Research Artefact 5: Mocap for Character

This artefact explores the process of creating motion and plotting it to a character to be rendered out in 3D Studio Max. The motion decided on was chosen for it’s similarity to an existing animated sequence previously created using key-framing. The animated scene is of a girl walking into a room, picking up a ball and looking around, which lasts around 15 seconds. Markers were set up in the lab to give rough positions for parts of the motion, these include which directions to walk and ball placement. The reflective marker and lab set up was arranged in the same way as the most effective capture test previously conducted for artefact four. This meant less time would be spent on getting a good capture and more could be spent on getting the right motion for the character. Several attempts were made to get the right motion to give the same curious actions as key-framed character. Now that a successful capture was taken, the data was then cleaned and converted to a C3D file ready to import to Motion Builder. The data still had imperfections so some time was spent fixing this in Motion Builder before plotting it to a CG actor. Once the actor had movement the next step was to set the character up in 3D Studio Max. The original bone system was kept and the character was exported as an FBX file recognisable by Motion Builder. The file was imported into the same scene as the actor with the motion plotted to it and an automatic rig was created for the character. At this point the character is ready for either animating or adding mocap data. A final step was made to change the character input allowing the character to follow the same movement as the actor.