MoCap Piece for Uni Project

Quagernaut

Hi there, this is the progress so far for my uni project using MoCap data to create a music video kind of animation to 'The Plagues of Eygypt'. I decided on motion capture for my project as it had always bugged me how i had never managed to grasp it and wanted to at least try my hand a using mocap data and lip synching the rigs to the singing areas. I know the eyes of the animation are a bit wild and the orange one even has his eye moving independently at on point but please feel free to critique as any feedback will be greatly appreciated I know vimeo is considered the optional video link for here but i only have a Youtube account and am not sure if teh Digital Fourmn for my uni actually accepts Vimeo. Im also not good with camera work at all so any advice with cameras would be amazing.

Camera's with Animation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anDZu0k32mQ

Four Angles of the Animation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sn6poKGKw0

Face Cams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb-gyM-xyeo

slipsius

Holy crap that's way too long.

So right away, your camera breaks the 180 rule quite a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180-degree_rule  Basically, if you have blue on the right, and orange on the left, the next camera shot shouldnt have blue on the left and orange on the right. It's disorienting. Think of Lord of the Rings. The entire thing, they are walking screen right. If they started walking screen left, it would appear like they were going back to where they came from. There are exceptions to it, obviously. But ya. 

You've got a bunch of knee pops in the animation that you can fix. And when they touch each other, you should really be using constraints so that blue's hands arent sliding all over orange's arms. Besides that, ya, pretty good job. Im guessing this is one long mocap recording?

A big thing studios will want to see is that you can combine 2 mocap clips together. not just editing one long one.  

Gunoozer

Hey There

I'm new to this site but i would recommend posting your work on multiple sites and not restrict yourself to one place, get yourself out there its the advice i have been given. I come across your work as i myself am attempting to get my motion capture work seen.

I have to agree with SLIPSIUS in that your work is to long and maybe should have done somthing a little shorter but this is ok as what you have produced is a nice animation with a few kinks here and there,

The first to note is the cameras. They do break the 180 rule a lot and need to be adjusted to keep the animation more flowing and understandable. SLIPSIUS gave a great example of Lord of the Rings. The moving cameras are ok but maybe connect them to a track of some wort as it looks like you have moved the through the world where you should attempt to constrain them to a track.

Talking of constraints however you really should of used a contratin on the areas where the characters interact, however! I belive i am right in thinking you got this rig from creative crash? Probably not the best one to choose as i have used this one before and had alot of problems constraning the wrist to a locator or even the other character. If you baked down to FK next time i would bake down to IK and clean it that way but what you have managed to done is ok just next time think about constraints.

Onto the face. I love this song and you have captured the lip sync lovely but maybe some little emotion, maybe moving the sides of the mouth down and up again and definitely some vibration like the lip quivering on the long sounding notes such as ''Gooooooooo!' 

But even though the animation has some issues it is still a very nice animation and only needs some adjustments to make it look awesome buddy

Quagernaut

Hey thanks to the both of you, It was during production of the animation that i found out that i should really have worked with something smaller xD and at my uni we have to do an FYP and portfolio piece of animations so managed to do what i didn't do in this piece in my other. Ive been working on the vibration for the mouth and will post an updated version when it doesn't look so unnatural. I'm completely agree on the constraints areas and did try to do this but just had no luck as the wrist is not IK and if i constrain the shoulder it just breaks the animation. I appreciate the feedback guys i really do and welcome Gunzooer.