Project 4: Skinning and Animation with Motion Capture Data due Monday, 11-19-2012

Description of Assignment:
For this project we used motion capture data to animate a character. We combined at least three motions. Once the motions look good on the character, use the resulting clip as a basis for our animation, we were to then create a movie to show our results.

Concept:
Due to some hiccups in the beginning of this project my animation was all about getting down the basics as best I could in the limited amount of time I had to work.

My Process:
I began by importing each motion file and constraining it to a skeleton. Then, I created clips for each motion and exported them so I could use them all on one figure. I then found three clips, the standing idle clip, the jog forward clip, and the jog left clip, which hooked-up together with the littlest amount of manipulation and created a new clip using all three clips. I then used Activate Keys to transfer the frames of the clips onto the timeline.
 
Clips

Unfortunately, my original clip of idle-jog-turn left proved unusable when bound to the model so I created a new clip using the idle-jog forward-and jumping clips to create a new animation.

 Skeleton Run and Jump

With my skeleton and basic animation I then imported my model and began binding the model to the skeleton. I used a smooth bind and tried to connect the joints to the areas of the model they corresponded with as accurately as possible. Once I created the bind I tested out the animation to see what areas were working well and what areas needed polishing. 

Figure

Initial binding

In order to make the model move without any bizarre transformations I used paint weights. This way each area would stick to its joint and areas that shouldn't move with the joints didn't. This helped for some areas like the armpits and chest, but other problems had to be fixed using other techniques. For one of the legs and another arm I had to actually go into each frame and move the joint into place so that no deformities were present. With these techniques I was able to create a basic animation and managed to include a simple setting.

Painting Weights

Rendered animation

link to animation:https://www.dropbox.com/s/ijmhqcjcqa29t4o/New%20Movie.mov

Download Maya:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xqz4lvk4ybfvag5/MarieJarrell_Project4.ma