MoCap Tutorial at Vimeo by Steve Lall

Our very own studio assistant Steven Lall has recorded an excellent video tutorial demonstrating the use of motion capture in animation, showing animators how to take a character with motion capture data and clean it up to create polished animation.

Performance Capture, aka Motion Capture, aka "MoCap", is a growing part of the animation industry. It's something our students need to be able to work with effectively, as many animation studios - and especially games studios - rely heavily on MoCap for their animation pipeline.

The tutorial uses the popular and dependable Norman rig, which can be downloaded free here. You can find the tutorial here.



MoCap with Norman
In the video, Steve demonstrates how to use MoCap data, carefully cleaning up the original curves but, at the same time, not losing the essence of the original performance.  Watch the video above, and you can see how Steve has used After Effects to create a "B panel" in the top right hand corner, showing what the original raw MoCap data looked like, in this case re-targeted onto the free Norman rig.

The advantage of this approach is that it shows the animator's work process - any potential recruiter can see for themselves the original performance, and also understand what Steve has done with it to improve the animation and bring it to life.

As Steve put it: “Performance Capture is a really exciting area for animators to explore. Mocap is often used in Films and Games, and although Mocap can seem like it replaces a lot of the traditional animation technique, it's a process that's fascinating and fun.”

Vimeo Channel
To find the tutorial video at our Vimeo Channel, follow this link.  Like our other tutorials, this one is password-protected. If you're a student or Escapee, email me for the password.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for our BA/MArt in 3D Animation, follow this link.  To apply for our storyboarding evening class, visit this page here.  For the next 12 week animation course, click here. And to apply for the next evening class in Producing Animation, see this page.