Thursday, August 4, 2011

MasterClass - Live Animation Binding

A few folk have mailed to ask when the MasterClass is being presented so I thought I'd do some blatant self promotion and spill the beans...... The MasterClasses are now online only, Autodesk figure they get a bigger audience this way and it stops me looking like an arse doing it live! (well, less of an arse anyway!) It should go live on TheArea under their Siggraph feed on Tuesday 9th. Here's the basic outline, although it got expanded slightly since this into using HIK as an intermediate object, and mapping to raw optical moCap data. Hope you find it useful!

"This Master Class will outline a method of transferring character animations between any source data and a given animation rig using a binder template file. This method was originally designed to enable Motion Capture data to be mapped to our in-house rigging systems whilst allowing for easy manipulation, but quickly evolved into a retargeting system in its own right. In the most basic form it allows for MoCap fbx files to be dropped directly onto your animation rigs. However, expanding the technique allows you to transfer animations between characters even when their skeletal structures and proportions are completely different. Because it relies on a Binder File and isn't code based it gives you the flexibility to manage any skeleton structure, allowing you to add custom bind nodes between any character specific joint and it's relative Rig Controller. Finally because the bind is a preset file it makes it very easy to bulk process animations, casting CharacterA's animation library straight to CharacterB."

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