To be honest, I haven’t done anything really fast, though I have seen good results from other people’s boxing mocaps. My concern, which I haven’t tested, but can be the same for film/video is that if you were to capture a drummer, for example, who is banging out really fast hits, you may capture a stick before and after hitting the drum pad, but not actually hitting it. in film/video this is where shutter speed helps. If the gate is open long enough, then you get the blur of the movement, which is fine for the human eye. Hopefully with motion blur in UE, you can achieve the same effect.
A punch or kick is typically a big motion, regardless of speed, so I would guess you’ll be okay. The neurons themselves seem quite durable, but I treat the with kid gloves because I don’t want to have to wait for a replacement. I can’t comment on impact, however. A staged fight doesn’t have much impact. i wouldn’t try to mocap a real fight.
The biggest issue is keeping them away from anything that would magnetize them, but there is a tool in the software that will help fix problems cause by that. So I wouldn’t worry too much.
I say 32 Sensors is the way to go if you want good looking animations since it captures also fingers pretty good, but the output is not 60fps as said by SterlingY, but 30fps recording is pretty good and yes, fast motion, kicks and so on are captured quite well…also you can use some builtin functions inside Max/Maya/Whatever to smooth out or to enhance some animations, so the difference in FPS capture for me is never an issue.
I forgot to mention that you wil probably need to tweak some of the recorded animations, especially if you have hands close to the body or arms crossed, since they will intersect themself at some point…also fingers ( like fingers touch each other ) will be not precise, but that is also due to the body proportion of the mannequin in Axis Player.
Also buy a spudger, those neurons sit pretty **** tight in their mouldings when connected and getting them out is a nightmare. As SterlingY says ‘treat them with kid gloves’.
Question for you guys, Axis Neuron skeleton seems to have more bones than the UE4 skeleton, do you guys map the mocap data to the UE4 skeleton in a DCC or simply import the Axis Neuron skeleton into UE4? I’m worried if it’s the latter I won’t be able to use the ART.
Even I don’t plan on actually using mocap for a real fight . In fact I wouldn’t last any kind of fight . But if the mocap can respond well to fast shadow boxing and air kicking , that means its quite versatile and has greater scope of usage . Something the game dev community needs .
Im well aware that we need to clean up the mocap data either in Maya,blender or motion builder for actual production use . But now we are one step closer to achieving AAA animations for our games . I can understand there are calibration tweaking for hands and fingers . 30fps sounds good enough as long as it doesn’t go below that .
I just loaded a 31 Neuron (no prop neuron) mocap clip into Axis and it runs for about five minutes and is 18K+ frames That’s 60FPS. Maybe I’m missing something, perhaps it is approximating every other frame.
Like you said, the body proportions of the Axis mannequin are important. The best thing is to measure the actual body of the actor wearing the rig and inputting the settings into a custom body size. But there are times where you might want to make a custom size that would more accurately match the size of the CG character. This is trial and error stuff. You’ve got options and you have to to test what works best. Regardless, I agree that you will need to make adjustments. The Axis Avatar, for example will never have the shape of Humpty Dumpty, so unless you pad your actor with pillows, you can also bet the the arms will intersect with the CG character’s belly.
In the end, it’s fun and rewarding to play around to get what you want.
This is a little script I wrote in Maya to retarget animations from Axis Player to the ART joint setup and I use it all the time ( with or without root motion ).
I notice that the orientation of the mocap data is a bit random, but in the script I add the root joint ( since the exported FBX from Axis player have the Hips as the first joint in the hierarchy ) to also enable/disable root motion.
I usually do this: import the mocap animation from Axis Player > retarget using the script > export the retargeted animation > Add the character in the scene using ART > apply the retargeted animation > tweak what I need > export into UE4.
With Maya ( and I guess also for other DCCs ) I usually batch export the animations using the Game Exporter which also separate the animations
That script was exactly what I needed! Bridges the gap between the PN skeleton and the Epic skeleton, makes life so much easier Thanks for reaching out mate, was a pleasure talking to you and I’m super excited to see your future projects in action.
There is one application which im really curious on how it might look like . Namely , using PN on an animal model with a normal rig . Only thing the legs and arms would be in proportions with an animal (eg bear or wolf). The animal model needs to be in a wierd human pose by default , but we will try to walk four legged to simulate that desired animal . Does anybody think this idea is valid ? If so can somebody try it out ?
There have been some thread on the official forum about it, and as of now you might be able to walk on 4 legs to simulate an animal behaviour, but it will look weird because of the mocap itself ( and also totally uncomfortable for the legs ).
At the end of the day the retargeting will take care of the rotation of the joints, not the position, so proportions are not an issue.
Best solution for me would to do use the mocap animation as “blocking” the main poses and then add good old manual keyframe animation on top of it to tweak everything.
Or better yet, find a bear, put the suit on him and tell him what to do
Agree with this. The PN suit was designed for biped mocaps but there’s nothing stopping you from repurposing it as mentioned above. Personally I’ll probably purchase a quadruped model with a handful of animations and use iKinema to create derived animations from that.
This PN template can help with scale and prop placement as you can see yourself walking around an environment in UE4 and mark out props in your real world mocap space. Happy days.
Cyxx Hi , I want to test a camera in real time to link to the neuron character 's head , in such a way so as to start a " game" . But I am still a beginner in UDK . Can you do that with these parameters is to prepare the demo scene.
(Of course, pay )
Hey thanks a lot for the plugin. I couldn’t get the official 1 to do anything but yours seems to work fine.
I am attempting to do the same deal with VR and PR as you did in your blood mind game. Any chance you could upload your player controller for that? I was trying to setup mine with the VR template player controller to keep the head movement from being affected by the tracking but no luck so far.
Thank You for the great plugin! I have been playing with the PN and I like it very much. I have a few problems though:
Is it possible to record the broadcast animation coming from axis directly in UE4 editor… This is possible to do with something like the kinect 2… where the data comes to the animation editor in persona and you press record and you can record the animation… is this possible with this plugin? I could not get it to work.
Also The other problem I have is that my animations made with axis have weird orientation, and I am having a hard time trying to retarget in motion builder… what is the proper way to export from axis so i can retarget in motionbuilder?
Thank you again!
Another question
a pop up on my browser for donations keep coming up, any way to remove this?
