What is Motion capture?

Hello everyone :slight_smile:

I found a video today that really intrigued me. I’ve heard of motion capture in several instances… or maybe i’m thinking of motion tracking… Anywhere i have some confusion on what it is! haha :stuck_out_tongue:

If any of you are Familiar with the youtube channel “Rooster Teeth” they did an episode of Recap where they did the regular recap but using Motion capture to animate the characters for it. They also use that method for RWBY and Red Vs Blue i think.

I remember wanting to learn more about it… and i’ve been trying to do some animation lately and it is quite difficult to get things to look natural and real.

But then today i came across this.

The movement looks so incredible to me. I mean sure there’s lots of camera movement and blurring that aids in the visual appeal, but it looks so natural and i’m wondering what is motion capture… and can your average person at home do this? What is the process? :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank you very much ^-^

Blur Studios published a"making of" that shows some photographs of their motion capture studio. Their earlier studio was about 1/4 that size, and only had 12 high definition/high speed video cameras mounted around the room. Those cameras, iirc, cost around $30K each. Some people have experimented with WII remote controllers taped to their arms and legs to get a home-studio type of motion capture, but I haven’t seen anything of very high quality coming from those efforts, yet.

The best home animators have come up with so far is ‘reference video’ where you make a video of yourself acting out the part, and use it as a reference for your animation.

Some files created by motion capture studios are available on line. Blender can import and use BVH type motion capture files.

Motion tracking is a way to figure out where a live camera was pointed, and how it might have moved in a live scene, so an animated camera can be moved the same way. This allows an animator to put CG into a live shot without looking like its perspective is off.

Aww… That’s really sad news then :frowning:

I guess it’s back to the tedious process of animating it by hand then xD

I’ll have to try and remember to use video reference since i have at least one decent HD camera i guess but even then it’ll take a while i guess :stuck_out_tongue: