Cascadeur - Mocap Cleanup and Editing Tutorial

hello everyone in today's tutorial I'm going to show you how to work with mocap data in cascado here using a couple of examples we'll go through the various tools and methods which will help you clean up your animation and further edit it so buckle up because this is gonna be a long one now first things first none of the mocaps have mesh so you have to view them in the join mode [Music] the first thing you'll have to do is to retarget the animation from the mocap skeleton onto the skeleton that you are going to be animating unfortunately retargeting is not currently supported in cascadeur we are planning to edit in future but it's not possible to do it in the current version so you can use any other software which will allow you to retarget your animation I've already retargeted the animation um onto the skeleton that I'm going to be using here today which is the skeleton from one of the default scenes in Cascada in fact the first three characters from the sample scenes all share the identical skeleton so I'll pick standard model mail for this one you'll also have to create a rig for your character this one already has a rig because it's one of the default characters but if you choose to work with your own character you'll have to generate The Rook first it can be done using the quick rigging tool if you're using a skeleton which is supported by the quick rigging tool you won't have to do anything really because the software will automatically generate the rig for you you'll just have to press add rig elements otherwise you'll have to manually allocate the points of the rig and there are dedicated tutorials on rigging available on our YouTube channel now you have a character with a rig and you have the animation for this character skeleton now I have to apply this animation to this character there's multiple ways to do that first you can go to file import fbx I'm selecting the animation after retargeting and I end up with a character which has its rake controllers and the animation from the mocap data there's also another way as an example I have this scene with a wreaked character and a scene with a retargeted animation this scene is actually huge and I don't need all of it so what I can do is just copy a part of it onto my character to do so you have to go to the join mode first select all the joins and then select the interval of the frames we would like to copy on the timeline for instance here I just select the frames of a single hit now go to add it copy interval or press Ctrl shift C now we go back to our character go to the join mode and select all the joins of the character now I need to select enough frames on the timeline but the thing is I only have 100 frames in this scene when I previously copied 150. so let's add more frames to the scene shall we [Music] now I can select the whole interval go to edit paste interval all press Ctrl shift V and now I have the part of the animation that I needed on the character that I had [Music] so what shall we further do with the mocap data first of all let's fix the issues that it might have something that I have noticed a lot was the rapid twists in the elbows and knees usually looks like a flick it can easily notice those twists if you follow the trajectory of the elbow Direction controller this huge gap between the points is actually the twist to fix that select the elbow controller and create a new track for it then select the frame interval where that flick happens delete the keys from this interval by pressing alt f and simply interpolate this interval and the flake is gone here's another example of the animation with a flick in the elbow I select the elbow Direction controller and track its movement I can lock the display of the trajectory so it won't disappear here we can see with the three rapid Flex happen so I'll select the elbow controller and add a new track for it now select the interval where these flicks happen delete the keys and interpolate the flick is gone however I don't really like the result because the whole arm ended up slowly rotating in this case I can delete more keys and it helps because now the elbow interpolates directly into its and position but be careful with that because if you delete more keys than necessary you can end up having a really bad result but remember you can always undo any changes by pressing Ctrl Z here's another example where there's a Fleck in the knee again I can trace it using trajectories and locate the exact point where the flick happens then create a new track for the knee Direction controller and replace the faulty keys with interpolation same way you can fix other issues as well in this scene the hand trembles on this interval and again you can select the hand controller track it and see where exactly this trembling happens so to fix this I once again create a separate track for the arm or select one if you already have tracks in your scene select the interval where this trembling occurs delete the keys and interpolate but in this case bezier interpolation will not work because it will give you an overlap so you can go for a busier clamped method or even use linear these types of interpolation don't give you an overlap now when you play back the animation you can see that the trembling is gone this method of replacing keys with interpolation even works in cases where you want to change the animation or add something new to it this here the hand goes through the mesh which doesn't look nice does it so say I want to change the trajectory of the arm on this interval in this case I can select one of the keys which has the issue I want to fix I can even flag this key on the timeline so it's visible [Music] and now move the hand so you would not go through the body just like so now I want to delete the keys around it and replace it with interpolation and again busier will not work so go for a busier clamped for this one make sure you delete both the keys that precede the changed frame and the keys that follow it and there you have it so we've changed the trajectory of the hand so it no longer goes through the body but there's another way of changing the animation and adding new stuff to it it's a tool called interval edit mode when it's activated you can see a red frame around the viewport and the interval selected on the timeline is also framed red the idea of the interval edit mode is that the changes that you make will apply to all the frames that you selected for example I can select all the frames of the animation and say rotate it so I'm rotating the character and because all of the frames were selected the whole animation has now been rotated with it by the way if you want to rotate the character precisely by a certain amount of degrees you can go to scene settings manipulators and take fix rotation step there you can select one of the suggested values or type in your own and rotate the character accordingly also if you want to rotate the whole animation make sure that this button fixed pivot mode is not active otherwise if it's on instead of rotating the animation as a whole you will end up rotating the character around its pivot point in each frame which will give you a completely different results there are also multiple modes in which the interval edit mode tool can operate with for example step mode in Step mode all the changes that you make are applies with maximum Force so something that we've done earlier when we rotated the whole animation we did it in Step mode also there's a busier mode in it the maximum force will be applied to the changes made in a current frame so for example I can lower the character in this Frame and these changes will gradually affect the selected frames of the interval here's another way you can use the interval edit mode tool this animation here you can clearly see that the hand went through the hip fully so I select the points of the hand and the interval in which I want to fix its position now if I use the interval edit mode with its step method enabled because I want the changes to be applied equally on the whole interval if I were to rotate the hand then it would dramatically shift its trajectory and make it even worse [Music] so in this particular case I need the fixed pivot mode to be enabled so click this icon to turn it on and now when I rotate the hand it will actually rotate in each frame rather than rotating the whole trajectory and here I believe you can place the hand in a way which will fix its position on the whole interval and to further make more subtle changes I will use the bezier method and using the same busier method I can blend the fixed animation into the rest of it I can either just move the hand so that the trajectories would match or I can copy the position of the hand and paste it into the interval with the bezier mode enabled now this method I will describe in more detail later in this video but we'll manage to fix the hand so it no longer goes through the mesh to correct trajectories you can also use tween machine which you can access from the scene settings tab for example I have this trajectory for the hand now this trajectory is obviously not smooth enough for example we can see here the points are close to each other which means the animation slows down but then on the next frame the distance increases too much and you get sudden acceleration say I want to fix this trajectory and make it more smooth to do so I select the points of the hand and use the tween machine slider to either bring the animation closer to the next frame or to the previous one [Music] and of course it works the same for the intervals as well for example I can select the whole trajectory of the hand click Target selected frames and now when I'm moving the slider all the selected points start smoothing out foreign and I end up with a trajectory where the movements fade is much more consistent now the tween machine also has multiple settings and modes for instance you can move the selection in the global mode as you can see here the arm now influences the whole body or use local mode where the tween machine will try to match the arm's local position instead in the next or the previous frame also tween machine has different filter types for example you can use interpolation average where your selection will be moved towards the position as if it were interpolated so this way you can even use twin machine instead of deleting keys and adding interpolation you can learn more about what swim machine can do from dedicated tutorials and the documentation when it comes to changing the pose the most obvious tool to use is of course all deposing in this animation once the character lands it can see that his feeds are clearly misplaced so I want to correct their position and place them right on the ground but keep in mind that auto posing Works in a way that it determines the position of all the green slash inactive points so if I were to move the Foot Right now the whole pose will change completely because most of its points are currently inactive so before using Auto pose Inc you have to activate all the points that you do not want it to change so in this particular case I only want to change the position of the green points of the feet so I select all the other points and activate them by pressing switch lock or shift Z and once we activated those points the inactive points of the feed were automatically corrected same way you can work with intervals as well of course you have to have the interval edit mode switched on [Music] now I activated the points on the whole selected interval therefore the position of the fees was also corrected in each selected frame however this method doesn't really prevent the feed from sliding the fees are definitely placed on the ground but in each frame they seem to be sliding a little if you want the feed to keep their position it is best to use the copy tool so I have this piece of Animation where the feeds are well sliding all over the place really I will log the display of trajectories so we could see them at all times and use one of the feet as an example to show you how this can be fixed here the foot landed on the ground and it's lit a lot before it took off again it's a good idea to Mark the important keys on the timeline say this one where the food touches the ground for the first time then I Mark the key where the food seemed to be fully rested I guess it's this one then I marked the Lost Key before the food is supposed to stop moving again I believe it's this one and then I need to find the key where the food already leaves the ground and it's this one now as you can see it's much easier to navigate the timeline this way then I need to select all the points of the food and press Ctrl C to copy their position now select the interval where the food is supposed to remain still and press Ctrl alt V this way the position was pasted on the whole interval and the food seems to be firmly locked in place now I need the rest of the animation to smoothly connect with this interval so one of the ways to do that is to use tween machine here I can select a couple of frames before the interval that we changed and use the tween machine slider to sort of land these frames together bring the position of the foot on this interval closer to the following frames and same goes for the other parts I can select the frames before the food leaves the ground and again use tween machine to change the position of the foot on this interval so it would smoothly transition into the next frame [Music] this method does seem to work for this kind of Animation very well but of course like every case is different right but this is the results I ended up with you can use the copy tool with the interval edit mode as well say I have this animation here and a key pose in which I want the character to arrive at the end so basically I want to replace the Lost pose with a new one so I'll select all the points of the character and press Ctrl C to copy the pose now I need to select the animation interval up to the middle of the jump Maybe go to the last frame of this interval now the only thing I want to restrict the display of trajectories to only one point otherwise it will be very difficult to see what's happening now turn on the interval edit mode and make sure you select busier method and now I can paste the pose into the last frame of the interval by pressing Ctrl V and now you can see the animation of the character smoothly blending into that pose and of course one of the most exciting tools to work with in Cascada is autofysics press this button to activate it and a green ghost appears in the viewport autophysics can help you change the mocap animation but still keep it physically accurate the most important thing to look out for when working with autophysics is fulcrum points you can see the fulcrum area in the viewport its outline green the fulcrum area may change as the animation progresses if the fulcrum area does not show in your viewport right click The View mode and make sure autophysics areas is enabled [Music] so fixing the position of the feet so they would not slide on the ground it's also important for cascadeur when it determines the fulcrum areas in this animation here you could see that the fulcrum area was not determined correctly at certain points this for instance uh the full is placed slightly above the ground and it slides too much so all the physics cannot calculate the fulcrum area correctly when practically in this particular movement the foot should be a fulcrum point however if you don't want to change the animation you can set the fulcrum area manually by selecting the frames in which the food is supposed to be a fulcrum because again the fulcrum area will determine the end result of autophysics for instance it can shift the center of mass of the character towards one of the feet if it believes the other one is not a fulcrum but you can run into even more dramatic changes so before you start working with autophysics you have to check whether the tool has determined the fulcrum areas correctly let's say in which case there's a point is treated as a fulcrum and in which it's not if on some interval the points of the force will be raised above a certain value the food will no longer act as a fulcrum on this interval same goes for the sideways movement as well if the foot is pushed too far away it will no longer act as a fulcrum and in those mocaps where the feed slide a lot the fulcrum areas are not determined correctly and the easiest way to resolve this issue with those having to change the animation itself is to change these values of Max height and max distance for the fulcrum points to act as such select all the points of the feed and all the frames of the animation make sure that apply and selected interval button is on it should glow rad and change the values in the Falcon Point tab I'll go with the value of 10 but it really depends on the animation most likely you'll have to try different values to see which work best and now autophysics treats feed as being fulcrum points despite their sliding on certain frames now you have to slide the foot much further for it not to act as a fulcrum it will be more than enough for most mocaps to work well with autophysics but in some cases you may have to set up the fulcrum points a bit more precisely to set the fulcrum area manually select all the points of the foods and select the frames on the timeline where the food should act as fulcrum I think all throughout this interval up until right here where you could see that the heel is lifted and the foot is placed on the toe which will affect the fulcrum area with all of that selected go to object properties fulcrum points also make sure that apply on selected interval button is enabled otherwise the changes will be applied to a single frame now click enforce and the food will become a full Chrome on the whole interval that you selected [Music] then moving on I believe only the toe points will act as fulcrum and then later on this interval the whole food works as a fulcrum Point once again before it leaves the ground then it's raised to make a step and then once again becomes a four Chrome same way we can check the other foot overall it looks fine little noise like this doesn't really make too much difference but here the foot should act as a fulcrum now once the fulcrum area is set correctly the autophysics no longer shifts the character as it used to but we do not expect it to match perfectly because simply the weight of the person whose mocap data was recorded could have been different using autophysics tool you can change things like say the height of the jump this animation here the character jumps but I want him to jump much higher than any person ever could the height of the jump depends only on two things the time the character spans in the air and the gravity value for example with Earth gravity to reach that height of the jump requires the time which equals to 14 frames which basically means it takes 14 frames to gain such height now let's enable the autophysics trajectory display in the viewports so we could actually see the difference so first thing I can change is the gravity value if I increase the gravity it will require the character to jump higher in order to stay in the air for the same amount of time now the more I increase the gravity the higher the jump gets but because we did not increase the time for the jump at some point it may look almost too quick compared to the rest of the animation now let's get back to the Earth gravity and instead change the timing of the jump to do that I select all the frames where the character is Airborne press Ctrl C and drag the interval to extend it now this way we force the character to stay in the air for longer which makes the jump higher and you can clearly see that on the physics ghost however it might be difficult to approximate the amount of frames that you need to get to specific height and for that you may want to use the ballistics tool go to point controller mode select all the frames of the jump and click this button to create a ballistic trajectory now you can see a ballistic curve in the viewport when you selected you will see the time that it requires to get this ballistic trajectory displays on the timeline now select the controller in the middle of the ballistic curve and move it to change the height to the one you need now on the timeline you can see how much time it will take to make this jump [Music] now I can press Ctrl T once again and adjust the intervals that you would match with the ballistic trajectory timing [Music] and we see that the height of the jump has increased on the physics ghost if the changes are not visible enough you can change the ghost offset to match with your character and you can clearly see how much all the physics has changed the trajectory of the jump now if you're content with the results you can snap autophysics to your character this way we managed to change the height of the jump without having to change the gravity value and we kept the animation physically accurate so once you're done with your animation you might want to export it so go to file export fbx and choose the option that you need but before doing so you might want to check the settings for the fbx file export for example the fbx ASCII file usually weighs more so keep the settings set to off unless you need it and make sure that the fbx up Axis is set correctly depending on your software because different software uses different op access so yeah um I think that's it uh I hope you enjoyed the video let us know in the comments below also if you have any questions join our Discord server we've got forums there q a and ultimately that's the best way to resolve an issue if you have any ask a question stay up to date with the announcements or maybe just share your work with others we'll be happy to see you there so good luck and see you next time thank you

Channel: Cascadeur

Views: 45,136

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Id: t1FBxxA2xIo

Length: 32min 55sec (1975 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023