Ballerina Project

Katieanimatey

A motion captured ballerina cleaned up and applied to the Morpheus rig. Any feedback/improvements would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

https://youtu.be/FLrBLlBaF9U

slipsius

Nice! Now make it a loop.

PeteHawk

I find it hard to crit Mocap. But I can see a lot on knee popping. Maybe push more on the facials and hands?
It really depends what you want to use this for? Are you just cleaning Mocap for fun? Is it for a game? Cinematic maybe, if so then you're going to need lovely camera motion, maybe play with cinematography?

Katieanimatey

it's just for a cinematic, I added in some cameras. The knee popping has been a recurring problem, there's no real cause of it i've cleaned up the curves as much as possible and nothing seems to fix it? Hands have been an issue since occasionally they like to detach from the rig? I don't know if this is an issue in Maya or what?  I'm working on the face now, adding in some expressions as she looks up etc. Thanks for the feed back!

Here's what i've done so far today: 

https://youtu.be/7qPP3JKSZsg

AGoodFella

I would still try to get some nicer hand shapes, right now, they're too wooden. Also, the knee pops are just too distracting.

At 5 sec, when the screen left foot comes forward, there's a jitter. I'm no ballerina but at around 9 seconds, the screen right leg is bent, I would imagine it to be straighter when she's pirouetting.

There's quite a lot of pops, jitters and awkward motion happening in the legs, its quite distracting. 

Katieanimatey

I've been trying to fix the problem with the knee, but it seems to make it worse? I'll try taking another look at the curves. I've straightened up the legs like you suggested too. Thanks so much for your feedback

AGoodFella

Knee pops are a spacing issue. Usually, you need to frame by frame the animation and fix them as you see them happen. Its quite tricky since knee pops can be caused by quite a few things such as foot roll, hip orientation, COG being too high or mix of them all.

When you see the leg straightening out too much causing a pop, its usually because there is too much of a change in a short amount of time.

Katieanimatey

Ah, that makes sense, i'll try that. Thanks

PeteHawk

Also when you said you've been clearing out the keys be careful of gimble. Mocap can be pretty messy when it comes to the curves. Euler filter is a good start before cleaning Mocap I found. Learn to use animation layers in Maya

slipsius

The majority of mocap cleanup is done on layers, in my experience. If you have single frame pops you wanna take out, sure, delete the keys on the base layer. But for the most part, for every key you delete in mocap, the less realistic it looks. And when you clean up one section by deleting a lot of data, but dont delete alot in other areas, you get this weird blend of mocap / hand keyed that just doenst look natural. So yes. Use layers. If you have a pop in an arm, on a new layer, put a blank key (zero key) a few frames before and after the pop. Then, on the pop frame, key it so its not popping. That way it blends nicely between the mocap data and your non-popped key.