MOCAP Session 8 - Friday 3rd April 2009

Since the group now knew how to get real-time working in an efficient time, it meant that the group could now work faster, however since Alex was an hour late to the meeting, it meant that time became limited, and not much work could be done.
A problem was discovered when merging the levels in with the character in Motionbuilder. Since the levels had been properly scaled to the right size in length, they had no been built in size with the character, so it meant that the levels were too big for the character to navigate in. Since the character had already been rigged, it meant that it could not be resized, and this was warned to us by our client, Alex Counsell. It seemed the only thing that was possible, was to scale down the levels. When the group tried descaling Alex's ropebridge level, it seemed to work fine, but when trying to descale Simon's level, it became a challenge. Firstly because he hadn't grouped the level as one object, meant it became impossible to do so, and also when it was scaled down, it didn't fit in proportion to the character, and this made the group confused. The solution maybe, was to get Simon to group his level and try again. If the descaling would not work, the group would not be able to use his level, and this would be a waste of time, so research would need to be carried out to get this to work.
Frances had finished her animations and had uploaded them to Youtube for the group to see, and it was agreed that they were useful for the start and end of the performance. Animations would still need to be created at the start of each new level to tell the user what to do in the level (a brief description/aim of the level).
Jack had finished texturing the character, and the group agreed that the textures were suitable for the character, and that it had matched Frances perceptions of the character she originally drew.
Alex had half completed the mine cart level. The group discussed how long they wanted the mine cart to last. Since the specifications of our task was to create a performance that lasted at least 2 minutes, it was decided that the mine cart level should last about a minute, half of the performance, since it was to be the last level and the most important level. It was then Greg's job to research into attaching the character to the moving platform so the character would follow the platform when it moves along the level. Since Motionbuilder was a new program for everyone, this could become a tough task.
Tasks for the easter holidays:
Jack -
Alex - Finish off ropebridge level, bring textures to next mocap session, and finish off mine cart level.
Frances - Think of ideas for aims of the 3 levels of the game, and start working on animations
Simon - Group the cave level together, and rotate so it fits the size of the mocap room, ready to be scaled down next time.
Helen - Continue updating website
Greg - Continue production process, and research into attaching character to moving platform in Motionbuilder.

The group have a month and a half before the performance on 20th May.