3DS Max Friendly version of the Open Motion Capture Library!

[Tels]

Ii does indeed shake quite a bit.

 

What strikes me at one area where we might improve with only a bit of effort by a lot if the leg movement. When the AI turns, it seems just to slide and rotate around the center, which looks ok if it is only a 25° turn, but increasingly strange if it is more than that, and completely out of place for a 180° turn.

 

That might be a lot of complicated code, tho,because it would need to simluate complete leg-contact and movement not using pre-made animations. Or do we actually use animations for the turning and could just improve them?

[Arcturus]

We have turn animations for standing NPCs. Walking NPCs only rotate their root bone.

 

I haven't seen good mocap made using one Kinekt, but these guys created software that uses data from 2 kinekts. Mocap made that way is very good:

 

 

http://www.ipisoft.com/

 

Software isn't free. They say they can convert image from standard cameras too, but I imagine it's not as good as Kinekts.

[SeriousToni]

Why are you standing with dark clothes in front of a dark background? Isn't this detaining?

[Arcturus]

It helps when background is uniform and in high contrast to markers, especially when camera is low resolution.

[Arcturus]

As you remember, after importing MD5 to Blender all the bones have incorrect rotations. It makes difficult to works with it. There's a plugin for importing FBX files for the latest versions of Blender. There are some FBX files made by Squill on the model repository. Imported FBX looks much better than imported MD5:

 

 

However. The rig is outdated, there are no pelvis bones. Also, after importing, a skeleton is posed in a first frame of the selected animation. It's impossible to reset it to a rest pose. Body is in a rest pose, but head is in the same pose as skeleton. Weights are probably alright, but it's not usable in this state.

If someone exported latest rigs with AF (rest) pose as an animation, then perhaps it would be possible to make a proper rig in Blender.

[Arcturus]

I installed 30 days trial of Maya. I opened af_pose.mb from model_src\proguard_mb. I exported it to FBX and imported to Blender. Skeleton was rotated 90 degrees.

 

 

I rotated the bones, but it's an outdated rig, from 2007. I couldn't find newer af_pose files.

 

 

I loaded animation from 2011 - proguard_cower_1 or _2 to Maya.

 

 

How can I reset its pose back to T?

[Arcturus]

Apparently I can't. But there are two other files: proguardmesh_export.mb and proguardmesh_rev2.mb, both from 2009. They are in T pose and seem to be up to date. So I imported them to Blender and they look ok except there's no pelvis bone, only pelvis2 (there is in maya file).

 

[Arcturus]

If I move the whole skeleton in Maya, leaving pelvis bone in place, then pelvis will be exported. Maybe it's because the pelvis bone is so short? It looks like both its ends share the same space.

EDIT: Ok, I moved tip of the pelvis bone and exported. Whole hierarchy seems to be in order now. I will have to manually move the pelvis bone back to its place in Blender. There are also bones that are short and not connected after export but that shouldn't be a problem.

[RPGista]

If that means your good to go regarding working on animations within your preferred 3d editor = great to hear.

[Arcturus]

It was always possible to work on imported md5.mesh, but it was troublesome. Hopefully this will make it easier. As for the pelvis bone, I'm now sure that Blender automatically deletes bones with zero length. So I will need to leave some offset between joints. If it's close to zero it shouldn't screw anything.

[Arcturus]

I can't export animation directly from this skeleton because of different rotations of joints. MD5 from Doom have odd rotations too. What's the reason of that? Anyway, I built a rather complex rig of two skeletons. The one imported from Maya has the IK chains, constraints and drivers. Second skeleton is imported from MD5.mesh from game. Its bones copy exact location and rotation of the bones from the first skeleton. When the animation is ready it can be baked to the second skeleton and exported.

 

 

But of course there had to be problems. I did a quick test walkcycle and while the animation was ok, shadows and meshes were sometimes disappearing. I exported animations from Blender 2.54 before and didn't notice that so I have no idea what is going on. I tried to import that animation back to Blender 2.5 and 2.6 but without luck (anim was always broken). I managed to import it to Blender 2.49 though, exported back to Darkmod and that finally fixed the issues with disappearing shadows.

[Bikerdude]

Hmm we need someone to help out with the anim work on the mod.