There are a wide range of approaches to achieving 3D computer animation, each with its own pros and cons. In this blog I summarize many of the common approaches, and then talk about how you may combine the different approaches into a real project. As a hobbyist, I personally to focus on free solutions that … More 3D Animation Technical Styles
I love the progress Meta are making (https://dulucas.github.io/agrol/) on animating the lower body from just a VR headset and hand controllers. Personally I would love to use this as a poor man’s option for mocap (Motion Capture), to create custom animation clips for characters. There are a number of camera based mocap solutions around these … More AGRoL, Avatars GRow Legs at Meta
When you use a walk animation in a Unity Timeline using an Animation Track with Scene Offsets applied, you may come across a problem where you want to have the character end up at a precise location at a specific time. The problem is if you are in Preview mode (the default), moving the character … More Precise positioning with walk animations in Unity
Motion capture from video files has improved with time with some recent new entrants on the field, so I thought I would give a quick try again to see whether they were good enough quality for my goals. I am creating an online animated cartoon as a hobby project, although I admit I spend much … More Video Motion Capture EOY 2022
Mocopi (I assume a play on “Motion Copy”) is a relatively low cost motion capture device announced by Sony for release in 2023 Q1. There has been a lot of twitter noise about the product, with some promising demonstrations of people using it with a focus on the VTuber community. Do I think it will … More Why I am excited for Mocopi
Here is a list of motion capture (and related) tools I have come across on twitter or similar. Feel free to leave a comment for tools I have missed! Webcam MoCap (upper body) Webcam Mocap (Facial) Webcam Mocap (full body) Motion capture from video files Some sources of videos of motions VR Headsets and Equipment … More Motion Capture Tools (my 2022 list)
One common problem with animating characters is when you instantly cut from one pose to another for characters with physics on hair or cloth. Physics engines often interpret the change of position as high velocity movement, causing more extreme hair and cloth bounces. The short animation in the tweet below is cool, but clearly shows … More Animation Hair and Cloth Physics Bounces
I subscribed to @MuRo_CG‘s “PlayAnimaker” on Pixiv. He is doing some cool work with using VR headsets for Anime style output. You can use your Oculus VR headset and controllers to pose and animate characters. One of the features supported recently is the ability to export BVH files. These are animation clips in a format … More BVH to Humanoid Animation Clips for Unity
I am have been working on a lightly animated comic (pages, with speech bubbles, but where there is a short video clip on each page instead of a static drawing). This is a low budget hobby project with a development team of 1. There has been a lot to learn, but fun. One of the … More Using Deepmotion.com to create custom walk cycles
I am trying to create a comic series using 3D VRoid characters. So far it has been more learning than creating content. I have slowly been fleshing out my cast of characters in VRoid Studio and creating locations in Unity leveraging purchased assets. I have explored blend shapes using AR Kit for facial expressions. I … More What is the fastest way to create an animation clip or pose on a budget?
Extra Ordinary, the Series 