Animating a rig on top of mocap

[nathanieljla]

I currently researching options for manipulating mocap, or more important animating on top of motion capture. I've gotten some characters up and running in Motion Builder and have brought them into Maya, but was curious if similar results could be achived in Maya alone. The only thing I could think of is to some how use the trax editor in Maya, but in unless I'm mistaken, I couldn't use IK rigs and such.

I'm currently using Maya 4.5. Anyone one have any insight into Maya 6's abilities? I noticed in the alias video of transfering mocap the target character did copy the motions 100% due to the ik on the characters feet. Also was anyone else a little nervous when a model of camera was being used to show off the new trax editor? I would think they would demonstrate something a little more complex like a...humm...PERSON

Thanks,
Nathaniel

[warpcat]

Threre are a variety of ways to deal with your issue. To discuss what you're after, sure, it's not that hard. You have "skeleton A", that has mocap. You can dupe that skeleton, get Skel B. Put the various kinds of rigs controllers on Skel B that you'd like. Then, parent those rig controllers to Skel A. You have Skel A "puppetering" Skel B, but you can still animate Skel B's animation controllers providing an additive offset.

I use that method to "tweak" mocap. But the next step I use is a script that physically retargets the mocap onto yet another rig, the "animation rig" our animators use. The script takes the rig, and per frame, matches it back to "Skel B", "transfering" the animation across. The cool thing is, it can transfer the mocap on to any animation solution on the rig. As an example, we have FK arms, IK local space arms, IK global space arms, etc. During the transfer, you can put the mocap onto any of the different solutions, depending on what you're after. As well, this retargeting solution allows for the mocap to get dumped onto any of our characters.

I hear trax is improved in 6, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I still avoid it.... always seems to cause more problems than solutions.
I've played with M6's animation transfer ability. It's well thought out, but not quite what I was looking for.

[fingers]

I completely understand what you're speaking of as you use 'Skeleton A' to drive 'Skeleton B' - what relationship do you use to do this... constraints, parent/child relationship, etc?

In doing this... have you ever encountered problems where 'Skeleton B' that is being driven by the mocap from 'Skeleton A' does not calculate where the controllers are in world space? This limits you in a number of ways... primarily, w/out world cordinates on your controllers the user is unable to loop the motion properly?

I can only hope that I'm making some sense out of the information I provided. Any information concerning my problem would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks - Fingers

[warpcat]

No, never realy encountered any problems, but it is probably based on how I build it for the animators. I always leave my controllers in local space, since puting them in worldspace would "detach" themselves from the mocap... and what's the point of that on a "mocap tweak" rig? As far as how I personally attach them, in the past, I would just parent them. Now that Maya has a parent constraint, I may try using that, just to keep the hierarchical organization better looking in the outliner, but the functionality would pretty much stay the same. And oh, I should point out I've never made anything really fancy to help the animators loop the motion, since we primarliy use it for cinematic sequences. When they do use it for game motions, like in my previous posting, we physically cook the mocap onto our full blown character rig, which allows the animators to more easily loop it. They wouldn't do the looping on the mocap converter rig itself.