"melo" <mel### [at] coxnet> wrote in message 
news:web.47b53aaa96bac4aa92254edf0@news.povray.org...
> Has anyone figured out an economic way to handle motion capture to use for
> skeletal animation joint rotation vector specifications in different 
> poses?
>
> I presume, digital image processing with multiple digital cameras with 
> optical
> markers might still be the least expensive option?
>
> So far, I have used pose pictures in Character animation books, drew some
> pictures for myself, and from those picture eyeballed the joint rotation
> vectors.
>
> Given I have 23 joint rotation vectors, 10-15 of which get involved in 
> most
> gross poses I played with. The going had been extremely slow.
>
> Thanks,
> Meltem

This is a tricky question because the economics depend on what you have 
access to and how much you're likely to get value out of it. If you're doing 
movies, then it's economic to splash out on the most professional kit about. 
If you're at college, you may be able to find someone close with some form 
of solution that you could team up with.

I don't think there's a free way of doing it. Even image processing of 
optical markers needs some software and I don't recall seeing any freeware 
that does that sort of thing, though I haven't done a Google on that sort of 
thing recently.

Most data capture techniques require that the data be cleaned up after data 
capture. For example, a certain proportion of optical markers are likely to 
be out of sight in each frame. So far as I know, even some of the more 
sophisticated hardware can generate spikes that register an unrealistic 
joint position from time to time, so you still need hours of work to create 
a smooth sequence.

If you're talking about economies in terms of time, then I think you'd have 
to be doing an awful lot of this to pay back the time it would take to 
evaluate solutions, buy and learn how to use one, then work out how to get 
the output into a format that you can use with POV-Ray.

On the other hand there are free BVH files out there that other people have 
captured which contain thousands of poses (which cuts the problem in half). 
There are also free tools for visualising pose data and potentially for 
modifying it using wireframe characters that could cut the time to hand-pose 
a model. You still have the problem of converting it into the format you 
wish to use though.

Regards,
Chris B.

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