Things in Motion

Got sucked down the Rokoko AI Video Mocap rabbit hole this week.  Its a nice free service that transforms video to motion files with varying levels of success.  I found my webcam gave me distorted results but it worked quite well once I started using my iphone.  Also the iphone lets you record vertically which allows for recording in a much smaller space much closer to the camera so that's a big benefit.

I also had to use 3DExchange to get the motion converted to IMotion but I'm guessing there's other ways to do that.

My first success was this very bad dance move that went from performance to exporting this tiny clip in about two hours.  Not bad.

I tried creating something a bit more complicated where I pick up an item from a desk, interact with that item and then set it back down.  I got a decent result into Iclone and then spent a couple of hours editing the results but IClone crashed on me.  IClone's backup process is usually pretty good but this instance crashed when I tried the backup and that was that.  A couple of hours work gone.  Not sure if I would label the work before the crash a success though.  I may try again or I may go back to the non-mocap route.  

Still, the whole experience has given me more positive thoughts about buying a mocap suit.  And now Im realizing how important the gloves part of the suit would be.  

Gotta keep saving those pennies.    

For anyone interested here some interesting clips on getting and editing the results.