Motion capture your animations over the net @ $10/sec

Post your questions, suggestions and experiences regarding to Image manipulation, 3d modeling and level editing for the Irrlicht engine here.
Post Reply
cobra
Posts: 371
Joined: Fri Jan 23, 2009 2:56 am
Location: United States
Contact:

Motion capture your animations over the net @ $10/sec

Post by cobra »

http://www.garagegames.com/community/fo ... ead/127481

This is pretty neat. Maybe it could help someone here from the Irrlicht forums.
Last edited by cobra on Fri Aug 26, 2011 1:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
Josiah Hartzell
Image
shadowslair
Posts: 758
Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:32 pm
Location: Bulgaria

Re: Motion capture your animations over the net @ $10/Sectio

Post by shadowslair »

Here`s my personal opinion:

Pros:
+ the idea is nice- its nice to have this option for the cases where you decide it`s worth using it
+ can help with motion realism in your game
+ (.?.)

Cons:
- price seems too high. Even if they make you an indie dev discount up to 5$/sec it`s still expensive compared that the average animator can charge you about half the $, depending on the case
- A 60 secs animation will be 400 euro. Let them be 300 with some discount. A 60 secs animation will be about a few hours of work (say 4-5) depending on motion complexity, rig and anim8tor experience/workflow. So, I`d rather waste a few hours. Well, the quality may not be 100 % accurate, but will be abt 70%-80%, which will do the job just fine.
- There`s just no way of not tweaking the motion data after it`s received. So, at least an hour or so.
- One will usually need many minutes of animation meaning many green peppers
- At a capture space of 1.5mx1.5m may be enough to capture someone brushing his teeth in the bathroom or doing other things there. Makes the motion capture pointless.
- No stunts, special or facial anim. Yes, but they`re trickier for most of the animators and waste more time and money. Anything simpler will be easy to make by hand.
- Capturing of non humanoid, cartoonish characters movement, or machinery movement will be impossible, or the end result may be very far from the one we need.
- You`ll be bound with their (probably standard) bones structure. Any bone less just ruins the whole animation or need time to tweak. For some cases, you may need an NPC to just stand on place and move slightly, not do acrobatics. In such a case you can and if smart will use less bones and simpler rig (faster and easier to work with)
- I prefer to animate da sh!t myself. Personal preference.
- The returned motion data most probably won`t be optimized at all. Meaning at frame X you`ll have Numbones*keys. Some keys may and most probably will be unneeded. One will need to a) optimize the keys by hand - too much and dirty work b) use the unoptimized data, which will result in usually abt 30% or more wasted filesize and ram occupation, and depending on the engine may need more computational time.
- (.?.)

Edit: If someone wants to hire me for 2.5$/sec of animation give me a call. A video of requested animation will be sent, and you`ll pay only if you like it. Stunts, martial arts, facial animation and on. The only limit is your imagination. :)
Last edited by shadowslair on Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
"Although we walk on the ground and step in the mud... our dreams and endeavors reach the immense skies..."
Radikalizm
Posts: 1215
Joined: Tue Jan 09, 2007 7:03 pm
Location: Leuven, Belgium

Re: Motion capture your animations over the net @ $10/Sectio

Post by Radikalizm »

To add on to shadowslair's list:

Cons:
-The fact that you won't be there to oversee them acting out your animation is a big issue; they just interpret the data you send them in a manner they see fit, but it could be you had something completely different in mind

And yeah, the price is pretty damn steep, I'd prefer manual animation with reference video material (something you can easily make yourself) any time over paying 600$/minute of mocap animation
Post Reply