Budget animation strategies

Unity Engine
1

So by budget I don’t mean next to nothing, something a small funded studio could afford, if you had say 30k to invest in animations which I think would be on the low side but let’s go with that.

Asset store animations are very sub par quality on the whole. And I think a key thing is going with off the shelf you just can’t get complete coverage from a single source,which leads to less consistency. So say even if you sacrifice quality in some areas like not using the best equipment, I’m wondering if that’s actually ok to gain consistency and complete coverage. And just having a paradigm where you afford to iterate.

We have a couple of local mocap studios actually, but being primarily focused on high end stuff it’s almost a non starter. It’s not just the price it’s also the goals are just not aligned, they don’t really care that I have a budget, I’m not their primary market.

Rokoko looks very interesting, or even investing in something a bit higher tier even if it dramatically lowers production costs.

I live in a tech hub so I tracked down a couple of people who do motion acting,and their rates were a bit insane IMO.

I’m sure it takes practice and there are obviously things specific to mocap. But if you had to pick a profession that would be able to do mocap fairly well without prior experience, what would it be?

For example one thing that led me down this path is my wife is a professional dancer/entertainer. Through her I have access to a lot of really good talent in that world which seems like it might be a good fit. Lots of them with years of professional dance/gymnastics training. The thing is I can get them at like half the price of what these mocap people want. That’s also why I think these mocap people are way overpriced. I know what top similar talent is making and it’s nothing like what they want.

2

I have a Smartsuit. I like the Rokoko capture software, it’s very easy to use (and when you are wearing the get-up the LAST thing you want to do is sit at the computer fussing with software). I’m waiting and waiting on the gloves…

Rokoko has a marketplace to sell animations.

I think the issue is that we need custom animations for everything. Generic animations are always… generic. I don’t think the issue is quality (your suggestion they didn’t have a good enough system) I think the issue is specificity. If the 3D character is cute or realistic, it will change the performance… And actually a huge amount (90%) of animations I need are people standing around talking, which Smartsuit is more than capable. (looks at tons of dance and hiphop mocap I will never buy)

I can’t say if it will be profitable to open a studio in your area, but having an engineer at the computer and a movement professional in the suit sounds like a good team.

3

Oh I wasn’t talking about opening an animation studio, I meant for studios making a game.

It’s difficult for me to tell if the common errors I see in off the shelf are the actors or the hardware. A lot looks like sub par actors that don’t have the body discipline. And I’ve noticed those imperfect animations are then far more picky about having a perfect rig. A less then ideal rig then just amplifies the animation imperfections.

But ya games do need custom and consistency also. And the ability to actually iterate over time like other content we create. Not 3 days in a studio and then that’s it, you can’t afford anymore regardless of what you ended up with.

4

Agree. Maybe with years of experience and a good team with a production relationship, you could rent a studio and bang out all the motions… I’d equate it to making a 4-6hr film in 3 days – it’s possible, but… ugh.

Hard to comment on what is a hardware problem and what is software (without pointing at something specific to comment on). What I typically see is geeks with no idea of human body, and dancers with no idea of tech-stuff getting together and having no common language to communicate. Dancers just improv the same improv they’ve done since college, and geeks are like “yeah, it’s working! Great!”

My opinion is yes, you want this and you have an in-house team that makes it worthwhile. I’d discuss it with your wife since she’ll have some input on the quality of movement. You can develop the common language together, and it will go faster and better over time.

I bought my Smartsuit for myself. I can’t really compare to other systems, but what I can say about Rokoko is they were a theater company. They were clearly the people who had to put on the suit and then perform in it. I guess Xsens now has the idea that sensors can be sewn into a suit (after how long?).

Rokoko suit is durable (not quite the sexy ninja assassin outfit I’d imagined, more utilitarian) and the software is dead-easy to use. My brain is free to work on what I WANT to work on: the character performance, and getting the anims into Unity – the Rokoko suit/software part is anti-climatic. “Oh, that’s all there is to it…?” Getting a figure set up in Unity with all the bells and whistles is more work. A specific example: You don’t need to T-pose in Rokoko everytime. Calibration is standing normally (arms at the sides). The gyros apparently “drift” over time, so it’s not as accurate as high-res multi-cameras tracking dots, but in practice it hasn’t been an issue for me at all. I’m still going to add an IK rig for when a character needs to connect with something in the scene. The software corrects for foot and toe placement before you export the anims (check their videos for a demo), and it can accommodate jumping (leaving the floor) and spinning (good-bye, optical tracking dots, hope another camera can see them when I turn around…)

There are also practical limits to rigging and the level of detail in a real-time figure vs rendering in Maya or whatever. Given the option of “editing an animation” or just performing it again until it’s closer to what I want, ehh… Again, without pointing at something specific… I’d rather just put on the suit and do it again, but a small fix, ok.

If you are debating Rokoko vs __________, I like my Smartsuit and the software. It delivers what they promised…. I’d like the gloves too, so whenever they are ready I will throw money at it… (I’m less impressed by their recent iPhoneX add-on for $40/month. As an indie I’m doing everything myself, Face Cap app is a 1-time $45 purchase, and as I get older I’m less eager to try to juggle plates on a rolling log while playing the bagpipes… I suppose if I were paying Benedict Cumberbatch to act, sure, get it all in one take – doing it myself, I’ll break it down into manageable steps.)

The anims are “uncanny”, meaning they give inanimate low-res 3D models a living quality. I’ve used a lot of procedural and IK puppetry too. Mocap is (imho) miles above that. The cheapest mocap solution will be some VR rig with the fewest sensors, so eventually we’ll see a product with the barest minimum (2 wrists, 2 ankles, hip, and head), but there will be diminishing returns on the uncanny if all the movement is just interpolated IK.

1 Like
5

How about a top-end iPhone/iPad Pro with ARKit 3.0 just announced at the latest WWDC? I don’t know about details but it looks like it should be possible because one of the highlight is full body tracking.

1 Like
6

I made a SteamVR mocap tool using the Unity engine. It’s completely free, exports straight to Blender and provides a fast and automated workflow. release announcement.

Download:
AnimationPrepStudio - Version: 1.0.0 beta

AnimationPrepStudio_SR - Vive Pro Eye edition

I was tired of other motion capture software because you must re-target the rigs for pretty much any animation.
This tool uses the same skeleton for both recording and in the final Blender scene, so no re-targeting required.

Here’s a video showing how I create a short animation, render it with Blender Cycles, and all in roughly 5 minutes:

It also allows for custom characters to be added using MakeHuman community avatars.

Custom Scene Builder Project - Add custom environments to the “scenes” list from any .blend file.
Custom Avatar Builder Project - Add custom Makehuman models from any .blend files.
Custom Prop Builder Project - Add custom props or firearms from any .blend file.

I am currently adding some new features including Reallusion character support, keep an eye on this post for updates.