How to insert a new pose into existing animation

[Cyaoeu]

@AnnaO'Key

The thing is that I’m trying to figure out if Blender can fit into our work pipeline.
I’m relatively new to Blender and I like almost everything about it.
For years, I used to work in other software, creating animations, while animation tools in Blender quite differ from those I got used to.
That’s why I created this thread, sorry if it makes you dizzy :spin:

Nah, it’s fine. But if it’s mocap handed to you there’s probably no way to make it less painful. The only way to make it less painful would be to record the mocap yourself so you’ve got exactly what you need and have to spend less time on cleaning it up.

[AnnaO_Key]

@MarkJoel60

Anna, I think the discussion is helpful. I’m not a Blender Developer, but discussing pipelines is important.

I come back to my long post and a question I asked that you probably missed: “Is there a 3D Tool that does this?” It might be helpful if so to focus the conversation around an existing product. Also, what does your work pipeline consist of currently?

Hello, Mark!
We often have to do with MOCAP in game-dev industry, because a game project can plan hundreds of animations. And developer might want to have them all nice and done in a couple of weeks (or a bit longer :p)
So the pipeline looks like that:

1. They shoot hundreds of animations in a couple of days (using VICON system, for example, but system does not matter, I believe).
2. Raw data is reconstructed and edited in MOCAP software (VICON has got IQ), where all shooting mistakes and jerks are corrected smoothed to a degree needed, and missing curves reconstructed. Final data can be of a very good quality indeed. All free MOCAP animations that I saw were mainly of very bad quality :evilgrin:
3. Best software for working with MOCAP is MotionBuilder. It has dozens of tools for mapping marker data to character and adjusting it. It also transfers data to default BVH skeleton. BVH can be used in other animating software (like Maya, Max, Blender ;). Maya most often, I think because most famous animation schools use it and therefore many their students know how to use it and use it in their work lately.
4. You are right saying that MOCAP keys all the frames. That’s why the only convenient way to freely operate with it - is working with layers. So you leave the base animation layer untouched and make pose corrections or add additional animations on upper layers(-s). One layer is usually quite enough. So, the fastest editing process for standard ingame animation would be as follows:

• Create Idle Pose for the character, insert it in the beginning and in the end, on New Layer. Remove jerks if there are ones, in the Base Layer. Bake New Layer to Base Layer for export. If you shoot all animations beginning with a pose alike, you will not need any further corrections at all.
• Advanced animations: make corrections if needed. Add weapons and make everything “look nice”.
• That’s all.
  5.There are several crucial points in editing MOCAP:
• You can always bake add layer animation to base layer.
• You can always work in base layer, reducing keys (deleting animation) you don’t need and “painting” your own.
• You can always reduce base layer animation to just several poses (deleting everything in-betweens) and use them like in pose-to-pose animation. In this case you have key poses and timing appropriate for our physical world.
• Further on you can always exaggerate these poses and modify timing to what your fantasy likes. You can insert any breakdowns anywhere. Thus you can follow classical animation principles and get cartoony animation.
  Remember, Disney also used rotoscopy in their animated films.

In a larger companies working with large projects, having MotionBuilder for MOCAP transfer and further editing, and having Maya for models, rigs, animations and final render is ok.
But smaller companies can better afford and support Blender.
In current situation I’d like to become a Blender fan And I’d better support Blender in any way I can, because I like its policy and see its perspectives.
And I’d like it to be a convenient and popular software for creating animations as well as it already is in modelling and texturing. I know that it takes time, money and effort. And I’m willing to support it as far as I can.

[AnnaO_Key]

@Cyaoeu

Nah, it’s fine. But if it’s mocap handed to you there’s probably no way to make it less painful. The only way to make it less painful would be to record the mocap yourself so you’ve got exactly what you need and have to spend less time on cleaning it up.

Oh, that would be best, you’re right But our MOCAP system moved to another city. So we have to work with what we get.