Since its adoption, motion capture has left a bad taste in the mouths of many. It’s perhaps a question of technical “age” - the current mocap process too rudimentary, too coarse, too data-intensive. There are too many people placing expectations of time and money on a technology too basic in its usability. For those fortunate enough to have the money and bandwidth for an in-house studio and staff, the experience is perhaps a bit sweeter. For those still wrestling with file conversion, data clean-up, post-processing, and retargeting – your pain is felt far and wide.
An industry perspective
A lot of emphasis has been placed on the quality of data. But with all the fancy cameras and markerless technology, there’s still the predicament of creating a palatable, affordable processing pipeline for the captured data.
When asked by the Motion Capture Society what he thought of the future of motion “performance” capture, James Cameron said “I believe it will make fantasy filmmaking much more user-friendly for filmmakers, actors, and studios, and ultimately bring down costs. It's just now possible to create photo-real human [computer-generated] characters, but it isn't cost effective.” At the time, Cameron’s “performance capture” bill for the film Avatar was running him “several hundred million” dollars.
Interestingly enough, Cameron also comments that actors need not feel threatened, for the technology will never be a replacement for acting. Keyframe purists may find this resonate with their similar fear as motion capture becomes more and more accessible to smaller studios.
Regardless of the consumer-ifying of motion capture equipment, the big guys continue to keep their edge because they’ve got the dollar. They’ve got the space, the equipment, and the staff to convert the data into something usable.
Not only is Mixamo attempting to reshape motion capture, CTO Stefano Corazza is pushing the core technology further with the development of markerless motion capture at the Stanford Biomotion Lab (shown here in a Wired review).
Mass-production motion
Stock motion companies recognized this void for consumer level developers who want to compete with AAA studios’ top-quality animation, but don’t have the time or money to rent a studio (let alone buy one), or pay for pure keyframing. They began mass-producing cheap mocap data, available on websites and CDs. Unfortunately this didn't help matters. The problem remains that the motion data is not difficult to obtain - it is rather the issue of effectively applying the motion data to your characters, according to the character specific geometry and personality. It is the re-purposing and cleaning stock motion that makes mass produced mocap just as intensive as keyframing in the first place.
The next step...
Mixamo is attempting a different approach. Serving as the intermediate post-processor, Mixamo developed an online technology to bring big studio mocap resources to anyone with an internet connection. All in-house capture is cleaned and looped, and automatically retargets to your uploaded rig online. Yes, automatically retargeted, in real time. Once uploaded and mapped, your character is three clicks away from performing more motions than could fit on a stock motion disc. Take your pick - adjust, and customize the motion to your liking. But don't be fooled, Mixamo customization is not a procedural trick. The controls are actually recalculating the characteristics of that particular motion based on multiple takes recorded for a range of variation.
The customization can be more than enough control for game creators, but many animators will find that a Mixamo motion is a piece of well-processed animation ready for their stylistic input - a moving canvas ready to perform their vision. For tight budgets and hard deadlines, the difference between spending a couple hours on getting a punch right for hero v. villain and adding a motion layer to actually make your villain act..."villainous"...could mean the difference between a convincing scene and a bad recreation of "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots." Like Cameron says, technology will never be a replacement for art.
Take the director's chair and consider Mixamo your personal production team. Retargeting, looping, cleaning, customizing, with an average price point lower than a sushi lunch - which coincidentally you could be enjoying with all the time you saved using Mixamo. Download options are available in all your favorite flavors.
No matter what point in its evolution, motion capture is an effective technology being used all over the world. Continuing to leverage motion technology, Mixamo is taking great strides in improving accessibility, usability, and affordability. Whether you're an indie game developer looking for content or a AAA studio interested in rapid prototyping, we think you deserve more.
Related articles:
- James Cameron - Performance capture re-invented
- MoCap MIT - An essay on mocap from MIT
- Neil Gaimon - A pondering on Mocap
