Animating models with motion capture
First of all I'm a blender newbie who would like to animate some models hosted here :P.
There is a nice repository of motion capture data (2500 animations) : https://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture
USAGE RIGHTS:
CMU places no restrictions on the use of the original dataset, and I
(Bruce) place no additional restrictions on the use of this particular
BVH conversion.
These mocaps can be imported as BVH into blender. Then you just have to link the armature to the mesh. here is a video tutorial explaining this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YY12TkXGqc&feature=related.
This work quite well if the rest position of the armature matches the one of the mesh, which occurs rarely in practice ... I tried to import a BVH with the ogre model here : while the upper part of the body was well animated, there were problems with legs.
So now I see 2 solutions : modify the mesh so that its T pose matches the one of the BVH file, or create an armature pose that matches the one of the mesh and attach the mesh to the armature in this pose. While the second solution seems easier, the first one would allow to use nearly all the BVH files with the model once its bind pose is modified.
I played around with it some time ago too... IMHO given the lack of really usable free mocap data out there, and the huge amount of cleanup necessary... its not really worth the touble.
And I guess soon we will have all Kinect home motion capture right into Blender anzways, so no real need to bother with it any more ;)
--
http://freegamedev.net
Lol after realising what you where showing me, MOTION CAPTURE is the animation rigging. And well thats awsome since I can rigg a model in NOTIME with blender. I will be looking into this. Purhaps even try going to the extreme and implementing this as a convert to .ugh and youll see these on my models. Considering I can merge animations from this single file. This may let me rig and animate instantly once a single rigging is set. But its a long shot.
Question? do they use the same rigging for every motion capture? If so I think im going to explore this. I mean 2,500 animations is kinda like boggling my mind here.
www.tkodo.com
Yes, it's the same rigging for all motion capture and motion are sampled at 60 or 120 Hz (I don't remember well).
But I have gave up trying using this. As pointed out by julius, kinect is coming soon and there are already great videos on kinecthack.net !
No need to wait, kinect to blender mocap is a reality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PtxfRpCBHE&feature=player_embedded#at=126
The program is "Brekel", its available here:
http://www.brekel.com/?page_id=155
For the moment Brekel, and other softwares, can export data to bvh, and then you can import bvh into blender. The problem is to match the bvh skeleton with the model's skeleton :/.
A thread on brekel's website speaking about directly using kinect into blender : http://www.brekel.com/?page_id=368/general-discussion/um-blender/
But the most promising things I've seen in forums so far is : http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?207281-Using-OSC-in-Blender-2.5-Game-Engine-(with-Kinect-captured-data)
And a nice video here : http://www.kinect-hacks.com/kinect-hacks/2011/02/12/controlling-virtual-...