Monday, 21 December 2009

Practical Artefact Description for Research Document

With Mocap being a controversial medium, exploration into how this software works will be planned. Data from an actor’s movements will be recorded and mapped to a character where the motions will be examined through 6 key areas; Timing, Spacing, Mass, Weight, Anticipation and Follow-through, as these are the core principles for animation highlighted by CG Academy - Animation Fundamentals. A camera will record video footage of the actor in the data collection process to use as a reference for muscle movement. A key framed alternative of the same motion to the same model will be created to examine to show the positives for each technique. Main areas of interest that will be looked into will be; The 6 key areas previously highlighted as well as overall time taken for each form of practice.

A Motion Capture facility will be used to collect motion data from an actor specialized in Thai Boxing. Three different individual sets of Thai Boxing combinations will be recorded by the software, each being roughly 10 seconds long. The three different data files will be converted into Bio Vision Hierarchy (BVH) files which are friendly to Autodesk’s Motionbuilder software and any necessary cleaning up of the data will be applied. A test dummy character created in 3D Studio Max will be imported into Motionbuilder where the BVH data can be mapped to it. Three more animations will be created using the same test dummy character, the motions being key framed to be exactly the same as the motion capture recorded. These 6 artefacts will then be discussed in an evaluation and all studio sessions, meetings and editing will be recorded and commented on in a progress journal.

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