1. Motion capture animation of the body

1、Animcraft 。

Animcraft is a brand new animation sharing and efficiency software. It allows arbitrary biped and quadruped character animations to be stably transmitted between different bones, different bindings, different bodies, and different software according to key frames and controllers.
For details, please refer to Animcraft official documents and Animcraft video tutorials . The official documents and official video tutorials introduce in great detail what Animcraft is, how to use it in Maya, 3Dmax, and the connection with major game engines.

Download the character library AC_Model and animation library preset assets AC_Animations from the link in the official document and import them into the Animcraft software to use some of its official models and motion capture motion data to do animation exercises.

2、Rococo 。

Rokoko is a motion library plug-in that can be used in Maya, unity and other software. The previous blog has also briefly recorded, in this Rokoko For Maya , Rokoko For Unity .

3、Adobe's mixamo

There are also many actions available in mixamo , all of which are free. You can download them by logging in with your Adobe account, and you can download them in fbx format. The method of applying the desired animation to your own model is similar to that of rokoko. First, after downloading the fbx format, import the model animation, and in Maya prepare the character that you have bound and brushed the skin weight Create HumanIK and define the corresponding points, bake to the bone.

2. Animcraft's facial expression capture

Official Document Facial Expression Capture Tutorial .
Personally practiced Animcraft's facial expression capture, and record it here.

About mobile devices

Requirements for mobile terminals that support facial expression capture written in official documents: devices with depth cameras or devices with A12 chips and newer chips, but Android devices with depth cameras cannot find Animcraft.App in the app store, so here The device requirements should be devices with a depth camera and an A12 chip, that is, iPhone X, iPhone XS, Max, iPhone XR and iPad Air3, iPad mini5, iPad8 and above for iOS systems.

use

computer

1. Prepare a model with facial binding, here we use official resources for testing
2. In Animcraft, click the real-time facial motion capture icon
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3. After that, the waiting connection will appear in the view, as well as the IP address and port number (as shown in the figure below, This picture is from the official document)

mobile device

4、

On the Apple device (I use iPad Air4), go to the Apple Store to download Animcraft.App, open the APP, and select facial capture (body motion capture is not yet supported)
Then set the IP in the APP settings to be consistent with the IP displayed in Animcraft on the computer. The above picture is 192.168.0.119, and the port number is also set to be the same, which is 10086 here.

Then click the LIVE connection. After the connection is successful, the Animcraft on the computer will show that the device is connected.
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5. Capture. At this time, the facial expressions made on the Apple device will be applied to the characters on the computer in real time. You can also click the record button to record facial animation data, and then transfer it to the computer, upload and save it to Animcraft's expression library, and use it as a permanent asset.
6. Import to Maya for use.
7. Export FBX.

Facial Rigged Animation Summary

1. Make facial bones and rigging in Maya, draw skin weights
2. Transfer the model to Animcraft, connect with mobile device
3. Record facial expression capture in mobile device
4. Send back the facial expression animation data stored in Animcraft, Transfer the data to Maya using
5. Export the fbx file

Some notes about motion capture animation