Best Mocap Formats

[korchkidu]

Hi all,

I would like to benefit from all your experiences in working with motion capture data. Indeed, I am trying to decide which formats are the best for me. I need one format to represent marker trajectories and another one to represent animation. In particular, I need these formats to be:

1) Opened. I will have to go from one software to the other and to program things by myself. For example, I will have to do things in Matlab and then put everything into Maya.
2) Common. I do not want to rely on some proprietary format. I want formats that are supported by most of the well-known animation software.
3) Easy to use. This is for sure the most important point as you could imagine...

For these reason, I decided (for the moment) to use:
1) C3D for maker trajectories as it is the "common" VICON format;
2) ASF/AMC as it seems to be quite largely available on the net (cf CMU motion database).

What are your experiences (good/bad) with these formats ? Do you think they could be good enough for what I want to do ? Do you think of other best formats ?

Thanks in advance for any suggestion, comment, etc.
K.
PS: please, I am not asking a list of motion capture formats. I am just looking for the best ones for what I want to do. So do not propose other formats if you do not think they are better than C3D and/or ASF/AMC.

[joojaa]

Just a question why would you need 2 formats? Since both of these targets are same thing. A format that can define animation must be in its core able to define trajectories.

If you really want to you should use fbx since it already has all the major applications in its hold link to fbx. And its also one of the most flexible of the formats, so why 2 use 1 good one instead.

The only real reason not to use fbx in this kind of capacity is if you don't want the flexibility

well this paragraph says it all:
"
FBX supports all major 3D data elements, as well as 2D audio and video media elements. This means you can interchange all major NURBS and polygon surface types, keyframe and mocap animation, shapes and morph targets, materials and textures, lights, cameras, hierarchical information; and character animation data including IK, envelopes, and deformations – and the list grows with each new release."

[korchkidu]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 04/24/07, 02:23 PM) [snapback]264741[/snapback]
Just a question why would you need 2 formats? Since both of these targets are same thing. A format that can define animation must be in its core able to define trajectories.

Not really. One of these formats is dedicated to represented 3D marker trajectories. The other one has to represent rotations around joints. The 3D marker trajectories is what you get after a mocap session. You then have to fit it onto a skeleton to compute the joint rotation which gives the animation data.

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 04/24/07, 02:23 PM) [snapback]264741[/snapback]
If you really want to you should use fbx since it already has all the major applications in its hold link to fbx. And its also one of the most flexible of the formats, so why 2 use 1 good one instead.

The only real reason not to use fbx in this kind of capacity is if you don't want the flexibility

Actually, flexibility is what I am looking for. fbx is not doing everything I want to do and is doing far more than I would need for representing animation. In particular, I have to process markers trajectory and I want to use Matlab to do this. I want also to reconstruct the animation using my own programs. If parsing and processing fbx files is something very common, then why not...that is mainly the reason why I am really looking for widespread formats and not for software. I want to be able to manipulate them easily, do what I want and then, import/export the results to any software (at least Maya at the beginning).

Thanks for your comments.
K.

[joojaa]

Well, in that case use a format that can portray both. Thing is animation is just values, and a rotation value does not differ from any other value. See thing is that asf must be able to portray trajectories, why? Well otherwise you couldn't move the base bone and you can. Thus a trajectory could be represented as non connected bones.

Anyway fbx can do all you need tough granted you may need to write a reader for matlab. Anyway fbx is the second generation mocap data format, wich is a generic as close to babelized format as you can come. (trajectories and rotations are just data, and fbx handles data very well)

[korchkidu]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 04/24/07, 03:44 PM) [snapback]264752[/snapback]
Well, in that case use a format that can portray both. Thing is animation is just values, and a rotation value does not differ from any other value. See thing is that asf must be able to portray trajectories, why? Well otherwise you couldn't move the base bone and you can. Thus a trajectory could be represented as non connected bones.

Anyway fbx can do all you need tough granted you may need to write a reader for matlab. Anyway fbx is the second generation mocap data format, wich is a generic as close to babelized format as you can come. (trajectories and rotations are just data, and fbx handles data very well)

Ok, I will have a look to this format. As you seem to have already experienced the fbx format, do you know if it possible to work with it without having MotionBuilder ? I mean, is there any converters from "common" mocap files (c3d, asf, amc) to fbx format ?

Thanks in advance,
K.