Hello everyone I am planning to start playing with the pipeline for bringing motion capture into the engine with the possibility of bringing packs to the marketplace. I’m excited to hear what kind of animation you would like to see. FPS animation seems like an obvious first choice. Also I would like to add that I have extensive experience providing Mocap for AAA studios. I am looking to branch out and make this more accessible to Indie Devs
Well depends one whats to be included.
Run and gun sets would be fine but with software the way it is now one can sit down and make as may different variations in no time at all as well a lot of that stuff can be and has been available for years for free.
But a complete plug and play 1st and 3rd person control “system” would be of value if it also included the entity package to make it all work.
If the SDK was turn key and included both a shooter and an adventure package that would be something I would be willing to pay for.
Want to know what to make just play Tomb Raider or Assassin’s Creed toss in some run and gun poses , hook it all up with code that makes it work, and I think you got a product to sell.
I would buy it.
The animations I have noticed for free are pretty basic and I would find useful for only a basic prototype. I was hoping to create more extensive or unique animation trees. Also the quality I have seen from Mixamo and other places seems lacking. My hope is to bring high quality high frequency human animation from recorded actors. I have been playing those games. Lots of climbing and jumping. That would be fun stuff to record.
So I am just curious as to what your using? I already have a pipeline created.
IPISoft 4 Sony Eye Cameras full 360 For Capture and Crunch/Cleanup
BVHacker to align and clean a bit more and get ready for Blender
Blender to Export to FBX to UE4
Whole studio and above process cost us about 1k
Just my advice for that setup though you need a good 40 x 40 foot space to set that up to get good captures
What is Your process?
Also by control system I assume you mean the state machine inside of Unreal? I am still doing my basic reading about animation blueprints. I plan to eventually do that. It could take time to create all the logic to tie all the animation together and it would also mean it would take longer for me to make a larger animation library. At first I want to focus on providing lots of animation clips that people can play with. I think once I have learned the pipeline it should be decently plug and play. I want to base my bone structure off of the Maya rigging toolkit they provided and if its different maybe also provide a matching HumanIK skeleton to go with it. I plan to stick to average proportions so that the built in retargeting tools will allow you to drive any character and proportions you come up with. I have some more hands on tweaking I can do inside of Motionbuilder but I am hoping the built in tools are pretty awesome.
Good question OSIAS. I use Optitrack cameras, Maya, and Motionbuilder. I have also used Vicon in the past. I currently usually do temporary setups but I have worked with large volumes.
Sounds good.
A lot of the stuff is rather basic and almost like someone was guessing what would be of worth. You can only do so much with a few decent run cycles and back flips that have no relationship or even targeted towards video games.
What I would be interested in is in anything off the ground as in ledge climbing, wall jumping, ladder work and more or less anything with a high dynamic range of movement of anything over the shoulders. I also use MotionBuilder so access to the FBX is also a must but if done well and reasonably priced it would save a lot of time and bucks off our budget.
Looking forward to this and a lot more content and assets designed for games development.
+1 for climbing animations like Assassins Creed.
Nice thing is that everything enters the engine through .FBX so I don’t think that is gonna be a problem 
If you mean you want to use my work files before I baked off of the character rig you would probably have to talk to me directly. For the moment I am going to focus on getting a test animation through the pipeline. I’ll post about it when I have. I only got the engine earlier today.
With the growth of Oculus Rift fan base, the upcoming Sixense STEMs, and booming VR interest in general, it would be nice to see animations suitable for VR development. Basically that means a lot of animations intended to be used additively, and mixed and matched. For example, how I’ve been doing with OR and Razer Hydras (back on UDK, just got UE4 a few hours ago) involved top half animations, bottom half animations, full body animations, and individual limb animations, not to mentions a load of skeletal controllers. (Can’t forget the necessity of IK target bones in the rig.)
I think I get what you mean. So for example if you were making a flight Sim you would want a lot of arm and head motion from the player perspective. Maybe doing cool stuff like operating controls or have an animation for ejecting like they have in Titanfall Etc.
What are the results like with that setup? I’ve always wanted to get into the mocap side of things, but it was always too expensive. This looks really appealing if it works.
Actually I’m curious too. Using the sony eye or kinect have you been able to do multiple actors or a decent sized volume? I haven’t tried using them but it seems like they wouldn’t hold up for a large shoot. Just a basic single person. Correct me if I am wrong.
This is our setup and I will explain in more detail.
IPISoft 4 Sony Eye Cameras full 360 Degree Setup
4 Camera Stands
Two USB 3.0 two port Cards
Two Sony Motion Controller Recharging Stations
3 Sony Move Motion Controllers
Four 30ft USB 3.0 Cables
Headmount for Motion Controller
Extra Lights / Lamps so no shadows
Roll of duct tape to mark out area
Bright Orange Footies
Couple Tight & Bright Different Color Clothing
The above will run you right around 1k and it allows you to capture 1 actor. Its quite capable of doing 2 actors however the setup costs are going to double the cost to about 2k because you need twice as much hardware like 8 cameras and the software for the 2 actors is about double as well. The site is full of it when they tell you the space you need to do anything worthwhile. Truly you need to plan on a good 40x40 foot space to do proper captures. Also you need to have a decent machine to put all this hardware in and for crunching.
How does it fair, I have been quite happy with the results especially being we don’t have an experienced animator on our team and I do it. I animate like **** so this makes it life like and looking great. You just need to know how to act and certain tricks for mocap like gorilla hula hoop arms etc.
Stay away from the Kinect rigs there not as good IE they can not capture faster motions and not as many cameras and angles and this is what is important imho. 4 Eyes is enough to do a 360 Degree setup and it works great. Defiantly want the sony move controllers to help capture accuracy for head alignment and hands location. As long as you are willing to spend the time crunching the cleanup the results will be great.
I am impressed with the results and for 1k that’s really good.
You’re about ten years too late.
There’s already tons of free mocap out there, and that’s not including the massive free pack of animations from Autodesk. Free animations here for biped in 3ds Max and Motion builder.
Sure I know there is plenty of free stuff out there. I took a look at that pack and like a lot of the other stuff I see out there it doesn’t really add together into much of a motion tree. My plan is to have more extensive sets. Single characters in a AAA project can have several hundred if not 1000+ animations. Not saying I can get something like that together quickly but its a goal. Also if it goes well I want to really be active in the community and help people have access to more variety.
Also is anyone else having problems with the Animation Toolset cropping its menus. I already have the animation on that proxy character just can’t get to the publish button lol. I wanted to stick to going through the plugin but I’ll probably just strip the rig and import it myself so I can start playing in the engine.
You make it into a motion tree in motion flow or mixer mode in 3ds max, (very simple)
I have myself 100 gig of game animations that I give away free, complete sets with every conceivable move. So your idea is dated and will not work! You only have to look at Mixamo’s failure in the same market, and they’re a big company.
@OASIS, thanks for the tips man! That setup looks promising. Do the ps3 cameras actually support PC natively, or do you need to get a special PC version?
That does look really good for under a grand, I was looking here but it was much more expensive 
The cameras are just standard play station eye cameras. If you go to ipisoft website they have links to all the hardware you need.