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Advanced motion capture question.
Hello!
I’m working on a project where we are trying to make 2D cavedrawings “come alive” and start dancing. I am thinking that the best way to do this is with some sort of motion capture software or AE plug-in, where we would shoot on tape an actual dancer, and somehow capture the dancers motion and apply it to the cavedrawing. Since it’s very simple drawings in 2D, almost like stickfigures, I’m hoping there might be a solution that doesn’t involve real expensive motion capture tools and a 3D program. We do have somewhat of a budget to invest in some software that might help us accomplish what we want to do, but I have no idea what would be best to use for this. Does anybody have any advise on the best way to do this (hopefully in AE)? All tips highly appreciated!
Kind regards,
Eric -
6 Replies
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If you wish to try some mocap software before you buy the Pixel Corps has a sweet deal going on this summer. You can join for $50 for the entire summer and this gives you access to thousands of dollars in software that you can download and authorize from them. It can’t be used for commercial purposes but you can watch tutorials and learn how to use it and make sure it works before you invest any money in anything. There are plenty of forums where you have access to tons of industry professionals (like the COW) that will be glad to help you and answer questions. Like I said though, it isn’t free but for the software you get access to it is worth it.
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well.. if you don’t want to spend any money, you could track the various joints of a dancer using ae’s tracker. then using the beam effect, you could construct, line by line, and stick figure, attaching the tracker data to the appropriate end point of the beam effect.
you’ll then have to figure out haw to make the line from the beam effect look like a cave drawing… roughen edges and a displacement map would be where i might start.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
also, i would test this before i hire and shoot a dancer…
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
haven’t used it much myself but from what i’ve seen you might be able to use stills or cutouts and the new puppet tool in afx8 to animate the dancer. wouldn’t be “realistic” but may be worth taking a look at.
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if you try the ae tracker method, since some of the beam points will need the same data, apply the tracker data to a series of nulls. name the null after the joint they are tracking, like right ankle, right knee, etc.
that will make it easier to just parent the beam points to the joint nulls, and, if/when you need to tweak the movement of a joint you’ll only have one set of keyframes to deal with.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Thanks for the tips so far! I was hoping there might be some plug-in or reasonably priced software out there that could speed up the process of doing individual tracking of each point with AE’s own tools. I’ll check out the Pixel Corps deal. Maybe the AE puppet tool will work out ok, but I do want the dancing to look fairly decent/natural, especially since this might be composited with a real dancer…
Kind regards,
Eric
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