MoCap in Game Industry Research

Fri, 13/02/2009 - 12:55 — admin

About me

My name is Artyom Arabadji. I am a 4th year Computer Science student in University of Bristol, doing my final year research project in Computer Graphics field.

About my project

My project focuses on making human-like animation in computer games cheaper and easier for animators. I am investigating a possibility of generating transitions between several existing motions automatically. I.e. given two existing motions (for example, run and jump), my system uses a Motion Capture database to generate a transition between the two. It does so by splitting motions in the database into small fragments and joining them together.

About this questionnaire

The point of this research is to investigate what techniques studios employ in order to integrate human-like motions into their games and whether technology described above would be of interest to the games industry. Questions focus on Motion Capture, Motion Blending and Motion Synthesis. Please answer as many questions as possible. If a question is not applicable to your company, it can be left unanswered.

Privacy Policy

The information gathered through this form is strictly confidential. It's not going to be used for any purpose except to help with my research project. This questionnaire is anonymous.

If you have further questions regarding my research project or this questionnaire do not hesitate to contact me.

Q2 Did any of your games required your team to produce human animations of any kind? (This includes human animation retargetted to fit non-human characters): *

Yes

Q3 How do you normally create human motions?:

We outsource animation work to a different company

We work on animations ourselves from scratch

We use Motion Capture data as a basis for our animations

You can select more than 1.

Q4 Does your company own a MoCap database? How did you obtain it?:

Yes, we recorded motions ourselves

Yes, we purchased a package

No, we don't have a MoCap database

Q5 If you bought a MoCap database how much did it cost?:

Less than $5000

$5000-$10,000

$10,000-$20,000

$20,000+

Q6 If you use MoCap, how much do you normally spend on MoCap per project?:

Less than $5000

$5000-$10,000

$10,000-$20,000

$20,000+

Q7 How do you pay for MoCap services?:
MoCap services have obscure pricing strategies. Prices can depend on quality, duration, complexity of motions being recorded, post-processing tasks used to clean-up MoCap data and many other factors. MoCap databases have similar properties: their age, quality and variation of motions supplied drastically effect their prices. Please describe how your company usually pays for MoCap services.

Q7 Answer:

Q8 How long do you think your current MoCap assets will last before you need to update them?:

Q9 What sort of quality do you normally look for in human animations for your projects?:

Life-like realism

Acceptable quality

Basic movement

Q10 Say, you have two motions in your database that you need to produce an animation (run and jump, for example). You need to join these two motions together. Would you regard this as a tedious job to be done by hand?:

Yes

Q11 Do any of your projects require you to use motion blending? How do you normally carry it out?:

Yes, our graphics engine does it on the fly

Yes, out graphics engine pre-processes transitions when game loads

Yes, we have special software in place which does it for us

Yes, our animators do it by hand

Yes, we try and record transitions in the studio

You can select more than 1.

Q12 MoCap database lifetime can be extended by using motion synthesis to create new motions. Does your studio use any motion synthesis software? (Please specify):

Q13 Interest in motion synthesis of transitional motions:
It is proposed to use motion synthesis to create transitions between motions automatically to:
a) Make the process easier and faster.
b) Save money by extending the life of a MoCap database and reducing the amount of times studios need to use MoCap recording.

Motion synthesis which uses existing MoCap data as a basis can create realistic transitions. These are not as good as recorded motions but quality difference is generally negligible. This software can use existing MoCap database or come with its own package.

Provided that this solution is cheaper than:
a) Recording new motions.
b) Working on motions by hand.
c) Buying new MoCap package.

Would your company be interested in using such software?

Q13 Answer:

Yes

Not sure

Q14 Desired qualities:
If you answered "Yes" please specify what bespoke qualities you would like such software to have. For example, is it essential for software maintainers to provide technical support to your animation team? Do you have any in-house technologies (for example, motion capture data specification format) that the software should support?

Q14 Answer:

Q15 Please share your thoughts about this technology. What extra information would you need to make a choice? If you answered "No" or "Not sure" in Q13, why is it not applicable to your company?:

Снег. Keeps the dream alive.

MoCap in Game Industry Research