Plan for Toby W. Allen
by Toby W. Allen · 06/13/2005 (12:04 pm) · 3 comments
wow - finally all the motion capturing is over and done!
This .plan is predominantly going to be about mocap and the NinjaSticks.
MoCap
After three straight days of this, I'm glad it's over. Our setup worked well and we've posted images for these Day1 & Day 2 & 3 . The mocap stuff in the end went really well and it's easy to get it going once it's up, the only problem is that we were limited in the way we can structure and position our cameras and thus we lost some movement, but we worked around this not to lose anything. It's not as good as a full room of cameras, but still this worked well. Ricky Wei Lei Lam, our great Tae Kwon Do stuntman and head of the Tae Kwon Do society did all the moves for us. Those of you who will see the new batman will see ricky as a stuntman for the shadow warriors. I've now ended up with:
6 - Original Test Files
21 - Lower Body
34 - Mixed Body
17 - Root Poses
12 - Pure Test Files
38 - Upper Body
Total: 128 movements files.
You might be wandering why so many root files, well these include a t-pose and a mix of breathing and combat poses. We've got a couple of move files for each movement too, just in case. I've got an insane amount of work to get these into max - since the original program that takes these only saves to C3D, to get C3D into max as a motion file you need it in the .bip, .bvh or .csm format.. which no converter exists for (not that I can find - if you know anything I don't, post a comment). This is without saying that I need to clean up the motion files before I export them and that's a bloody pain in the -! We did release a Mocap setup file, which some might find interesting.
Here's a movie of Ricky in Action (.Mov - 4mg)
NinjaSticks
I'm very please that the development of this is coming long nicely - The levels are coming along nicely too. The waterlevel has been a bit of a pain due to the waterfall - Who's idea it was to create a separate file when the particle editor saves stuff should have re-thought his work. This is a major pipeline issue - It really blocks the process as any major changes have to be copied over and this can cause crap to happen and thus screw up your whole particle system. Why can't it just save on the .cs file and then force it to re-compile I don't know!
The palace and rock level are both coming together. Here's a shot of the barren rock level - granted this is the first ever iteration of this level, but I just love the colors. The zen garden is just sexy... it really really is... Joe has that for the moment and I'll soon grab some screenshots.
All the characters are getting together. I've had some issues with Max for bones, but I'll figure them out soon. Check out the main site for GDS if you really want to get the low down on everything.
GDS Leeds
Well this year's been mad! I mean if you look as the stuff we've done it's just pretty crazy for the first year. For those interested I've compiled a GDS Information pack 2005. This contains tons of info on the society and what we've done. Check out About page for a full list of what we've been up to, but this society is so much fun. It's very hard work, especially on my side being president and getting things organized (Boy I wish someone would sponsor us with a laptop, would save me!), people have been so cool about helping us out. I'm just happy about the society - we've done a lot more than I anticipated. It's nice to have a break too over the summer, but we're planning on a third devathon at the end of the summer to wrap up the work on the game and get the game ready for release in september.
Toby.
Le President
www.gdsleeds.com
This .plan is predominantly going to be about mocap and the NinjaSticks.
MoCap
After three straight days of this, I'm glad it's over. Our setup worked well and we've posted images for these Day1 & Day 2 & 3 . The mocap stuff in the end went really well and it's easy to get it going once it's up, the only problem is that we were limited in the way we can structure and position our cameras and thus we lost some movement, but we worked around this not to lose anything. It's not as good as a full room of cameras, but still this worked well. Ricky Wei Lei Lam, our great Tae Kwon Do stuntman and head of the Tae Kwon Do society did all the moves for us. Those of you who will see the new batman will see ricky as a stuntman for the shadow warriors. I've now ended up with:
6 - Original Test Files
21 - Lower Body
34 - Mixed Body
17 - Root Poses
12 - Pure Test Files
38 - Upper Body
Total: 128 movements files.
You might be wandering why so many root files, well these include a t-pose and a mix of breathing and combat poses. We've got a couple of move files for each movement too, just in case. I've got an insane amount of work to get these into max - since the original program that takes these only saves to C3D, to get C3D into max as a motion file you need it in the .bip, .bvh or .csm format.. which no converter exists for (not that I can find - if you know anything I don't, post a comment). This is without saying that I need to clean up the motion files before I export them and that's a bloody pain in the -! We did release a Mocap setup file, which some might find interesting.
Here's a movie of Ricky in Action (.Mov - 4mg)
NinjaSticks
I'm very please that the development of this is coming long nicely - The levels are coming along nicely too. The waterlevel has been a bit of a pain due to the waterfall - Who's idea it was to create a separate file when the particle editor saves stuff should have re-thought his work. This is a major pipeline issue - It really blocks the process as any major changes have to be copied over and this can cause crap to happen and thus screw up your whole particle system. Why can't it just save on the .cs file and then force it to re-compile I don't know!
The palace and rock level are both coming together. Here's a shot of the barren rock level - granted this is the first ever iteration of this level, but I just love the colors. The zen garden is just sexy... it really really is... Joe has that for the moment and I'll soon grab some screenshots.
All the characters are getting together. I've had some issues with Max for bones, but I'll figure them out soon. Check out the main site for GDS if you really want to get the low down on everything.
GDS Leeds
Well this year's been mad! I mean if you look as the stuff we've done it's just pretty crazy for the first year. For those interested I've compiled a GDS Information pack 2005. This contains tons of info on the society and what we've done. Check out About page for a full list of what we've been up to, but this society is so much fun. It's very hard work, especially on my side being president and getting things organized (Boy I wish someone would sponsor us with a laptop, would save me!), people have been so cool about helping us out. I'm just happy about the society - we've done a lot more than I anticipated. It's nice to have a break too over the summer, but we're planning on a third devathon at the end of the summer to wrap up the work on the game and get the game ready for release in september.
Toby.
Le President
www.gdsleeds.com
About the author
#2
06/13/2005 (3:51 pm)
I thought about mo-cap for my ballet game, but then I read about how they tried it for the tony hawk video games (and had tony wear those ping-pong balls) and it turned into such a mess that they found better results hand-animating them, so I decided if they could skip mo-cap so could I. plus, the cost is prohibitive unless you got "da hook up" but even then integrating it into your project is expensive in time and resources (as you're finding out with all those mo-cap files). but your end result will look very cool! 
#3
Cool stuff, Toby, good to see people doing great things with limited resources:)
06/13/2005 (11:03 pm)
This is just me talking out of my arse, but i think skateboarding game as such would always be PITA to mocap. With martial arts dude its relatively straightforward, since he basically maintains one position in space, while skater cant do all his stuff standing on still skateboard- it has to move around and often with quite some speed. No wonder that it would end in mess.Cool stuff, Toby, good to see people doing great things with limited resources:)
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