Animation is hard, how do motion capture creators do it?

I have made great couples cuddle anis, to be honest. But sometimes movements in animations are SO incredibly hard. I have worked for three evenings (!) to get a leg movement right. The SL import screws it all up and most of the times changes in Poser are unpredictable, especially if movements are smooth. You never know what the SL import makes of them.

I wonder. If it is so difficult to make smooth movements manually in a program such as Poser, how come that people with motion capture software can make anis so easily? They also have to deal with the SL ani import, right?

If they told you, they'd have to kill you or at least leave you in a perpetual animation of the Macareena for the rest of your SL life

Motion Capture scores well because the end result has every frame as a key frame - but it loses because it is limited to the ability of the actor who is doing the movement. It also has a problem in getting a smooth loop. It is limited by the SL avatar skeleton and mesh - this is a constraint that applies whatever animation technique is used - and if you look closely at MC animations in SL, you can see the effects of optimisation and poor looping.

If you are prepared to make your animations as stop frame ones in Poser (or very close to that) you can do better than motion capture because you are not limited to the skills of the actor and getting back to the exact start point for looping is simple. Whatever technique you use you can still only load up 30 seconds - or not always that! (Please vore for Jira: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-13782)

You also have to realise that the motion capture equipment is very expensive (compared to Poser) and takes a lot of time to set up correctly.

The motion capture suit that has to be worn is also quite restrictive - it can prevent the actor from doing the motion well. Even if you could get the services of a top class dancer, they will not dance their best wearing a MC suit, and skaters and gymnasts can't perform their most difficult moves. But - if you want to capture ordinary movement that everyone can do - walking, running, sitting, standing - then MC is the best because you don't need to get an actor with special skills.

If you want to do couples, you either need two sets of equipment for MC - double the cost - or, double the time as you capture first one and then the other, and hope they both repeat the dance exactly the same as the first time! Also, the standard size suit is too big for kids. Using Poser for couples and small avatars is the simplest technique.

I won't go into tinies or quadrupeds....

In short - animation is not an easy job, whatever technique is being used.

@Tegg - my Macarina was done with Mocap data, but it took a lot of work in Poser to make it fit the SL avatar and it still does not loop perfectly. But it is better than the others I have seen - you just have to learn to be less of a perfectionist with SL animation.

1 trip to Sine Wave, Animazoo, or Henmations, and you can see from the animations that if they are not dancing their best, one sure cannot tell.

I am sure they are doing the very best they can - no slight was intended.

None taken.

Your post is an interesting read, especially your opinion on the difference between MoCap and Hand Animated.

I guess all those cool movies like Toy Story and stuff and are all hand animated?

Pretty amazing.

I believe a lot of Toy Story was CG - computer generated. I don't know what was used - Toy Story was made some years ago and was pioneering. I think Maya is a popular choice of software for professional animation of this sort nowadays.

Nick Park's work - Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run etc., is all stop-frame with the models being adjusted for evey shot - I think they manage about 10 seconds of film a day!

Mocap was used very successfully for Smeagol in Lord of the Rings, acted brilliantly by Andy Serkis - but some of his action had to be CG.

Of course, they had big teams of people working on the job. Paolo is on his own and grappling with some tricky problems. Don't give up, Paulo - like the dancers it is all practice, practice, practice.

Hehe Deira, thanks for your great explanation and your encouragement Very interesting stuff.

Like I said, I've managed before to make 6 great AND smooth couples cuddle animations about a year ago. Every evening for three months (!) I was on the betagrid, uploading and testing every single little change to optimize movements. Although it was long and hard work, I got it right in the end. All hand made in Poser: 15 fps and 440 frames.

This time it doesn't go so well. I am making a simple sunbathe animation. Avi lies on its back and pulls up its right leg a bit. Right thigh goes up and right shin bends, trying to keep the foot close to the ground. The foot slides over the ground, so to speak. I am aware that small movements are declined by the SL import, especially if that small movement is spread over many frames. So I try to overcome that by making the movements somewhat larger en put not too many frames in between. I even lowered fps to 10 (300 frames in total). But still I can't get it right. When the right thigh goes up, the right shin moves up with it and doesn't bend. It bends later, but then moves into the ground. When the leg finally moves smooth and okay, and I want to extend the movement (leg goes back to starting position), everything is screwed up again. Not in Poser, but after SL import. It's irratic and unpredictable.

It makes me crazy. Do you have any advice for me how to handle the problem? When I animate an arm and hand in this same way, I have far less probs. Is the leg simply hard to animate for SL or is there something else I could try?

/me makes sympathetic noises
What you are trying to do is not easy.
I think you will need a lot of key frames to stop the foot going into the ground - maybe every other frame.

Try using linear interpolation - if you are not already doing that. Poser defaults to splinal and this can result in some wild effects in SL.

If you are feeling really brave try using IK on the legs and moving the feet using the mouse very carefully - make sure you have the correct tool button selected if you try this. This does take some practice though.

Good luck - I'm sure it will be a beautiful piece of work in the end

Toy Story was made by Pixar, which does almost exclusively CG animation. They generally use their proprietary "Marionette" animation software, and of course render using Renderman (which they sell, don't they?).
.

Ahhh Deira! I have NEVER used linear interpolation for SL. I always thought you should use only spline. Therefore I've never dug into the difference between spline and linear. I just tried it for a sec in Poser and already I see the difference. I haven't tested it in SL yet though, but it looks like linear gives me MUCH more control and predictablility for this specific leg movement.

One question though, if I may. You say: make lots of key frames. Does the SL importer take notice of these key frames or does it make its 'own' key frames? And isn't it so that exporting a Poser-file to BVH automatically makes every frame a key frame?

Btw, making/adding key frames is simply done by pressing the + button right?

(edit) Ohhh Deira, IT WORKS! Linear interpolation gives much more control than spline!!! I've tested it tonight on the betagrid. Even smaller movements can be controlled now! Of course there are still issues to overcome, but linear is really much more predictable than spline. My leg movement is now (almost) perfect AND smooth! I still don't understand exactly how key frames work though, but I'm already very happy now!

Do you use only linear interpolation for SL? And what should I do with the first 2 frames? Frame 1 is the T-position, frame 2 my start ani position (both have 'break spline'). Should ALL frames become linear?

Thanks a lot!!!! You've made my day. I hope every animator reads this. But hey, maybe they already knew and I was just the stupid one....

That's good - pleased to hear it's fixed now.

You need to thank Lear Cale really - I noticed early on that Linear often works best in SL, but Lear looked at the client code and determined that it uses Linear interpolation when it does its (in)famous optimisation. The importer does not take any notice of key frames - once you have exported to bvh, every frame is a key frame - but the client software, when running the animation, will optimise and it can drop or insert frames depending on the frame rate being experienced at the client side. The lower the frame rate you use when you create your animation, means the less optimisation processing takes place. There is always this balancing act to achieve between getting the animation speed looking correct and the movement looking correct and minimising optimisation effects. (This applies to mocap too - it is a "feature" of creating animations for SL)

Since you have Poser you have the perfect tool to see the efffect this can cause. Just get up the animation graph for an animation with splinal interpolation - one with plenty of keys set - and just delete some keys as if you were randomly "optimising" - just look at what can happen to the graph. It can go way off from where you originally set it.

However - it was your original question that I tried to answer - Mocap avoids some of these anoying effects because it captures keys for every frame - i.e., interpolation does not apply to Mocap - none is used. Sure, SL still optimises and can drop (or insert) frames - but you can never get the conflict between splinal or linear with mocap - effectively it is always linear. Hence, I suggest more key frames - makes it more like the result you get with mocap.

Please do not think that splinal interpolation is bad though - it is very good for some movements - beautiful, in fact. Your earlier work probably used it just fine. When you want to soften a movement and make the transition speed realistic, then splinal interpolation can be the right thing to use. It is when you are trying to be very precise with a movement that you need to make it linear.

OK - yes, click the + and - buttons in Poser to add or delete key frames - those buttons at the bottom of the Library work on the whole frame as seen in the document window, those within the animation graph just work on the specific keys in the graph. The buttons in the animation palatte work on whatever you have selected in the palatte - individual key/s or whole frame/s

It does not matter whether the frame 1 T-pose is set to linear or splinal - but if it _is_ splinal then you will be safer if you break spline on frame 2. If it is all Linear then you will not need to break spline.

No, you are _not_ being stupid - you are trying to do something that is very difficult to do. Many animators in SL use software packages, like QAvimator eg, that only provide linear interpolation, so they never hit this problem.

Thanks Nika - that's interesting to know. I checked out their web site:

http://www.pixar.com/index.html

They do a RenderMan plug-in for Maya and provide a free evaluation copy.