Pipeline focus

Things have changed somewhat to help fit within the scope of my abilities and the time allowed. I knew i would struggle to sort out a small project but this has been a little ridiculous. Here's a brief summary of the new plan.


Redefine project to just one pipeline with tweaks.

Split into three parts, Pre capture, Mid Capture and Post Capture

Pre: Templates within Vicon Blade to help with varying structure, encompasses the technical side of setting up a motion capture session in order to accomodate for non human rigs

Mid: Augmenting the data using props and acting techniques

Post: Most likely using spline IK and lattice deforms to help constrain the data to the appropriate motions.


More research needed into "Pre" phase. So far have been looking into what information on the template function in vicon there is, it seems like most of the documentation is concerning human biped setup. There are tools to help label the markers appropriately in relation to one another. It could be as simple as figuring out which markers should be labelled as what in order to reconfigure the template to be suitable for non human subjects. This would need a little extra research into anatomy of the creatures intended to be used as rigs in order to help assess how best the markers should be laid out.

Having spoken to Norbert, I know know that adapting the skeletons to go into the appropriate creature shouldn't be all that difficult. The translations of the bones aren't recorded apart form the root joint so the rotations are the only things that'll need to be considered when capturing and establishing the range of motion. Again this will need to focus around the motion analysis to help inform marker placement.

I will only need one rig other than the human control. So I think for time sake the angle poise lamp may be the best option as the sort of anatomy is pretty self explanatory due to the joints it has. It's range of movement should be pretty explanatory too.

I have a mocap session scheduled for either Wednesday or Friday (Update: Friday confirmed) to allow for messing with templates. I'll book another for sometime after that to actually acquire the footage for the mid and post sections of the pipeline.

I think I'll be using the lamp as its the most non human with a load of reference footage for one being animated well (Pixar) I've started to do little motion studies on how the lamp moves and what motion it mimics. I'll upload scans later on as I'm using my personal sketchbook to do these in.