poor mans motion capture ??

Support Animation and Rigging
1

hey guys ive been struggling with making good looking walk cycles and came up wit h an idea that in theorie should work (i think)

would it be possible to add a plane behind my subject and set a movie texture to said plane

if so could i load a small video of someone walking and simply go through frame by frame matching the model to the texture as i go along

just an idea guys lol would this work at alll !!!?

2

Yes you can do that, but it won’t make you a better animator. You need to understand the principles first. Walk cycles are hard, even for professionals so don’t be to hard on yourself. You can do this, which I’ve seen people do if you want, it might help you get a basic cycle down but it still might look weird if you don’t understand the principles. Good luck!

3

yh i guess your right thnx i will try some more tutorials instead thanx

4

Sure you can. It’s called rotoscoping, and animators use it all the time. Not so much a poor man’s as a low tech motion capture. Another thing you can use live video for is to get the timing right: how many frames does a pace take? Step through the video one frame at a time and count them.

On the other hand – rotoscope a walk cycle, and you’ve got a walk cycle. Learn how to animate a walk cycle, and you’ve learned some animation.

5

I have had the same idea, but for some reason the texture aplyed to the plane object in the 3D window paralises in the first frame and wont budge. There is another option i found in this forum.

  • Select the camera.
  • Select “Wiew” in the 3D window.
  • Select “Background Image” in the menu.
  • Import the movie you want.
  • In the Background image Pannel activate “Auto Refresh”

Now everytime you advance a frame, The movie image in the background of the camera will advance one frame too. The objects in the scene will stay in front of the image so you can select and move them. The thing with this method is that you must work in camera wiew. Also your image may be a little distorted due to the square schape of the camera. to solve this (keeping the camera selected) go to scene options(F10) in the buttons window and choose the “render” button (the square with the picture) then, in the “Format” pannel, right under the button that says “game framing settings” you have two buttons where you may choose size Z and Y. Play with those until your background picture looks right. Sorry if i overexplained the steps but another noob like myself may be looking for this answer. :eyebrowlift:

Hey guy´s ! This is my first post ever! :smiley: