MOCAP Sessions 6 + 7

The 6th mocap session was productive, as the cameras were connecting up to the computers, and so a successful ROM test was run. Simon is now in charge of cleaning up the data on the performance day, and Jack is to work with Motionbuilder. Since the notes taken when being taught by Geoff were vague, it was hard to understand what to do when it came to putting the data in Motionbuilder, and so the session was ended early.

Lucky for the group, a Tuesday session was booked in, and during tuesday, wednesday and thursday sessions, two staff members who are familiar with the MOCAP room, were available for help. This was beneficial as it helped explain the missing steps that the group missed when running through the procedure. There were certain steps in the procedure that were essential, that was not written down in the notes, and these were then updated. Cleaning of the data was simplified, meaning that more time was had to work in Motionbuilder. This would become useful for the group, as the time before the performance will be limited.

Since working with real-time was explained too quickly when Geoff explained it, the notes taken were very brief and very hard to understand. The staff members in the room were around to help, but they had not covered the subject much as well, so experiments were carried out to try and get the feed live. After many attempts, and mistakes of removing an actor from Motionbuilder, the feed finally worked in real-time. The problem was that whenever the real-time plugin was started, the actor in Motionbuilder would just shrink into a heap on the floor, and not match any ROM data. The solution is explained in the revised notes, which can be found here: Mocap Room Documentation. Because of limited time, the marker set was not set up properly, meaning the character jolted and became jumbled up in itself when working in real-time. By creating a proper marker set in Motionbuilder will help keep this data smooth, and hopefully cause no problems. Since it took a while to find a solution to importing the character that Jack and Alex had made into Motionbuilder, it meant that little time was had to experiment in real time, but now this was working, it was proven that the group may be able to achieve a good, working performance, and next time, know what to do, so the group can show Alex Counsell. Even though this step was meant to be achieved a month ago, many problems were encountered. The group have two months to get the performance ready.
Tasks for this week include:
Frances - Work on the animations for the start, end, and inbetween levels. Animations will also need to be created if the character falls, or gets hit, or dies.
Alex - Finish the aesthetics of the ropebridge level, add the textures, and continue working on the mine cart level. This should be aimed to be finished in 2 weeks time.
Jack - Continue with texturing of character, and finalise rigging.
Simon - Help out with cleaning up of data, and texture the cave level.
Helen - Continue updating website
Greg - Continue production process