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Motion Capture

by Kayley · in Torque Game Engine · 12/20/2004 (10:58 am) · 11 replies

Can anyone let me know where I can find a tutorial on feeding in Motion Capture data into the Torque engine? From the demos that come with the engine, it is obviously a standard feature to have a long sequence of animation from motion capture data....

I have stream of data points (eg joints, body parts)... how do I attach it to a character and animate the character though the movements of these points?

Thanks!
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Torque 3D Owner Stephen Zepp
#1
12/20/2004 (11:00 am)
Heh..while it's a compliment to the TGE rendering/animation capabilities, what you see in the demo is simply a really good animator and good scripting control!

I faintly remember one or two projects working on motion capture, but honestly I think it would be outside the TGE portion of the animation pipeline itself--probably done after rigging but prior to export to .dts I would guess?

EDIT: here is the most recent link to a discussion about motion capture

Torque Owner Joseph Villard
Default Studio Name
#2
12/20/2004 (11:51 am)
Hmmm... I thought the dancing Orc in the demo was mocap...

Torque 3D Owner Stephen Zepp
#3
12/20/2004 (11:56 am)
TSE? possibly. She didn't mention TSE specifically (and I don't know one way or the other), so I thought she meant the fps demo from TGE. If she meant TSE, sorry!

Paul Kreemer
#4
12/20/2004 (3:04 pm)
Kayley, my first thought on this is that TGE doesn't really import animation data. You need to load it into your 3d editor/animation tool, apply it to your model and then export the model as a DTS file and the animations as DSQ files.

Looking at the thread above on Troy McFarland's mocap pack, that data appears to be setup for 3DS MAX, and searching TurboSquid for motion capture files shows some .csm and .bip formats. So it's a matter of what formats you can import into your 3d editor.

Torque Owner Joe Maruschak
#5
12/20/2004 (6:02 pm)
Motion capture is nt brought into the engine as motion capture. bring the mocap into your app of choice using whatever format you can use, and then export it. The Orc uses Biped data.. we have done tests in max and maya using FBX on custom rigs.

Torque Owner Kayley
#6
12/21/2004 (8:52 am)
Ah... correct me if I am wrong but am I getting the impression here that mocap can't be directly fed into the engine but rather used in an animation package and then fed it?

How is that real time then?

Is it not possible to have mocap data streaming real-time into the engine and have the nodes perform realtime deformation on the character mesh?

thanks.

Torque Owner Danny Ngan
#7
12/21/2004 (9:04 am)
AFAIK, no game engine supports live mocap feeds. All animation data in game engines -- Torque included -- is optimized data from whatever animation software you use. Mocap is just another way of creating movement for your characters. As far as the engine is concerned, there is no difference between mocap and handkeyed animations. It's all transform information.

Torque Owner Jeff Thomann
#8
12/30/2004 (6:33 am)
Look to motion builder... www.kaydara.com - it'll save you a ton of time if you already have maya, lightwave, 3ds max, etc.

Torque Owner Dirk "dirkk" Krause
#9
12/30/2004 (8:54 am)
Do you have any experience with it? I surfed the site for some time, but couldn't find a price - do you know how much it is?

Torque Owner Danny Ngan
#10
12/30/2004 (9:12 am)
MotionBuilder is now part of Alias' product lineup. Here is the current product page with purchasing information:

www.alias.com/eng/products-services/motionbuilder/index.shtml

Torque 3D Owner Kage
#11
12/30/2004 (9:34 am)
Good info guys:)

Price on this is not bad at $995 compared to some 3D modeling apps. There is a 30 day trial for motion builder from Alias, and I'm gonna give that a shot and see how difficult it is to work with that and Maya to export a set to the game.