I have a character rigged for my game (IK/FK and deformation bones), So I am looking into capturing walks/runs and some of the full body motions and transferring that to my character.
Where do I start? How to I retarget animation from mocap rig to my character? (can not scale my character, it has to remain the way it is now)
One of the critical aspects of the character is that it has “origin” bone, the root, which has to move as character moves (motion delta is calculated by the game engine based on motion of the root bone). How would I make root bone moving when transferring motion from mocap rig to the game rig?
I tried a couple times and failed. There are some new BVH Retargeting scripts floating around that you may want to look into. The only mocap data I had access to are the free ones floating around the web (probably 10 years old now). Even at the BVH level the feet would slide around and the rig/bones are out-of-date and not compatible with newer rigs.
Well, what I am wondering about is what’s the difference between using retargeting scripts and manually assigning constraints (copy rot and copy rot/loc) ?
I think the retargeting is more of an automatic process. And once you define a retarget “RIG” you can re-use multiple mocap files from the same source on the same rig style (i.e. rigify) more or less automatically (with each run of the script). Otherwise each new mocap dataset must be retargeted manually.
To avoid having to end up doing more work converting than actually working on the task at hand I would suggest the All or Nothing concept. Either go all in and apply their default rig to you model or scrap them and find something more compatible.
If iPi is the best for what you need and you can’t find anything better then go all in with them.
How much time will it take to figure out and do the conversion (if it’s even possible) vs. finding something that works with what you have.
I’ve had a fair amount of success with mocap… the mocap tools that come with blender aren’t too bad… they have their uses but aren’t as clear as they could be
I’ve tried ipisoft and its a really good low budget alternative to regular mocap methods…
the problem with ipisoft, is the animations will need a lot of cleanup afterwards, as the resolution isn’t great, leading to a lot of jitter and sliding feet, keep this in mind as it can take a fair amount of time to get a result you’re happy with.
another tool I have used successfully with blender is endorphin, it allows you to blend between prerecorded mocap files, apply physics to mocap animations, perform full physics or partial physics to a rig and other cool stuff like that… really useful for tweaking, cleaning and joining the mocap files you get from ipisoft. it also makes it easier to remove jitter or slide. I think that endorphin is a really useful tool for manipulating motion capture animation.,for making mocaps which would never be humanly possible without a stuntman and a very expensive setup. gudluck!
I suspect that 2 bones that connect hip bone to legs in iPi aren’t important. So technically converting vertical hip bone’s motion into horizontal pelvic bone motion is what I’d need to do. any hints?
