IPI Software / Motion Capture

Motion Capture has just recently been an interest of mine because I had to do an essay about it and it really stuck in my head, so I want to continue using and experimenting with motion capture. Mocap is basically a performance capture software where a person wears a tight suit with dots on it which are tracked but multiple cameras scattered around the room. The data that is captured by the cameras are transferred on to a computer and moulded onto a skeleton, from there a character can be combined to the skeleton so that the character is now able to move like the person or object that is being tracked by the cameras.

For my Context of Practice module I created an animation with demonstrates the differences between a character that has been animated using Keyframes and animated by using Motion Capture. For me this was really interesting to do because I got to learn how to capture my performance and then apply that performance onto a characters that I modelled in Maya. The software that I used for capturing my performance was called 'IPI' which uses two kinect cameras from an xbox console that are pointed at a 45 degrees angel to the subject. For my performance I did a boxing routine because it didn't have that much movement but still had an entertaining factor to it. This looked something like this.

However, I re-performed the motion capture because I thought that I could do a better performance, plus I didn't really like how me feet never moved. After I did that I transferred the data over to Maya and placed it onto me prebuilt character. This was an easier process than I thought it was going to be, but I did have to bind the skeleton to the character and then paint the influences in so it  wasn't all easy. This is what the final outcome was.

 

I feel like this went well but I'd like to further my knowledge on motion capture so that I can create more animations using this technique because I find the performance to be more realist than if I was to keyframe it. I did also find a studio that just focuses of performance capture down in London called "The Imaginarium" which was created by the famous actor Andy Serkis who did the motion capture for 'Lord of The Rings' as Gollum and 'Rise of The Planet of The Apes' as Caesar. The Imaginarium do internships which are four weeks long so hopefully I'd be able to apply for one, so that I can gain more skills and knowledge about Motion Capture.