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So this is crazy cool- Rokoko gave me a motion capture suit a few months ago (with the caveat that I make fun stuff with it), and they just released an update that lets me stream the motion straight into blender, which... I don't know how useful it's going to be compared to recording the motion in the Rokoko Studio software natively, but it sure is fun being able to directly control the models (and it's great for brainstorming).

While it's not particularly expensive for what it is, $2,500 still ain't nothing, so I just wanted to extend an open offer to anyone who might need random mocap data to post here (I'm mostly thinking short stuff, like up to 30-40 seconds), and I'll try to record it when I get a chance.

As I say in the video, the final result usually tends to be better than what you see there, since it does a final process over the top once all the data's in (since this is streaming live, we don't get that)- but we still have a few limitations: the processing expects us to be on level ground (climbing ladders gets funky), we don't have hands, or a face- but that still leaves a lot of options! Let me know!

This was how I did the crab battle, animating the brunt of it during the 20 seconds I spent acting it out (I slowed down most of it).

Files

Rokoko Mocap Live

Comments

Anonymous

This is really cool! I just learned to retarget mocap too. Honestly anything helps, especially crowd animations, like people standing around, pacing, talking to someone all angry like people do. I’m excited to see what you make!

Anonymous

+1 for various crowd animations!

Anonymous

"The pilot's been punished" :D I'm with Kaleb. Motions that people usually do all the time would be most usefull, because you obviously allways need them. The more "fancy" stuff you can do by hand. Thanks!

Anonymous

Wow, rockin' suit and demo! I'm with Stefan, just some mocap files which can loop for people standing around or sitting or whatever. That would be very cool!

Jan van den Hemel

I'm actually quite impressed by the quality of the motion, especially considering it's in real-time. I thought mocap data was always very jittery, it's quite smooth.

Anonymous

could definitely use that yes!

IanHubert

Yeah!! And the Rokoko-to-blender addon has a pretty intelligent retargeting utility, which is great- it was a little bit of a pain before. 100% into making crowds!!! That's my biggest goal right now. I'd love to combine this with the previous post, but instead of containers it's randomly generated crowds, changing the color/logos/styles of shirts and stuff. I need to look into displacements to see if I could modify the proportions a little- I... huh... yeah, that would be fun, haha

IanHubert

Sweet, yeah! There's that Carnegie Mellon free mocap collection that you find, and it's cool its available, but all of it's somebody walking in the WEIRDEST way, swinging their arms up to their necks and stuff. I want to snag some good naturalistic stuff if I can. I'll see what I can do in the next few days.

IanHubert

Same! I'm not sure what level of real-time processing its doing to it, but I'm darn impressed. Basically the suit's just full of a bunch of accelerometers, and it compiles what all the motion probably "means" in the software (maybe that's a super standard practice now?). You can give it a bunch of added data (like your limb lengths and stuff), but it works pretty good even before all that.

IanHubert

Cool! Yeah I should finally figure out a good way to make a looping walk cycle.

Jan van den Hemel

Just curious, how do you connect the mocap data to an armature, is that hard? This is where I've always struggled - there's a ton of free mocap data out there, but it's really challenging to set it up without a retargeting add-on like Autorig. Though I guess the latter is pretty sweet and kind of a must-have add-on anyway.

IanHubert

SO- yeah, that was the hard part. I'm slowly finding ways of doing it, but I'm fighting against my lack of rigging knowledge, and things get REALLY weird real fast when stuff's wrong, haha. Right now I import an unanimated FBX rig from the rokoko studio, and create my character to THAT, that way I know it'll be compatible (I think it works great with any mixamo-generated rig). But they just released a new retargeting utility that seems pretty darn smart- only just started playing with it this evening, though (couldn't get it to play nice with Autorig right-out-of-the-box, but I assume at the very least I'd have to turn off FK (or IK?). I'm out of my depth so I just systematically check every combo of boxes, haha

Anonymous

Hey, i think i dabbled with the Carnegie Mellon Mocap data a few years ago. I think i ended up hand-animating again, for the same reasons you're mentioning. Totally forgot about that.

Carkoon

I've seen that you can also use a Kinect for motion capturing (this video is from 2017, I don't know whether stuff has improved or not: https://youtu.be/1UPZtS5LVvw). That might be a cheaper solution for some people. I have no idea how reliable it is though. Also did you have to clean up the mocap data? I know next to nothing about it but I saw it mentioned a few times that mocap data often has to be cleaned up before being really useable or is that only when you want absolute perfection (not that I found anyhting wrong with the crab battle :D). Has anyone here maybe used it?

IanHubert

Ah! I had a friend who played around with that! I remember it was pretty darn impressive (he had it linked into the blender viewport, and was playing as Big Buck Bunny running around and kicking beach balls), but it was also 2011 and I'd never seen anything like it, so I don't know how it compares to today's stuff. My guess is by 2017 people had pushed that technology about as far as it ever went. That said- those results look GREAT! The Rokoko suit is rad, but also has to make a lot of assumptions for its processing (like, humans stay on the ground). It's a bundle of accelerometers and it uses all the data to make some really good guesses about what's going on. But it doesn't have an ABSOLUTE idea. If I climb a ladder, it'll keep sinking me to the ground, because that's where feet are supposed to be, whereas the kinect actually has a more absolute idea of where things are at, even if the fidelity is maybe a little lower. I'm still trying to figure out the post-processing (and that's also what they're releasing updates for. Apparently they have like one guy who's coding it, and he keeps coming up with ideas and features, which is cool- maybe ladders are coming :D). But yeah, maybe it's not great for absolute perfection just yet. I'm excited to try out the facial mocap, though!

Anonymous

Ian, can the Rokoko capture walking around in defined space? Or is only for in place captures, like just standing in one position and not translating in 3d space?

Anonymous

this is a stand alone suit that can record anywhere one of thir marketing videos shows a recording being done in the middle of a desert

Anonymous

Very cool! I've got a few Perception Neuron Mocap Suits that I've been criminally neglecting for years...

Anonymous

Waaat! lol So I would like to request this https://www.instagram.com/p/B_x1XD8lSQ9/

Anonymous

I noticed you said "its great for brainstorming" Can you use the smart suit for commercial work? Can u make money with the suit .