There's so much to learn about motion capture and while Avatar/Hulk/LoTR made it look so cool and easy, getting down and dirty to actually using the system is really quite...something.
And I can't even say that I know everything there is to know about it. In fact, I may well be one of the least knowledgeable of the technology at work.
But it's been quite an eye opener. Learning to calibrate the system, sticking on mocap markers on actors etc are the baby steps to mastering it. The entire system is so sensitive that any slight movement to the cameras can cause calculations to fail. Wow. *hence the clumsy me has to be extra careful.. talk about stress!*
Anyway, I am really quite excited for the journey ahead. I'm looking forward to see how the mocap data transfers to the 3d characters.. and yada yada yada.
A brief history of Motion Capture: http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/motion_capture/history1.htm
I'm still not very sure how mocap may compare to keyed 3d animation, but I guess as I learn more about the craft, I'd have some pretty interesting inputs. :)
*update* I've been trying my hand at 3d modeling recently as part of my company's training. Maybe I'll post some pics soon.
*update* check out a discussion of mocap vs animation here: http://johncelestri.blogspot.sg/2011/10/motion-capture-is-not-animation.html
