Moho Forum

That's a really cool and interesting look.

We need a key strainer.
I think Lightwave had one, or someone wrote one.
I don't know how hard it would be to write one?
The issue I suppose is working out which keys to drop.

So Chuck, what does the motion tracking function do well,
and where does it need improvement? What changes could be made,
what are the limitations you've identified so far, and where do we find
one of these genies?

Yeah a tool to cut down the keys to a minimum would really help.

I think this ideally would be a seperate tool to the actual tracking, which processes the keys after the tracking has done its job.

The tracking actually works pretty well, it only little polishing in regards to that 360 degree flipping and an occassional key 'sagging' where the values seem to slowly creep down across time.
I do think a toggle for targets, to lock them so they don't keep processing again whenever selected even after they have already been tweeked to their optimum path might be nice.

AN extra script that runs across the keys and reduces them according to proximity or angle with a strength control would be just great.
Wes, Vern, Genete, Slice, Rudiger? Anyone feel a desperate need to make a key reduction button?- I'll be yer best mate? Though you probably would'nt want that


I don't think I have scratched the surface yet though with this technique.
I think by actually using existing rigs constrained by tracking bones may be a much economic way of setting up a take.
This way less tracking bones could be used with a more flexible, reusable working character.
This constraining is the way to go, like a puppet if you like this way values can be increased and IK can be maintained.
If the controllers could be switched or turned on and off then that would be too cool.

The strength of this technique I think is in the subtle variations that it can bring.
My 'Huge Orange Head' was probably the worst case scenario where I was attempting to get a very exaggerated character to utilise the mocap info. This was the exact opposite occasion for it to work well, but it still produced some midly effective results.
Gross body movents....... not what you're thinking robot ; .... with a lot of natural expression would be perfect for this, if you want lip synch then the character mouth would want to be reasonably similar to the original material in design- more natural and realistic.

awesome

If I understand the process correctly, you place all of the tracking points that you need, such as at the major joints, hip and head. Next,(this I'm not sure about) you add a bone layer for each bone that will be connected to the tracking (ie ten bones equals ten bone layers). Finally, select a bone and assign to which two tracking points that it will follow, then do the same with the next bone.

Is that correct?

I'm not sure about applying the figure from there. I'll work on that.

Regarding keystraining, you can already cut down the keys in AS, using Animation > Rescale Keyframes. Set the "New end frame" to say, half of the existing "End frame" value. Remember to select the keys you want scaling. Then repeat this, but this time scaling the animation back up to its original length.

End result: you've halved the key density. If you only want a quarter of the keys, simply scale to 25% of the length and back. Depends on how busy the animation is. The range and target keys are totally flexible, so you can use it on any part of a scene.

Oh should say I haven't looked at motion tracking at all, and I've only done this with regular bone layers in AS5. But it works fine for such purposes, and might be helpful here. Cheers, Nick.

That really helped
L0L

windstormer, your bones can be all on the same layer, just not parented to each other.
Draw a bone approximately where you want it, then go to the bone menu- track bone to layer. Options for that appear in a diag box just know when to use scaling or not.
If the animation doesn't look right try this,
check the bone is un parented, retrack
delete the bone retrack, should be fine.

Otherwise just follow instructions from help regarding the layer tracking.

Thanks nhurst but that method of key reduction is way too arbitrary, I only am asking for the specific tool because it's really the only way to get effective results.

I am so looking forward to any in depth insight into how this is done!

Just purchased AS 6, and it was very well worth the upgrade! (loop bug aside)

C

tutorial please