Motion capture is coming to the masses as a company called DAZ has integrated their Free 3D character software called DAZ Studio with NaturalPoint for real-time linking of motion capture data (people with little adhesive dots all over their body being video taped by multiple cameras) to 3D characters. I watched a beautiful female model control a slobbering, jowl laden monster with yellowing teeth. Gosh, the best of both worlds.
This is a low grade sample of motion that can be captured with Optitrack. There are more, better quality samples on Optitrack’s site. Now, I’m not suggesting that you drop 5K on a tracking system, but hiring the firm to track for you and then incorporating the motion data to 3D files is an easy, cost effective way to get believable motion into CG content.
There was also a funky and cool software called FaceShop Pro. Line up a standard digital camera, shoot directly at a human’s face and then spend about 90 seconds moving little points around on the computer monitor. Push the Go button and watch the software morph a preexisting 3D human face mesh into the subject of the picture complete with texture map. It does a really, really good job and the output can be exported to any 3D package that supports the .obj format. Hmmmm, between motion capture and this, are the days of stunt doubles numbered?
All of the usual suspects were there with names like ILM/Lucas Films, Pixar, Autodesk, Newtek, ZBrush and Sony, strutting their stuff and slugging it out for prestige bragging rights to the cinematic enterprises with enterprise sized budgets. But, no godsend-type new feature sets - just solid improvements to existing softwares.
Every day of the show had the floor packed with people. To avoid snapping pix of the back of peoples heads, this photo was taken before the doors opened. This image of the zBrush booth shows the seated HD demonstration area that was common to many of the exhibitors of means. Swank.
The ILM crews shared some fun insights about the problems with the special effects for the latest Indiana Jones effort. You know the big scene at the end where the flying saucer arises from the beneath the temple with all of the debris spinning around? Apparently, the only thing real in the scene was Harrison Ford - not even the plants at his feet blowing in the wind were really there. The scene, 1200 frames long, was so complex each frame took 6 hours to pop out from their render farm comprised of hundreds of quad core machines. Because the debris couldn’t really be done with the usual methods for some very arcane reasons, it was hand key framed and tweened.
