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Motion Capturing in Three Dimensions?

Posted by Cliff on from the teaching-a-wireframe-how-to-dance dept.

brokenbeaker asks: "I friend of mine is a modern dancer, and she is working with a 3D modelling program to record dance performances. Apparently, the system is very primitive - if you make a dancer jump, she doesn't fall back down to earth. My question is, does anyone know of a sophisticated (physics based, I guess) modelling program that can be used to record dance? How about motion capture in 3D - would this be feasible? Anyone looking for a programming challenge?"

4 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. What about the motion trackers used for animation? by Slashamatic · · Score: 5, Interesting
    One of the techniques used in computer assisted animation is to film an actor wearing a dark costume with strategically placed reflective dots. Cameras feed images through for processing which allow the animation process to be made more realistic (i.e, no cartoon physics). The raw output of the system is an articulated stick figure which goes to animate the 3d character.

    I guess as this is the movie industry, such stuff would not be cheap and probably require a beowolf cluster or two to run it.

  2. software? by tolldog · · Score: 4, Informative

    What software is she using?

    I know that Maya has a pretty complex modeler and it has solvers that allow for all sorts of stuff.
    You can do IK solvers for a body and you can also add influences to states, such as gravity and wind.

    I created a simple marble toy using the system. It would drop a marble and launch another one off of a see-saw and then start rolling down a track.

    If she really wanted realism, she should look into motion capture, as other have suggested. It doesn't really take that complicated of mocap setup. Just patience and time at the end to tweak the animation keys.

    -Tim

    --
    -I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
  3. Vicon by inkfox · · Score: 4, Informative
    For motion capture, you might suggest she look at Vicon, the most popular motion capture system. Plan to have a couple hundred thousand bucks set aside for an entry-level system though. (Ouch.)

    For hand-editing, the character animation software in Maya may be a good place to start. Or, look at any of the "bipedal toolkits" for other 3D animation packages. There are packages designed specifically for facilitating hand-animation of humanoid figures. Still, you're talking several grand and a relatively beefy computer for this.

    I believe that AnimationMaster has basic support for this stuff as well, and it can be had as cheaply as $299. Possibly worth some extra investigation there.

    --
    Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
  4. Hmmm. This has been in use for a while. U of C. by muonzoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Although I cannot find a specific-cool link at their site, the Human Performance Lab in the Department of Kinesthetics has been doing some mightly cool motion capture and analysis of atheletes, normal people and people with physical limitations for years. Very cool Sun based motion tracking system. My climbing partner in Uni used to be the technician for the capture / analysis systems. They were SPARC systems at the time, from sun.
    As other posters have mentioned, motion capture and motion synthesis tend to be very different problems, although in an end product (if it is a rendering) may contain elements of both.
    Alias' tools still tend to be some of the better products out there for synthesis. If you are serious about capture, I know that the U of C department would at least be a starting place for software sources. I know that it wasn't an inexpensive setup.