Streaming Motion Capture

[EnvisMJ]

We would like to stream live motion capture data from our capture system into vizard to allow us to animate a character that we created (rigged with Max biped).

Is there a way to do this without MotionBuilder? We've had endless problems with MotionBuilder and would rather not use it in this pipeline if we don't have to.

Has anyone actually done this?

[farshizzo]

What motion capture system are you using? This is technically possible, it's just a very difficult and time consuming task. Without MotionBuilder, you will need to perform all the IK and motion targeting yourself.

If you feel you are up to the task, then have a look in the docs for manually controlling the bones of an avatar.

[EnvisMJ]

We're using a 6 camera STT Motion Captor system with SD cameras.

I would be really surprised if you've heard of it... it's kind of ...obscure...

[VelvetElvis]

You can actually skip motion builder all together. You can load the .bvh file or other motion capture format directly onto the biped in Max.

You can load all of your animations in one sequence or sequence them out and control which ones are loaded in what order in the cfg file in Vizard.

Granted, it would be much easier if Vizard supported animated bipeds directly (ie reading the .bip file and translating that onto the bones as it does in Max) or could read the point cache files (either in xml or pc2 format) created in Max, but that would be too simple.

[EnvisMJ]

Unfortunately, our MoCap format isn't directly 3DS Max compatible. Also, doesn't sound like a streaming operation?