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Cap Your Mo! Join the Summer Mo-Cap Challenge


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  • Hash Fellow

Animation:Master has been able to use motion capture for years but it's always required expensive and complicated equipment.

Not anymore!

Now you don't need expensive equipment to record motion capture! No special cameras, no tracking balls! You can make motion capture from regular video!

 

SideBySideDelayedGIF.gif

 

Get in on the Summer Mo-Cap Challenge!

Learn how to do mo-cap for your A:M characters!

There will be prizes including a $25 Hash Store credit for everyone who enters.

"Follow"  to this thread to stay up on developments (button in upper right corner)

 

Learn to... Cap Your Mo!

1 Shoot some action video

I recommend you try something simple for your first attempt.

 

2 Edit your video

 

3 Convert your video to motion capture

Deepmotion.com will convert your cellphone or camcorder video to a motion capture file. Their free account lets you convert up to three video clips of up to 10 seconds each per month. You have lots of chances to try your hand at mo-capping... for free!

 

4 Constrain your character to the mo-cap object

Your motion capture file becomes an Action Object in A:M that your character will follow.

Update: see "Version Trouble" post below about a bug in v19 and about using v18 for this step

Part 1 (hip and legs)

 

Part 2 (arms and spine)...

Bonus tut: Matt Campbell has an alternate mo-cap process you may find useful... Matt's Video

Fully constrained result:

 

This is the BVH file I used in the video if you wish to practice with it: MAH01152Dance_Adult_Male_Alt.bvh

What about the hands and fingers? We'll cover that later.

 

5 Use your animation in a chor

Dress up your mo-cap animation with scenery, props and lighting!

Video... coming soon.

 

6 Show your work!

I bet you can think of more interesting things to do with mo-cap and your characters than I did!

Maybe you can tie together a few different shots into a small story?

Post your experiments and questions and comments in this thread!

 

7 Enter!

Entries due in by October 31 November 28  December 20

Update: the Contest is concluded (see winners here)but you can still qualify for the $25 participant prize with an entry before end-of-Summer 2023!

Pick out your most interesting work and submit it. Everyone who enters will get a $25 Hash Store credit!

Basic guidelines:

-Use your original A:M character, not a stock character.

-Your entry will include both your animation and your mo-cap video. You can put the video before the animation or after.

-Of course, all your characters and animation will be modeled and rendered in Animation:Master!

-Everyone wins in this Challenge but we might have a vote among all the entrants for a favorite entry. So if you want to vote... you have to enter!

-Subscribe to this thread to stay up on developments

Entries due in by October 31 November 28 December 20

If you are uncertain about any step... contact me!

Have fun! Lets see some cool A:M stuff!

 

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  • Hash Fellow
On 6/27/2022 at 6:01 PM, Tom said:

Wow...great stuff!

I bet a Yoga enthusiast like yourself will have some interesting motion to capture!

Looking forward to your entry!

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  • Hash Fellow

Example of a Basic Entry

This sample entry incorporates the three things we are looking for in the "Cap your Mo, Summer Mo-Cap Challenge"

1. I show the video I shot for the motion capture\. Putting the video after the animation is an option.

2. The motion capture was used on an original character.

3. The animation was put in a little scene to give it a premise.

(If the embedded video doesn't play, click on the "Watch on YouTube")

Extra things I did:

-I clipped out the starting T-pose since that wasn't part of my "story"

-I manually key-framed eye direction and finger poses since those are not represented in the mo-cap data.

 

Your entry can have more than one shot. Use several to tell a small story!

All the how-to's in the top post.

If you are having trouble with any part of the process... PM me!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Hash Fellow

Reminder.gif

DeepMotion gives you three free mo-cap conversion per month so there's no reason to not shoot some experimental test now instead of letting them go to waste, even if you don't use it in your final project.

Don't wait til the last minute... Summer ends in September!

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Is there a minimum rig we should be using? None of my stuff uses any of the pre built rigs like TSM2 etc and the last time I messed about with .BVH (Using the kinect to make them) they required a more advanced rig than I had built/installed.

My rigs usually look like the one below. They don't have any special constraints beyond weighting.

Rig.png

 

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  • Hash Fellow
15 minutes ago, Wildsided said:

Is there a minimum rig we should be using? None of my stuff uses any of the pre built rigs like TSM2 etc and the last time I messed about with .BVH (Using the kinect to make them) they required a more advanced rig than I had built/installed.

My rigs usually look like the one below. They don't have any special constraints beyond weighting.

Rig.png

 

 

@WildsidedIs that all FK... you rotate each bone into position individually? Then it is exactly what you want!

If that has some IK constraints on it, turning those off would probably do it.

If you have more doubts, ask.

If you want to bring that to Live Answer Time we could look at it there also.

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  • Hash Fellow

Version Trouble

I just discovered that v19.0 and the v19.5 betas I've been testing were importing BVH files incorrectly!

If you have watched the "Constraining" video  above you see the mocap bones coming in looking like this...

v19.0p_Rls.jpg

 

It's a mess but I presumed it was a problem with the BVH file and worked around it and still got my mo-cap done.

 

However, today I found out that that is a broken result. If you use v18.0p you will get a correct import that looks like this...

v18.0p_Rls.jpg

 

Much better! I suggest you use v18 for the BVH import step until the fixed version of v19.5 arrives in a few weeks.

You can get the v18.0p installer from the Hash ftp site. You will need an ftp program like FileZilla to go to...

ftp . hash . com/pub/updates

After you install v18, copy your master0.lic file from your v19 folder to your v18 folder to enable it.

If you're not sure about any part of this... ask me!

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • Hash Fellow

Ideas for your mo-cap entry...

  • A dance step 🕺
  • An exercise 💪
  • A sport 🏌️‍♂️
  • A household chore 🍜
  • Any outdoor task 🛠️
  • ???  🤔

 

Don't let Summer run out without giving this mo-cap thing a try!

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  • Hash Fellow

Multiple takes in one upload

DeepMotion gives you three free 10-sec uploads per month, but each upload counts as 10 seconds even if it is shorter than 10 seconds.

Since running in front of the camera only took about 2 seconds, I edited four different takes together into one clip.

DeepMotion mostly got it right and I'll be able to extract the one or two that I want to use...

 

Notice there is no T-pose in my video. I'll re-use the constraints I made from one of my other clips.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • Hash Fellow
37 minutes ago, Wildsided said:

How much are we allowed to edit the BVH before it becomes ineligible? Like to eliminate jittering or move things to prevent model clipping? or exaggerate something etc.

That is allowed. I presume the mo-cap will need some doctoring.

Since part of the contest is to include the video you shot, voters can assess if they think you have done too much real animation.

And if you wanted to post here with tips on fixing mo-cap that would be useful as well.

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  • Hash Fellow

I've detected a few glimmers of mo-cap activity among our forum members but I'd like to see more.

The contest is extended to November 28!

If you haven't started, now you can!

Get your entry in by Monday November 28!

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  • 3 weeks later...

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