is it possible to make very complex animations without mocap?

>is it possible?
of course. All of the Overwatch shorts are hand-keyed, and they look very impressive.

>is it difficult?
Probably.

>>533135
just started modeling, cant wait to start animation after

>>533138

Don't want to burst your bubble, but animating is an extenuating grind.

A full time week of work is required for 2-3 seconds of movie-grade animation.

You're staring for 40 consecutive work hours at the same 3 seconds.

>>533139
this

>>533139
dont care im pretty motivated either way, so im gonna grind no matter how long and git gud

>>533144

Look at him...all the hope in his eyes...

>>533145
lul ay thats what i need, jokes aside though
>not brain dead
>have time (kinda)
WHAT can possibly go wrong

>>533145
>>533146
I belive.

https://discord.gg/0Y4utWZT6cw7HUcE

also you should join the discord, we help sometimes.

>>533138
>3d animation
Enjoy your suffering anon.

>>533133
yes it's possible but you can be lazy and download all from mixamo

>>533133
sometimes especially in gales mocap animations look like shit, look at new injustice.. how bad the whole game moves, it literally looks like first mortal kombat animations, then look at street fighter animations

I'm like you anon, I'm busting my ass learning general 3d to start animating as soon as possible... I've done some walk cycles etc.. it's awesome when you look what you did at the end

>>533135
Nigga hes talking about realistic animation. No matter how good an animator is, realistic animation will always look good better with mocap. The amount of dirt and physics that happens in realworld motion is wayy too much for a person to animate by hand. It'll come close but not mocap will look better. It'll take wayy too much time for an animator to make something that even comes close. Full manual animation is only used for everything other than realistic animation.

>>533139
>>533160
>Doing a dialog
>hearing the same damn thing 30000 time.
>kill me please...

>>533175

It's like putting a song for your alarm clock.

>>533133

Yes.

Even Disney never use mocap for 3d animation.

But you need a God tier Animating skills, time, & lots of motivation to do it though.

>>533139

Pretty much this.

Key for good animation : Dont get depressed.

>>533193
i only get depressed when im not looking at a computer screen, i'll be fine

>>533133
Are you dumb? Of course it is, it's just the skill relegates on how good it is.

>>533174
>he's talking about realistic animation
Where does he mention that?

>the amount of dirt and physics that happens in realworld motion is wayy too much for a person to animate by hand
You do realize you can simulate both of those things, right?

>Full manual animation is only used for everything other than realistic animation.
You're talking out of your ass. Mocap is not the endgame of 3d animation.

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>>533194

I get depressed by looking at the same 5 secs animation over & over again for 12 hours straight.

Its making me insane & depressed.

>>533181
10/10 comparison.

File: MHRqPg_Tlq7p4dj1pPmEVkqziAhsPdu0_wSFtY6Idv4nEFt-0SDOIhp3m2RehXeyCXi8hUgLxq4Uxtar60-zYidSo96-rc-MAEWhY9p3zWaG=w500-h250-nc.gif (1MB, 500x250px) Image search: [Google]

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>>533198
>Where
What else is complex animation? What, that overwatch stuff? The most complex animation is realistic animation, you would know this if you see a graph of the mocap.

>simulate
Simulate what? The little twiches in the 100s of facial musles? The little changes n dips in actions what humans do because of habit, peronality? Are you even an animator? I've been doing this for only 3 yrs but I know my shit.

>Endgame
No one said it was the "endgame". Mocap is only feasible when animating ultra realistic animation. For cartoony animation, beast animation ect we still need animators.
Btw mocap aint a press-this-button for animation thing. Animators still need to make a whole of of cleanup and processing to actualy make a final product so its not like animators going obsolete because of mocap.

>>533133
Making complex animation without mocap involves clever rigging. It is almost impossible to create the subtle motion of organic movement just animating keyframes.
But a rig custom made for the type of motion you wanna record typically gets the job done.

One effective method is to make a digital rod puppet and record simple motion capture from a analog game controller or your desktop mouse to drive it.

Here's an example of a rod puppet if you are unfamiliar with what they are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyfy8rrfOkM

>>533206
>complex animation can only be mocap
I guess we're assuming that then.

>the little twitches in the 100s of facial muscles
Yes. Muscle systems are not new to rigging. It's possible to simulate it.
They almost certainly used a system like that in the gif you posted.

>mocap needs a lot of cleanup
I realize that, but I also realize that it's possible to create convincing realistic animation without mocap.
Those white dots in your gif represent bones on the model that are moving according to the actor's facial muscles.

Now look at his neck. There are no markers on it, yet the model's neck muscles are moving in a realistic way.
That is due to rigging, not due to mocap.
With a good enough rig, you would still be able to simulate that manually.

I think you're overvaluing exactly what mocap data gives you, and undervaluing how good some animators out there are.

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>>533206
>Mocap is only feasible when animating ultra realistic animation

what the fuck? you need twice of animators to control and oversee the whole shit. not to mention all acrobat monkies you have to pay royal salaries and insurances..

Can someone point me to what I need to start a mocap animation?

I'm using Maya and Blender. I've been animating by hand its fun, but wow... Yeah, listen to the others... You may spend 40+ hours a week just on a few seconds of animation... Especially... if you wish it to be very smooth and realistic.

I never thought about looking into mocap. But... Now I am...

I have an empty room 16x16 I can use, but where do I begin? Can I get stuff cheap enough? Lets say if my budget is under 6k? I'd appreciate options, cheaper ones that can deliver.

Hopefully, can be done with less than 2 people for what I need.

>>533206
>>533208
this, you're overvaluing mocap. also, whats your point with the graph? polished, high level animation will always have complex curves, whether it's disney or ILM. raw mocap will have messy curves, just like raw stepped blocking for cartoony work

I agree that using mocap and/or handkey depending on the shot and being flexible yields the best results, but mocap is still a long way off in the facial arena, so much is usually lost even when you look at the leading edge tech. to the point where in some cases you could probably just handkey it faster. I think in the future it'll get to the level it needs to be, but it's not there yet. even in movies where you might think pretty much every facial shot has mocap, like planet of the apes, there are full handkeyed shots that blend perfectly alongside them, you'd know this if you saw more reels.

ps - I am a pro animator, if that qualifies anything

>>533144
everyone enjoys different things, I love animating but modeling is fucking torture

>>533210

The cheapest way do mocap is to buy 2 kinect for 400 € i think

>>533221
what if u would buy a mocap suit for like 300$
[dumb question incoming,]
would that work if u wear a mocap suit and just film ur self with 2 regular cameras?

>>533229
And then spend the equivalent amount of time cleaning up the keys.

Motion capturing is often an "inspiration" that is very closely followed when cleaned.

You can't just get the actor in the suit, get the scene captured and call it a day.

>>533133
BLIZZARD DO IT ALL THE TIME

Check the Warlords of Draenor its all hand animated, fucking brilliant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLzhlsEFcVQ

>>533139
So I would love to do that I would sink in every hour of the week to do it

>>533144
do it bro i love modelling not sure i got time to animate but maybe, depends :D but either way if you wanna collab in the future would love to, I have your level of enthusiasm and commitment and i dont give up i keep going, even when obstacles happen, we need to do just do it, so seriously if you wanna team up in future let me know

>>533240
would love to team up, but for now just focusing on learning since im new to this whole 3d stuff

>>533246
Yea thats cool how far are you what are you using, im currently beasting Maya and literally learning about topology and trying to make heads with tris or ngons, its tough but fun

ive dabbled some zbrush and people are saying thats beter to sculpt and then retopo

>>533255
without tris and ngons sorry lol

>>533209
I saw the making of animation in assassin creed... Are you telling me that they could have jist done it by hand with lesser no of animators and got the same result?

>>533208
>>533215
So why does mocap exist then? I mean, by what you guys are saying, everyone would be better of just animating everything by hand using advanced rigs n simulation.

>>533255
actually just started modeling w blender 2 days ago lol so im not far in, i was doing some unreal engine stuff but im gonna lay that aside for now

>>533267

For realistic animation, use mocap.

For cartoonic animation, use hands.

procedural animating helps

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>>533266
no you moron. im telling that mocap needs less time for an animation but it cost shit ton and need same amount if not more animators to slap and control all shit together. if you got good rigged musle model you sure can do the shit faster. its all the fucking question of approach and what you want to get.

Why aren't exoskeletons more popular for mocap? MCUs with with powerful cpus and many sensor inputs are cheap these days as are rotational sensors.

wow so much people ar learning.. are all of you learning on your own? I'm learning too.. and I'm aiming also aim ing for animation,, why don't we open the thread and share, our progress, share tech, help each other out... IDK

>>533313
I'd love for consistent animation critique to be a thing on /3/.
That would be really cool I think if enough people are interested.

I'd contribute, but I don't have anything animated recent enough to post.

>>533313
I am, im doing ok trying to master heads at the moment witout tris or ngons so making 2-3 heads a day or as many as i can

>>533362
>witout tris

It's an exercise in futility anon. Even if you do the effort to make a 100% quaded topology you'll end up with poles, which are just as bad as having tris.
And a much more simple topology to make of model using tris will generate a 100% quaded topology as soon as you subdivide it.

As an expert modeller you will use triangles. But only when you need to and only in areas where the impact of their poles is minimized.
Attempting to make a 100% quaded topology is time consuming and difficult and the rewards of the practice are next to none.
Instead of accepting statements such as 'no n-gons' and 'no triangles' as being absolute truths, make sure you actually understand why
certain topology is considered ideal and what causes pinching artifacts occur.

You will still strive for a very quaded and evenly spaced topology, but avoiding triangles to absurdum is to be considered bad practice as well

>>533369
>poles, which are just as bad as having tris.

Poles look a bit nicer, and at least for organic modeling, are considered more desirable than tris.
It's also just good practice to learn how to redirect topology with poles and form proper loops.
Sidenote: Is it possible to form good loops with tris? I'm unsure because I've always just used poles.
It's the same general concept, however. You'll be placing them wherever the mesh isn't deforming a whole lot.
For faces, there are 3-4 popular places to put them.
1. The upper inner corner of the eye
2. The cheekbone
3. The side of the head

I suck big dick at body topology, but I'm assuming the loops just follow muscle/skeletal structure (Shoulder blades, pectoral muscles, etc).

For static models, it does not matter.

>>533369
Yo thanks for your answer.

What about just for modelling though maybe it would be better if I sculpted a character in ZBrush and then ported the correct topology under it? Im guessing thats the basics of how modelling is done right?

>>533139
Wrong. I can make a decent length shot look good in just a few hours.

>>533629
Then good by your standards is not professional by anyone else's standards.

>>533304
Are they mocapping for Deus Ex?

>>533629
no you can't

>>533267
mocap can get you a good portion of the way there even if it's dirty, since it can cut out a portion of the blocking phase you would get from 100% hand key. also, depending on the company they can afford to have high end tech and to hire mocap actors. like I said it also depends on the goals of the specific project and the studio

>>533266
yes, they could have done it without mocap, but since they can afford it it will get them closer to the final result faster. note that besides cleanup it's also necessary to alter and push animations as well. and not all animation could have been done by hand (parkour climbing for example)

>>533303
you can't procedurally do decent character animation

Anyone who wants to join a good group of artists join /3/'s discord group. You can get good, helpful critique for your work and all sorts of info about 3d stuff.
https://discord.gg/sMggh -> invite
Tip:Am not an admin but if you act rude, you'll get banned.

>>533707
Depends on the budget you can fork out for decent mocap systems around 7k

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>>533827

i have no fucking clue what this disort is and how it works. i dont want my machine being fucked up by some retard from 4chan, who think that killing the computer, on what depends my work and my time, is a trolling and giggle and shit.. soo. care to explain what the fuck are you trying to start here?

>>533867
lmao chill, Discord is a chat application, they also have a browser based version, if you're that paranoid

>>533133
>is it possible to make very complex animations without mocap? or is it possible but extremely difficult?

The fuck do you think animators have been doing the last 60 years? Hell, the vast majority of CG animation isn't done using mocap.

>>533869
can i stream my shit there?

no offense but their description sucks.

>>533867
Think of it like a "modernized" IRC with voice chat.
In terms of safety, it's a legitimate application, but usually the people that use discord are retarded.
There are exceptions of course, but in my experience most discord channels from 4chan either die out or devolve into pointless drama and shitposting.

In short, probably not worth the effort unless the people in it aren't idiots.

>>533879
>but usually the people that use discord are retarded.
Stop being a fucking hipster. Even studios have their own servers in discord. I play a lot of Evolve, they have a discord server with the devs, you can even play with the devs if you are a top player. Discord /3/ server has some really good artists. Ofcorse there are retarded channels made by 12yo, doesn't make the app itself reterded, coz if thats the case then no mature person should ever come to 4chan.

>>533867
Google it, if you're too lazy to do that dont. Seeing as to how you chose to type down a paragraph of paranoid preassumed bullshit instead of trying to do some digging on your own which would take less time tells me you are not the most pleasant positive person who can interact properly with a community anyway.

>>533873
There is a stream option of some sort, i haven't checked it yet. The app is still in beta so things keep changing. I only use the threads and voice chatrooms. Its designed with gamers in mind(inbuilt game overlay, game playing status ect)but everyone uses it coz its free, versatile and easy to use.

>>533882
>there are exceptions of course
>there are exceptions of course
>there are exceptions of course

>>533884

no offense but i will keep my hands off the distort. maybe its good for gamers but i need something where i can stream on a simple klick so i can show people y modeling and offer them either solution or talk over the problem.

i used before some nice tools but they went all into expensive payment and spamflooding so right now im not using anything.

>>533892
The exception is other way around, there are some useless channels out there, but most are good. Besides its not like 4chan where you have to see stuff you dont like with anons spamming their crap all day long. Users are registered and you can only see stuff you have chosen to see, you can even block users.

>>533827
So can you send an invite again pls?

>>533936
https://discord.gg/BpM4H

and what about kinect ?

>>533133
Use a kinect. Edit out rough patches. Or Blenders cgmasters animation primer is really good.

>>533236
I know they probably still videocam themselves doing a few of those shots for animation references but man I really wish the Warcraft movie was just that sort of animation than the live-action-CG thing we got.

What's the cheapest simplest method of Micah? I heard you can do it with just kinects.

>>533139
This is bullshit, because I am a 2d artist and I can produce animation much faster than that. What would be the point of 3D if this were the case?

>>535085
High quality is the key here.

>>533133
Mocap is a crutch. Even when mocap is used, a lot of it has to be cleaned up by an animator or else it'll look like shit.

>>535085
high quality 2D can't be produced much faster than that.

yeah, key animators could back in the day, but they weren't doing every inbetween and all cleanups, which is essentially how 3D works.

>>534741
you can just use few cheap digital cameras.

>>533133
Mocap is only useful for people who can't animate faces or don't understand bipedal movement, most of the time it looks like shit when done by an amateur especially if you don't have stuntmen/actors.

Animation is really easy outside of photo-real faces due to the uncanny valley, just make sure you keep your shit organized and layered because once you have enough bones going it can get cluttered.

>>533369
But anything in gaming is done in tris because apis dont like quads

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>>535314
>Mocap is only useful for people who can't animate

>>533133
Mocap still has to be cleaned/finessed to look great. It is a nice shortcut for major poses. What I like to do is 1) Mocap 2) set my keyframes to no interpolation 3) pick major poses/nice details 4) delete all the inbetween garbage 5) finesse the in betweens and pull curves.

>>535314
>people who can't animate
Decent Mocap takes more work than regular animation.

>>533133
Honestly, it depends. If you're looking for REALISTIC animations that don't fall into the uncanny valley then you'll need to do mocap and a team to correct the faults in the system. However, if you're clever, you can cheat a bit by going in the other direction and not trying to pass the uncanny valley in the first place. Those animations can be just as complex but if you simply avoid "human-like" noise from the get-go you'll have a much easier time if you let that preconception go.

>>533174
Actually this is incorrect. Motion capture tests from the early 2000s from the Lord of the Rings movies proved that motion-capture, while a great base, is absolutely terrible to be used in real films verbatim. Not because of the inaccuracy, because motioncapture is tight, but because motion capture ends up being too realistic to the point of being floaty and uncanny.

Smeagle/Gollum had to take the raw capture data from Andy Serkis, and then had animators hand-animate everything from that mo-cap base.

If you don't do the hand-animate phase, the motion capture looks like shit.

>>535880
>too realistic to the point of being floaty and uncanny.

wat

by definition too realistic cant be floaty or uncanny

>>535899
captured motion from humans just doesn't always translate in the right way to a creature rig

Why do they use the very same actor whose face they scanned? Doesnt it beat the purpose (in movies)?

>>535967
Does your brain work correctly?
I don't think it works correctly.
Why would you ask such a stupid question?
Have you actually thought about it for a second or are you used to ask stupid questions without thinking and let other people carry the answer to you?

>>535943
that could be more plausible

>>535976
Not him but that was a pretty good question

>>533133
Look at P.N.03

all handcrafted

Gamecube

>>533139
Movie animation is ridiculously busy these days desu. They put a trillion pointless gesticulations and microexpressions into every shot, and at least half of it adds nothing at all except maybe a slight distraction. The right movement done the right way with the right flow and emphasis is worth a thousand wobbling busywork details.

>>533133
Yes OP. this is hand done

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJIXk_sHR5M

>>536876
if you're talking about vfx I agree to an extent, but what he said also applies to cartoony animation as well. it takes equally as long to do it at movie quality.

you can use an xbox kinect to make high quality animations without nearly any cost, just use yourself as the model then add/enhance the animation yourself.

There's also tween motion from video. You essentially just define standard humanoid rigs and the image detection does the rest. It's incredibly good and requires very little time. Then you just clean it up.

Mocap IS the way to go, and animators all use it in the pipeline, but they don't tell the masses how easy it is because it threatens their jobs, and they don't feel like diversifying.

>>536985
Additionally, the quality of mocap you can pull from an HTC vive is staggering.

>>533133

i just want to have sex with hot girls

>>537047
the fuck are you waiting for then?

>>533236
I get that a computer the size of Sears tower couldn't run this at 7 fps but can't they at least find a good half way point between this and the actual WOW graphics? it looked older than the time it came out as is

>>537989
Wait.... Why are you talking about realtime graphics? Dont derail the thread.

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>>533133
if you don't understand the fundamentals of animation then your mocap is going to turn out like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tpmiGFxRg4

>>535458
CЛABA УКPAИHE

>>533139
>animating is an extenuating grind

What the FUCK is an "extenuating grind"???

Try exasperating...

I'm actually attending Goatsmilk Tech working on my bachelor's for CA Titty Motion Design

>>535458
What did he mean by this?

>>533138
This thread is pretty old but for anyone new reading. It can be difficult to get good at making animations. I've been doing it for about 4 years and I've only been able to make decent animations for maybe a year, possibly less.

OP here, holy shit this thread is still alive lol.
great info all around though thanks everyone