automatic squash and stretch

[needse]

ive been looking about for ways to add some sort of automatic squash and stretch to mocap data

i want to achieve a more cartoon style motion to the mocap data

does anybody know if this is possible in some way ?

found this but =

The cartoon animation filter =
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXOVOEv1GZs

does anybody know if this is possible

[poopipe]

It wouldn't be trivial to write something that automated it at all and imo its such a subjective and contextual thing that it really needs to be done by hand.

[needse]

yeah i just debating whether to use mocap or not coz it looks to clean

shame coz my keyframing sucks

[needse]

found this

http://www.reallusion.com/ContentSto...1/default.aspx

[poopipe]

honestly mate - I don't see the benefit of buying something like that.

cartoon walks etc. are really expressive so use of a generic "toon" animation is either going to give you something dead or wrong. It won't give you anything you couldn't adapt from plain old mocap anyways I dont think.


You're better off spending the money on this and doing it all yourself if you ask me.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Animator...4649604&sr=1-5


I find animation very, very hard work. My timing is naturally crappy (hence me not being a famous rock star) so even though I can put stuff in poses I have trouble making it flow properly. I'm also an appalling actor (hence me not being a famous movie star) so I can't decide what poses to put things in. The one tip I can give you is to work to a soundtrack, it pretty much automatically fixes your timing and it gives you an emotional cue for the poses.

I say give it a crack - assuming you've storyboarded, if you haven't do that first - in detail

[needse]

cheers for the tips again poop i will add that pile of books to my list of books i want/need

yeah i know im just trying to think of any way to speed the process up lol not a good idea again

me neither mate, im not a rock star/movie star so looks like i need to go back to basics like ya saying. which aint a bad thing

on the plus side sussing out mb now. curves and story mode etc and i find it alot easy to aniamte etc in that than i do in CAT so maybe another 5 years and i will have a decent tonny style walk cycle lol

them motions are good as reference now

as for storyboard i do have one but dont like it ( not enough action ) so i need a rework on that i may cut some important peices out of the story lines and create a kinda montage of action seqs as if they were clips from different episodes

[needse]

seems theres a dvd of that book

http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/

just running through the clips theres some interesting stuff


oh thats alright its only £760.85 incl. VAT. lol think i will get the book

[needse]

what would you say the best way to do the face animation with bone rig.

morph targets in max ? or should be putting in motion builder ?

not gonna do laods of talking but i would like to puit some words in there somewhere

[poopipe]

I favour morphs cos theyre much easier to manage and you get better quality to rig complexity ratio.

You need 7 or 8 visemes to cover English

I usually get a fully expressive face out of around 36 targets. that's independent left and right targets and visemes included.
I create my morphs in zbrush for one side of the face and flip/skinwrap in max to create the other side. .its really quick and simple that way.

Look up Athey on here, she had a morph mirroring tutorial linked off her signature.


bone rig wise..
a good setup with pose saving/loading, clever blending etc. is great and potentially more flexible than a morphs rig but a whole lot of effort to put together -not to mention skin properly.


theres a video online about the face rigging they did on gears of war that uses shared morphs to drive a bone rig. its maya in the video but i set up the same thing relatively quickly in max.

[needse]

ok thanks for info

i will check athey out see what i can find

the face is already skinned to the bones (if you didnt know)

just regoing over the wights now just need a good method to drive it

i will have a look at saving poses aswell

[needse]

also i got a problem with the horse rig (this is straight out of max no editing ive just added a 2 legs motion to it but the front legs keep rotating and i cant seem to fix it
any ideas i know i gotta alot of questions sorry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TwuA...ature=youtu.be