Organic Motion Marker-less Motion capture

Joseph Silverman

http://ncroal.talk.newsweek.com/default.asp?item=517804

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Organic Motion, Tschesnok says, is different because it visualizes and captures thousands of natural points on the subject. "We track thousands of natural points--the corner of the eyes, the edge of the arm, the bend of the knee--effectively capturing the entire person in a lifelike manner, similar to the way your eye watches edges and motion. In this manner, Organic Motion authentically tracks the entire person, enabling us to provide a full 3-D scan of the subject in real-time." Cheaper, cleaner and immediately usable animation data--what's not to like here?

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I dunno much about this, but it doesn't really sound that relevant to me, aside from being kinda' neat. Anyone mind sharing some insight?

James Edwards

Yeah that's definitely hot. If it actually does what they claim, without all the big studio overhead, setup and cleanup we could add that to our already space starved office without having to renovate. I missed GDC but I bet I can catch them at Siggraph instead this year. Thanks for the link.

Richard Kain

MoCap is very expensive. At the moment, the only way to implement it is with special suits, a lot of space, and a sizeable amount of expensive camera equipment. Usually, studios won't have their own facilities. They'll simply rent time at an existing motion capture facility. As such, motion capture is pretty much out of the budget range of all but the larger studios and publishers.

If anyone comes up with a cheaper, more inexpensive MoCap solution, it will benefit the industry greatly. As expensive as MoCap is, its also the fastest way to produce complex animations. A smaller studio with a cheaper MoCap set up could afford to add a lot more animated characters to their games.

JKMakowka

Well there is also the exo-skelleton approach:
http://www.metamotion.com/gypsy/gypsy-motion-capture-system-mocap.htm

Not sure how expensive it is, and the stuff above sure sounds even better. But is is a working solution, that doesn't need special facilities.

animatr

i think it's bullshit. all the motions they were showing were spread eagle formations. how is it going to work with overlapping parts? it even says that it tracks the edges, so when parts overlap, how is it going to do that?
Not only that, but you would still need a large space to capture most motions. how are you going to capture a long walk cycle in your cube? how about cinematics? i think it has a long way to go before it will be useful.

swampbug

When will that girl bend her elbows? I'd like to know.

Uly

Interesting, but yeah. Very limited range of motion. What I'd like to know is why their promo video had music that sounded like an early 90's Body Break commercial.

James Edwards

Yeah my big concern is occlusion... space wouldn't be as much of a concern if the system is as flexible as they are making it out to be (I'll take instant access and unlimited takes over travelling back and forth to a studio), but I'd definitely want to see what would happen with more complex, overlapping motions, or multiple actors. This is a step forward only if they have solved those issues. If not... oh well, same old same old till the future arrives.

I'm not a big fan of the Gypsy suit, but I haven't seen one other than at shows.

Emil Mujanovic

Or you could use Mr. Bones' animations, he supposedly has tonnes of MoCap animations. INCLUDING MICHAEL JACKSON!
And no... I wasn't being serious.

-caseyjones