Mocap & Retargeting in Blender #2 - Best Mocap Resources

hi welcome to cg dive this is part two of the retargeting in blender series before we dive in and start exploring the different retargeting tools i thought i'd share with you a few sources of motion capture data we'll be using mocap data as the source of our motion in the next videos so i think that will be useful essentially there are two different sources of motion capture data on the one hand we have libraries of pre-made motions that we can download and then retarget to our characters and on the other hand we have systems of hardware and software which allows us to create our own motion using a mocap suit video footage or other techniques i'll focus on libraries here they are nice because the animations are already created for us and often they are professionally edited cleaned up and ready to use on the flip side we may be limited to whatever the library provides and in some cases we may have to pay to gain access to the motion data however there are plenty of free and low cost mocap collections so there is something for everyone and a word about file formats mocap can be imported into blender using different file formats at the end mocap data is imported into blender as skeletal animation or armature animation so any file format that can handle bone animation can be used in theory but in practice the two main file formats that you'll find online are fbx and bvh you may be able to find coolada or gltf files here and there and they should work fine in blender i just haven't found any myself there are file formats that you should avoid some sources provide motion capture data as pip files these work with the 3ds max biped format and you cannot use them in blender sometimes you'll find c3d files this is not really skeletal data it's point cloud data that can be converted to mocap somehow but i'm not quite sure but you won't be able to easily work with this file format so avoid it while we are talking about awesome resources i thought it would be a good opportunity to say thanks to brad clark from the rigging dojo i learned a lot about rigging and retargeting from him and brad is one of the rare people who not only have the knowledge but he's also willing to share it and he's always trying to help people so follow him on social media and also check out riggingdojo.com which is one of the best places to learn about everything related to rigging including working with mocap retargeting and so on and they cover a lot of different software like maya motionbuilder and now even blender and also how to transition from maya and motionbuilder to blender miximo is one of the most popular mocap libraries they have a ton of animations that you can use and it is completely free i think you can do whatever you like with the miximo mocap data except for reselling the actions themselves but you can use them in your animations or games even commercially obviously this is not legal advice depending on the character the miximo rig may come with different number of bones and different naming conventions so my advice is to import your own character with average human proportions and rig it with the miximo tools then you can apply animations to it and download them with a consistent armature so choose an animation that you like click download from the options choose without skin so that you download only the armature and the action without the character model you could also choose 60 fps to get more detailed mocap data but i usually just go for 30 fps which is also the fps that i use inside blender there is no limit to how many actions you can download this way another motion library that you should check out is provided by rococo and you can use it even if you don't have the mocap suit all you need to do is download their studio software so on rococo.com go to 3d software and download free rococo studio and download it for either mac or windows and you'll also need a rococo id get it from here it's free and when you install rococo studio and login with your id you can go to the motion library and here you can find hundreds of motions including three ones here i have sorted the motions by price and so the free ones are on the top and if i want any of them i can edit to cart click confirm order and check out and then i can go to my library and you'll find all of the motions that you downloaded or purchased here another source of motion capture data is good old turbos squid just go to turbosquid search for motion capture and you'll find thousands of motion capture products if you are only interested in the free ones just limit the price to free you can also choose the file formats that you like find the motion that you want and then you have to purchase it or in the case of free ones just download it octa-core is another good place to find good motion capture data when you go to their website click on motion they have more than 1400 actions to choose from most of them are paid but there are a bunch of free ones as well if you want to test the system just click the button that says free select an action that you're interested in add to cart go to checkout because this is free i just have to check out and then i can download my motion in the inventory i'll navigate to motions and here are the actions that i already have in my library i'll just select one of them click download here you can select your character for downloading motion capture data i would recommend simply choosing the male or female character click next make sure that your target application is set to blender fps again i'll go with 30 and then i'll click download and you'll download a zip file containing your action in fbx format deep motion is actually one of the systems that allow you to record your own motion capture clips but they also offer a small collection of free motion capture files created with their system you just have to go to this blog post that i'm going to share with you scroll down click download free package and that will bring you to google drive where you can download the whole collection or the individual files mocap online is another company offering a really nice collection of mocap animations now this library is commercial and paid it is not free if you want to test the library you can go to free demos and download some of their free trial files and if you're ready to buy some of their animation packs you can go to 3d character animation and choose some of the categories and here you will be able to download their motions in different file formats including fbx and if you're going to use these actions not only in blender but also in other applications that can be a good thing but if you need this specifically for blender you can actually go to the blender market and download the same actions but already imported into blender and saved as blend files and that can save you a lot of work personally i bought the ninja starter pack just to test the quality of what they have to offer and so far i'm pleased with what i'm seeing another mocap library motec entertainment most of the actions that you'll find here are paid what's interesting is that they have mocap data with two characters interacting in the same scene which i haven't seen anywhere else you can preview the actions i think the prices are reasonable a couple of dollars per action and if you want to try before you buy you can go to the free stuff and download some of the free actions the motion capture library is another cool place to find motion capture data you will have to pay for them however most of them are reasonably priced at around two pounds with the exception of the horse actions some of which cost hundreds of pounds and i guess motion capture data of a horse is really rare so maybe that makes sense but i honestly don't understand this idle horse action in which not much happens and which will cost you 672 pounds and 64 pence but again all of the other human actions are very reasonably priced mocapdata.com looks like another nice place to get mocap data however if i choose one of the actions and i take a good look at the file formats that i offer you'll see that they don't have any file formats that i can use in blender so before you spend your money always understand what file formats you'll be getting and if you'll be able to use them in blender the website free game art contains small collection of bvh mockup files the site also contains 3d models and other data so you could enter bvh in the search field here to filter out the motion files they are free and open source the license can be seen on the right here keep in mind that these motions may not be high quality i think some of them come from research done at universities and not from professional actors you will often get the full mockup session and not just a nice cleaned up motion that you can use right away it will be up to you to trim the actions and extract the actions that you need to download the files just find one that you like for example the karate mockups click on it and then click to download the zip file and each zip file may contain multiple bvh files carnegie mellon university has made a huge library of mocap data available to everyone if i understand the license correctly they can be used for anything you like so if you go here to motions you can download all of that data but unfortunately it is available only in file formats that you won't be able to use in blender directly but instead if you go to this main website and go to the cg speed link you'll be able to download the exact same motions in bvh format and the person who did that made it available in three different versions one is does friendly another one is 3ds max friendly and motion builder friendly and i'm still testing which one is best for blender i actually tested all three of them but i didn't notice a big difference mocap utd is another place to find motion capture data they released a motion under the creative commons license and in the library you'll find a large number of different actions if you click on any of the actions you'll be able to preview it on sketchfab and you'll be able to download the action as an fbx file simon fraser university has also made a library of motion capture data available to everyone however do pay attention to their license or rather what they say on their website the data cannot be used for commercial products or resale unfortunately but if that fits your needs just scroll down and you'll be able to find lots of different actions in different file formats the ones that you want again are either fbx or bvh but in this case i tested their fbx files and they seem to be incompatible with blender so you probably want to go for the bvh files so let's really quickly talk about ways to create your own motion capture data i haven't tested or researched any of the products extensively at this point but a few that i'm aware of are first radical and that is an interesting solution that doesn't require any hardware at all all you need is footage of yourself or someone else performing the action and then you can upload it and the ai that they use will turn it into 3d skeletal motion another popular solution lately is rococo they also have a really nice retargeting add-on for blender but their main product is the rokoko suit which is marketed as an affordable mocap suit a good alternative to the traditional and very expensive motion capture studios and i have found a few more which i'll just share with you as links because i really haven't explored them that's all i have for this video i hope you found some of these resources useful special thanks to my supporters and if you join them you can get early access to my videos and other perks please click like and subscribe ring the bell and i hope you tune in next time

Channel: CGDive (Blender Rigging Tuts)

Views: 26,479

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Id: ibAGa_v1V7Q

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021