I thought you guys should know this.

[HMart]

Some Russian guys made a markerless system of motion capture, were you only use a camera, web or not, to film a actor performing a movement and them you use their software and it will make that in a rig with motion capture data. They have a 30 day Free trial fully functional.

 

Why i'm posting this? Because it is a enexpensive solution for indi developers like your selfs and i think it could really help make this mod even better.

 

What you should now about the software.

 

It ONLY works with shader 4.0 capable cards (the powerfull the better) but don't need Vista to run, you can use XP.

 

Now here is the link.

 

http://www.ipisoft.com/

[Fidcal]

Thanks HMart. I wondered when someone would come up with something like this.

[New Horizon]

It's kind of expensive for a non profit mod team.

[Fidcal]

Nice presentation though. Maybe we could start a fund. I'd donate if I thought we could use it for Dark Mod. They also give a free 30-day trial if anyone already has a couple of webcams.

[SneaksieDave]

Just get everything done within 30 days.

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=9279

[HMart]

It's kind of expensive for a non profit mod team.

 

Yes i know

 

But from the site it seams they will have a 250€ more or less option, and when they do you guys could raise some money to buy it. I think

 

Never mind i just thought it was a good thing for this mod as i really like it, but you guys seam to have a good animator from the animations that i saw in the videos and on the demo missions.

 

edit: it seams fidcal add the same idea.

Edited May 15, 2009 by HMart

[Ishtvan]

I remember Oddity saying that mo-capped data still requires a lot of work before an ingame animation is ready. It's nice to have, but won't magically get us a bunch of animations in a short amount of time. Maybe an animator will correct me if I'm wrong, just parroting what I heard.

[HMart]

Yes it needs work but not the same amount that you would have to do to make the animation yourself.

[demagogue]

Wow, YouTube is suddenly a huge playground of possibilities.

 

(Not that the team should worry about what's covered by the YouTube license ... but for us fast & loose builders for our own maps...)

[Noisycricket]

Theres also this, $1 per mocap animation. Probably others too i would imagine.

http://www.truebones.com/

[STiFU]

Also, if you talked to them, I'm sure they'd make you a special offer. Anyone not supporting this project would be a fool... ;-)

[Vivian]

If you want to do mocap on the cheap, put some visible, high contrast markers (half-polystyrene balls stuck on a black suit) on your target person, then film them with two cameras (one from in front, one lateral, as close to planar as possible and the same distance away from your world-zero). You also need to make a little tri-axis cartesian thingy, like three sticks at mutual right angles with poly balls on the end, that will act as your world-zero.

Then hand-digitise using image-J (freeware, I'll dig out the plug-ins you need if you're interested) - literally click on the markers stuck on your joints and save the coordinates in each plane, then combine em into 3D. The more frames you digitise the higher res results you get, so if you only need guideline results you should be able to do it quite quickly.

Seriously, I work in a biomechanics lab and its totally possible, we do similar stuff all the time - the results will suck, scientifically speaking, especially next to high-end solutions like qualisys or viacom, but they should be dandy as a basis for animations.

Edited May 18, 2009 by Vivian