Mocap versus Traditional Animation
polycounter lvl 9
Hey Polycount....
So I've started a game with a fellow artist and an engineer. We're quickly learning a lot about our weakness' in some areas, one being animation.
I've been tasked with taking the lead on animation and it's been quite fun learning how to rig and animate. However it's going slow. So we made a decision to try out some mocap software - ipi. We made this decision based loosely on the fact that we all know mocap is kind of an industry standard, for AAA anyhow, and if the tech is available to us, why not take advantage of it? Our thinking being that it would speed things up given that none of really have an animation background. It took a couple of weeks to ramp up, but we learning and got somewhat of a pipeline down. We are now acting out anims and able to get the raw data. Cool... So I thought.
Cleaning up and editing mocap data is extremely time consuming for me. It's almost, if not, more time to clean up mocap data than it is to do traditional key frame animation. Most of the time, it's negligible.
My question is - Has anyone had any similar situations? What did you do for your animation pipeline? What's the benefit/differences between mocap versus traditional? Does it make sense for a smaller team to use mocap?
Any help would be awesome as I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to animation pipelines.
Thanks!!!!
So I've started a game with a fellow artist and an engineer. We're quickly learning a lot about our weakness' in some areas, one being animation.
I've been tasked with taking the lead on animation and it's been quite fun learning how to rig and animate. However it's going slow. So we made a decision to try out some mocap software - ipi. We made this decision based loosely on the fact that we all know mocap is kind of an industry standard, for AAA anyhow, and if the tech is available to us, why not take advantage of it? Our thinking being that it would speed things up given that none of really have an animation background. It took a couple of weeks to ramp up, but we learning and got somewhat of a pipeline down. We are now acting out anims and able to get the raw data. Cool... So I thought.
Cleaning up and editing mocap data is extremely time consuming for me. It's almost, if not, more time to clean up mocap data than it is to do traditional key frame animation. Most of the time, it's negligible.
My question is - Has anyone had any similar situations? What did you do for your animation pipeline? What's the benefit/differences between mocap versus traditional? Does it make sense for a smaller team to use mocap?
Any help would be awesome as I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to animation pipelines.
Thanks!!!!
Replies
I'd say - do animation yourself, it will soon be even faster (because your skill improves) than cleaning that low quality mocap, and the result will be more impressive, again, because even professional mocap needs a touch of an animator.
If you have a few spare bucks, you might search the internet for already captured and cleaned mocap or just animation packs at stores like Unity store. It doesn't cost much but will save you weeks if not monthes of work.
I guess what you could use it for is to get a rough timing down, since you're new to animation I'd assume that's one of the difficult parts.
capture whatever animation you want..
then delete most if not all keys between whatever extreme poses you find nessesary, then move the keys around a bit to tighten up the timing, then start adding inbetweens.. that could work as a workflow..
not having to rely on lack of animation experience nor shitty mocap data, but using half and half
I was in a similar situation to you last year in that we didnt have an animator full time and needed a quicker solution, I also used IPI and found it had its uses.
I think it depends what you are using it for, like thatanimator said traditional animation is always going to give you better results and it might be that you use IPI's capture as a reference (of course we dont all have his skills in animation
I was using for a top down zombie game ([ame]
But again it depends what your needs are.
Anyone looking for a similar solution I'd recommend Ipi for quick rapid prototyping or using as a base/ reference but I wouldnt use it as a be all end all animation solution unless you can get away with it.
Sorry this was a bit of a ramble
I was in a similar situation to you last year in that we didnt have an animator full time and needed a quicker solution, I also used IPI and found it had its uses.
I think it depends what you are using it for, like thatanimator said traditional animation is always going to give you better results and it might be that you use IPI's capture as a reference (of course we dont all have his skills in animation
I was using for a top down zombie game ([ame="
But again it depends what your needs are.
Anyone looking for a similar solution I'd recommend Ipi for quick rapid prototyping or using as a base/ reference but I wouldnt use it as a be all end all animation solution unless you can get away with it.
Sorry this was a bit of a ramble