't Chewie be like a young kid around the time of Episode 3? Maybe they could get this in there somewhere...

 

Nah. The wookiee life cycle is about 20 years longer than most Correlians (humans) and he's about 25 in Episode III. I'm so excited that they're finally putting Kashyyk in the movies! It's so cool there! Near the beaches, they live in these neat huts, and then deeper into the forest, where the trees go up thousands of feet (wookiees get comfort from being up high), they live in huts built into the side of trees. Then they have elevators which take them to the underlevels. Their are dangerous creatures down there, and they have to kill one of them and make a belt out of its tongue for their Rite of Passage into adulthood. They usually bring their entire family to help them hold its mouth open, as it has lightning reflexes in its mouth, but a few try to go out alone, most of which have been killed or lost for a long period of time. Chewbacca's cousin, Lowbacca, got hurt when he tried to go out alone. I'm not sure if Chewbacca fights in Episode III when the wookiees are defending the beac, but his father, Shilattyltak (not sure if I spelled it right) definitely does, and I think he dies.

 

I could go on much longer, but I assume none of you came here for a Star Wars species lesson... :rolleyes: Back to the Star Wars forums to post the other 3 pages I typed. :lol:

 

I love that model, BTW! I'm gonna try to make a realistic-looking one when I update from v10.5... :P

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Wow! I love that everyone is getting into mocap with their A:M models! This is what I hoped would happen! It is just really cool that you can do that in A:M--all those .bvh files all over the internet are great examples of reusable motion :D

Lest we forget, when it comes to Hash MoCap BVH animation, Will Sutton laid the groundwork with his fantastic tutorial and examples. THANKS WILL!

 

His tutorial: http://www.zandoria.com/motioncapture.htm

 

.bvh files all over the internet? Where...? I have only found the 1 (albeit rich) source at www.bvhfiles.com

 

 

DOES ANYONE KNOW ANYONE WHO HAS A MOTION CAPTURE RIG? Just thought I would ask...

 

If Hash Inc. makes a movie as mentioned in 2006...it would be cool to see some MoCap in it...

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Thanks guys. It was a lot of work ;). Zach did an awesome job adapting that .bvh file to the 2001 rig. It was cool to see how easy it was to reuse on the wookie...

 

Vern, I'm not so sure I'm ready to get sued. Then again George Lucas taking all my money away wouldn't be that much different ... I may as well just redirect my paycheck directly to his account...stupid star wars rererereleases/prequals/video games/lunch boxes...

 

Ed, I don't have a larger render of it yet, this little 320x240 version with 5 passes took long enough. If I get around to fixing up the problems I'll render out a bigger version. Definately agree with you on mocap, but it was just too tempting to try out.

 

starwarsguy ... I had no idea it was actually wookiee. I've been mispelling that for years ...

 

John Bigboote - if I get around to enlarging it I'll try to fix the lighting.

 

One thing that seemed to help with the hair was rendering it with a fairly large bulb and multipass, that seemed to soften things up a bit. In the past I've ended up wth some fairly strange results when rendering hair and animation (large black shimmers).

 

Anyway, thanks again all for the comments.

 

Kevin

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Hash Inc. has a motion capture rig, a Polhemus 16-sensor. We haven't turned it on in years.

 

Wow, Martin!

 

How about strapping Steve Sappington into that and recording his activities throughout the day. :D

 

Any chance that you might consider building up a more extensive library of motion for the community?

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Star Wars Guy...

 

Your question is almost EXACTLY the same as I asked in the reusable motion forum about a week ago...

 

A BVH file is a motion captured 'skeleton' with keyframes recorded on every frame. You can use any rig, what you do is 'attach' your rigged character bone by bone, limb by limb to the BVH skeleton. This is done with simple 'translate-to's' and 'orient-likes' and then adjustments, adjustments, adjustments...

 

The beauty thing is, once you get the hang...you can start to manipulate or enhance the mocap data. Once baked, the mocap action can be edited with other hand animated actions...so you can use a mocap 'spin' and then make your character walk away with a walk cycle you animated.

 

The BEST way to get up and running is to read Will Sutton's tutorial.

http://www.zandoria.com/motioncapture.htm

Experiment, experiment, experiment.

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Hash Inc. has a motion capture rig, a Polhemus 16-sensor. We haven't turned it on in years.

Oh really! There's got to be a story behind this!

 

Martin, did you ever get it working? Do you have any BVH files you could share? How long does it take to get 'up and running'?

 

I did a google search but didn't learn too much... is this system wireless? Does it connect to any PC or does it have it's own CPU?

 

So 16 sensors...

that's feet 2

ankles 2

knees 2

lower body 1

upper body 1

elbows 2

wrists 2

hands 2

neck 1

head 1

???

 

How much brain-surgury is involved in running this?

 

Very interesting...

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Kevin, that's so cool!

 

It's really funny that so many people have latched on to this so-called dance--it came from a BVH file called "sillymoves.bvh"--which I think was a very appropriate name. I've been looking for a while for a BVH file of actual club dancing, but I haven't found any yet.

 

It's looking like my planned video tute on BVH work is getting redundant! :D

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You wear a suit with sensors on it, and then, you tape it and the position of each sensor is recorded at each frame and makes each sensor the end of a bone, creating an "action." The more complex the suit, the more cameras you need, as each sensor must be seen by at least 1 camera at all times. That's all I know... :lol:

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www.turbosquid.com

www.renderosity.com

 

Have a ton of BVH files for purchase and for free.

 

Also there is a program for 40 bucks where you can do motion capture, but you need at least 2 cameras.

 

It seems to work very well.

 

It's called visual marker.

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That looks really great. I was cracking up the whole time.

 

BVH files could be a partial answer to fitting A:M into a pipeline. As BVH's are pretty much universally accepted, and as we can clearly see, beautifully imported into A:M, it could be a way of transferring animation from A:M into other packages. I believe I saw a conversation on this a while ago (don't search too hard, I think it was on a different forum :) ) . An exporter can only be so far away...

 

I'd love to see this at a higher resolution. Besides adding some blinks and fixing the little ammo belt problems, this has a really nice polished feel.

 

Zack

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