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Few questions about animation

Maybe i missed up the topic, but here is the deal.

I have some few questions about animation, so any experience animator would be grateful to share his experience.


For very high animation, like those from Movies. Avengers, Hobbit or Avatar, i see lot of MoCap. My first question is, Can be done the level of animation with Mocap, to be done without it, i mean just with keyframing?

Like Dobby/Gollum/Hulk, movement, expression?


For Cinematic/Live action movies. How is animated so much higher polygon model? Like Hulk in Avengers or the 6 legs creatures from Avatar?

Does first thing is rigger the lower version of the model, and then the details are applied by some texture maps?

Replies

  • Eric Chadwick
    Mocap is best for animating realistic human motions, like body and face. A skilled animator can animate these by hand, but they have to be really skilled to replicate the realism that mocap gives. Mocap is not great for stylized kinds of motion, like Hulk's big leaps. An animator is needed for anything not human-standard.

    I'm not a movie animator, but I think high-polygon movie models are animated much like game models. I saw a rig for a movie model that hid the high-poly model to increase the speed of the animator's real-time display, so they could animate easier. It had a low-resolution version of the model, just so the animator could see the forms and prevent interpenetrations. Search on youtube for movie animation rigs, you should find some.

    Texture maps... you probably mean displacement? Yes, probably some movie rigs do this.
  • Gyrz
    Thanks man. So, animators is need it when there isn't involved non human characters?

    So there is possible, for animate to replicate realism animation, like mocap provides? Do you know that kind of animator? Which studio, animate without MoCap.

    For movie animation rigs, i tried many times to find a model. But i can't, everything is low poly in game model.
  • Eric Chadwick
    Here's one I got searching for "character rigging reel cgi movies"

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni3R4FkC6YI"]CGI VFX Showreels HD: "Character Rigging" by - Matt L Derksen - YouTube[/ame]
  • slipsius
    https://vimeo.com/groups/masterofrigging has a bunch of rigging reels. 699 to be exact. Im sure you`ll find something in there.

    Although lots of human animations in movies are mocapped, most creatures are not. Even human motion isnt sometimes. You still need the mocap actor to be able to do the motion, so if its some insane fight scene, or exaggerated movement, or flying or something, it still needs to be keyframed. Also, dont look at mocap as an easy button that requires little of the animator. Mocap is just a tool. Good mocapped animation was heavily influenced by the animator. Pushing poses, timing, etc.

    As for what studios do hand keys stuff? Most of them, purely because not all animation can be mocapped, and most movies that require 3d have something in it that cant be.
  • Mark Dygert
    One other thing that movies tend to have that games haven't adopted yet (maybe soon) are muscle systems and sliding skin. There are few muscle systems available out there, 3dsmax has one that was part of CAT but works on any object.

    Maya has the Maya Muscle system, I think its included if not it should be.
  • haiddasalami
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    haiddasalami polycounter lvl 14
    One other thing that movies tend to have that games haven't adopted yet (maybe soon) are muscle systems and sliding skin. There are few muscle systems available out there, 3dsmax has one that was part of CAT but works on any object.

    Maya has the Maya Muscle system, I think its included if not it should be.

    Last of Us actually had a muscle system for the characters.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=myZcUvU8YWc#t=1083s
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