Noobie Question..

I'm a relatively new resident in SL, and have a question on dance animations.. How are these fantastic life-like dances I see in clubs done? I'd assume that somebody, somewhere has one of those 'motion-suits' I've seen used for Hollywood CGI animations.. I'd suspect this would be the only way to get such unbelievablely realistic motion.. Anybody know?

Tasman Perth

Short answer is, I've seen a variety of artists with creative approaches to this. There are BVH files on the Net which have already been made and can be imported without much effort (so this means the importer isn't necessarily the person who made it), and the data for these can originate with motion-caption data.

In other instances, someone is just really good at working with Poser and has a sound understanding of human form+function, like an animator really! 'Cuz that's what these are, animations. No, it won't be exactly like mo-cap of course, but it's a different artistic style (plus, proportions of avatars are off from what we are offline, so a little SL-specific tweaking may be in order).

I hope veterans in this area can help answer this for you!

Thanks for the reply.. I'd say they're really good in Poser to capture the dances I see in
SL.... I'll be watching this forum (and the scripting one) a lot, as I have a LOT to learn...

Tasman Perth

To tell you the truth, it's general opinion that most mo-cap is very stiff on its own, truely fluid animations are usually pain-stakingly hand-created in various CG programs, or at the very least, CG is used to improve mo-cap ^_^

Anyhow, you can't fully appritiate an anim until you have seen it without lag... a very beatuful experience. I suggest flying up a few hundred meters and putting your favorite dance on.

It will only look better ^_^

Wow. My post wasn't usefull at all