SCAD MOTION CAPTURE
SCAD MOTION CAPTURE BLOG DOCUMENTATION
My first year at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) I attended the club fair and was so surprised to learn that SCAD had its very own motion capture facility and club.
While I did not have the pleasure of taking Professor Jeff Light's class (Former ILM Motion Capture Supervisor) due to uncompleted pre-requisites before his departure from the university, I did get to witness his passionate form of teaching in an early club meeting. With the members of the club graduating, I decided to join as an officer to continue to spread my passion and interest for the art of capturing movements.
After taking over as President of the club during Winter quarter of 2019, my mission was to keep motion capture alive and teach new students about the tech and performance art just as Jeff Light did. I connected with industry professionals such as Cinematic Artist, Jakub Ben from CD Projekt Red who then referred me to Cinematic Director, Steve Kniebihly, from Digital Frontier as guest speakers for students to share knowledge about the game cinematic industry using motion capture. My overall goal is to make motion capture easily accessible for students of all digital media majors.
OCTOBER 15, 2021 | MILESTONE COMPLETE: FACIAL CAPTURE
Since Professor Light's retirement, we did not have anyone who could teach students how to do facial capture. We had Dynamixyz, but it became a topic of being "too difficult to deal with" thus documentation was never passed on from the graduating seniors who had Jeff as their professor. From stories and observation, animating facial expressions and dialogue required significant time to create.
After conversing with Animation MFA, Chris, we started to research possible options of which program would be best for students who could do facial capture with their own custom rigs without reliance on blendshapes. We looked into iClone, Cara, Rokoko, MocapX, Livelink and other candidates. While iClone was our runner-up decision, we found that the other programs were not as intuitive relying on blendshapes, iPhone X's true depth camera, or an expensive subscription. That is when we started looking into Faceware.
Partnering with club officer, Rachel Clinton, we sat down together to learn the steps of using Faceware's Analyzer and Retargeter. With the free trial, we found that it was extremely intuitive and easy to use. It uses the rig's controls rather than relying on blendshapes which is exactly what we needed. I reported and pitched this to the VSFX Chair, and hopefully in the near future the university can have an educational license so we can start teaching students and they can have peace of mind while working on their projects!
OCTOBER 5, 2021 | MOCAP FOR GAMES
Today was a fun day to meet some game students for their game project. This would be the first 3-major collaboration of VSFX, Animation, and Game Design coming together to record motion capture since the pandemic started. Students are not allowed to rent the mocap lab unless they have taken the required class so it was a pleasure to supervise and coordinate takes with them. It was also my first time meeting Professor Nye Warburton, one of the advisors of the club and the Games Animation Professor in person. He had such great energy and enthusiasm when directing the motions.
We had to problem solve the markers coming off the lycra suit. The suit did not seem the right material so we ended up having to tape the markers on our actor, Walter, "mummifying" him (early Halloween?). We did not have enough time to record all of their motions, but it was enough of the main ones that their animators could begin the clean-up process.
SEPTEMBER 21-23, 2021 | MOCAP TEACHING ASSISTANT
I assisted Professor Elmatawari as a T.A. helping students learn how to use the motion capture equipment as well as the software. We walked through the steps of Vicon Shogun, markering an actor, creating takes, exporting from Shogun Post, as well as mocap performance tips. It was really nice to be able to share with people my love for motion capture and being in the studio. The 4 missing cameras were reinstalled and we had to recalibrate them during the wand wave camera calibration since they were in a neutral status. Students were able to successfully record motions for their class projects and have the ability to run the mocap lab on their own.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2021 | RETURNING TO CAMPUS FROM VIRTUAL LEARNING
Returning to SCAD from virtually learning, we needed to make sure the tech unused for a year, was still functioning. I had only used the lab a couple of times before the pandemic yet still remembered the process through my past notetaking.
With the help of Michelle Rojas, my visual effects friend, I aided in re-teaching Professor Elmatawari (the current professor of motion capture clean-up) and M.F.A. animation student Chris Dreliszak how to use Vicon Shogun's technology from Eclipse, Shogun Live, to Shogun Post.
To our surprise, 4 of the optical cameras were missing on one wall yet we still managed to calibrate the system and capture decent data.
This was also the first time implementing finger capture with Vicon's Front-waist 5 finger set-up in this studio with previously bought markers using the club's budget.
Professor Elmatawari enlisted me as an unofficial TA to help teach his students how to use Vicon Shogun and the motion capture equipment. The following week will be the days of instruction.
