This week, we focused on creating animation based on our storyboard. However, after completing some shots, I realized the animation production cycle was insufficient, so I decided to use motion capture to enhance my animation project. This approach ensures faster completion of the entire animation. Therefore, the production process is now divided into two tasks: continuing to refine my hand-keyed animation and using the school’s motion capture lab to record the remaining animation.
After obtaining the motion capture data, we need to retarget it to our characters. This is why I use the ADV plugin for rigging the models, as ADV’s development for animation retargeting is very comprehensive. We can easily bake the entire motion capture data onto our models. However, due to differences in skeleton models, naming conventions, and the number of bones, the motion capture data won’t perfectly match our characters. This requires us to make secondary modifications to the animation, giving it more accurate motion trajectories that adhere to fundamental animation principles, adding follow-through effects to the character’s limb movements.
At this stage, I chose to roughly apply all motion capture data to the character models first and then work on the character’s facial expressions. This way, we can see the initial effect of the entire animation more quickly, usually taking about two weeks. So, if I don’t complete the entire animation this week, I will upload my animation video by next week at the latest.