Project 2:

Overview:

The second project involves capturing the motion that was set up by your shot list and storyboards, labeling the trajectories of the markers on the performer, cleaning the data, creating a skeleton, and applying the motion to your skeleton.

Software:

Vicon iQ2.0, Maya, and Motion Builder

Assignment:

You will need to elect one person in your group to wear the motion capture suit. Before any capture can be done, you will need to calibrate the space(Y:\Courses\AC760_Windsor_Spring_2006\Docs\IQMocapEssentials\ specifically look at the movies for calibration as well as mocap principles). The person who will later be in the suit will run these sessions and other members will move the static and dynamic calibrating devices. Everyone will be involved in putting markers on the motion capture subject, and the people not in the suit will be responsible for capturing. Each person must label and clean at least two motions. All markers should have a label and all discrepancies should be taken care of in your final .c3d file. If there is missing marker data, this can be addressed using MotionBuilder. iQ should do the majority of the cleanup for you, but it's still possible you'll have to do some of it yourself.

Once data is in Motionbuilder, you'll been to apply to the data to an "Actor" as shown in class.

Once you have the marker data of the T-pose, you can use this to help create a skeleton in Maya. Once finished, take into Motionbuilder and characterize. Use the bone set-up names to make life easier. Then use the actor as the input for creating your first run of animations and import them into Maya.

Instructor:

The motion to be turned in needs to only be one of your motions, but I need the optical markers, actor, and character in a .fbx file as well as the data imported back into a Maya file. If any one has trouble or questions, feel free to talk to me about them.

Hints: Use reference images to help create the skeleton. Match the bone names to what Motionbuilder is looking for to make life easier. Be sure to plot your animation to a skeleton in order for the keyframes to be "baked" into the skeleton. Select the Hips in order to write out the correct .fbx motion.