Saturday, November 07, 2009

MoCap project: "Swordplay"


Here's another project I've been finishing up in my spare time. A couple months ago I helped set up and then trained on Ex'pression College's fancy new motion capture stage. During the installation, I got in the spandex suit with the "ping pong balls" stuck all over it and ran around pretending to be the giant monsters or the sexy space-age women which my movements were being mapped onto in real-time.

The training culminated in recording a session with myself and another student actor which became the 30 sec bit of animation featured below. I took the raw data and cleaned it up, fixed glitches, merged different takes, finessed poses, and hand-keyed the hand and facial animation to bring the characters to life.

In case you're wondering, I'm playing the skinny character with the white shirt (screen left). And check out the photos below for more silly goodness.


(be sure to watch in full screen)

Original Mocap to Final Result Comparison:



...just chilling



...showing my feminine side

(this is what happens if you step out and then back into the volume)

...and students mocapping...a T-Rex?

3 comments:

LeftClicker said...

Awesome! Where is that studio?!
== LeftClicker ==

Unknown said...

Thanks! The MoCap stage pictured here is at Expression College for the Digital Arts in Emeryville, CA where I teach animation.

RH2 said...

T-rex is hilarious.

You guys get a mocap preset rig?
Or was that made from scratch?

excellent work by the way.