Hello everyone,

I'm extremely interested in the iClone software as an animator and am considering to buy the iClone 6 + Dual Mocap software package. Firstly, I do have a question that will appeal to the general Mocap & 3D Animation community.

As we all know, the Perception Neuron gear along with the Axis Neuron software serves for an 'almost' perfect & affordable motion capture solution. Though animators like me with a keen eye for motion have noticed the discrepancies and inadequate bone alignment of the live data. Long story short: The limbs of the Axis Neuron dummy are not perfectly aligned with the limbs of the live actor even with a "By-The-Book" calibration done beforehand. Obviously the solution will be worked on by the Perception Neuron crew and will be a hard task since the problem resides in the internal calculations done by the full setup.

The quick solution which I proposed to the technical department of NOITOM is to enable the user to manually calibrate the suit. As to modify the values of the bone's orientation 'realtime' to correct the position of the bones to the position of the limbs of the live actor. The software feature would be as simple as making the live actor sit in a specific pose and tweaking the skeleton accordingly.

The real question is: Is this possible with iClone Mocap software?

Thanks in advance for answering this question,

David

iClone has bone position/rotation editing layer. It is part of iClone, rather than part of the mocap plugin. It does allow you to make the adjustments you need. It is also keyable along the timeline for creating traditional animation.

There is another tool that lets you adjust the posture of any particular motion clip.

Of course, getting a good calibration to start with will make everything easier.

EDIT:
This page shows some additional calibration adjustments like body geometry can be input directly into the Noitom capture software.
https://neuronmocap.com/content/axis-neuron-software

Hi Rampa,

I work with Autodesk Maya (which also has animation layers). I can successfully clean motion capture data produced by the PN gear. Though the main issue here is production speed, and as you all know; one of the most important things in your workflow is production speed. The discrepancies are so bad that it more than triples the amount of work I have to put in cleaning the data. Unnecessary work... Respectfully... I have tried many things like changing the bone orientation in Maya on the exported motion capture data itself to correct the faulty bone alignments. Though this doesn't work, since with each separate recording (or during), the bone alignment shifts because of either unstable syncing or other potential things that could go wrong. These problems are almost unnoticeable and the slightest twitch could create a massive difference. The orientation fix only solves half the problem or sometimes even makes it worse.

I guess now it's easy to understand that it would improve workflow immensely if we could change the orientation 'directly' before a mocap recording. Having this amount of control beforehand means preventing issues that could tangle up together and create an even bigger problem.

Another reason to stress this feature is needed, is by looking at recordings where a two-handed prop is involved (like a weapon). It is nearly impossible and extremely clunky to perfect a motion capture act by letting the live actor create the offset himself. He can hold the object still with one hand whilst using the other hand to create the offset to compensate for the bone that is faultily aligned. Though holding a two-handed object with one hand makes the act seem extremely unnatural and almost impossible to do adequately. This would again create a lot of extra work.

You could say that this is a calibration issue (it definitely is). But calibration is an automatic feature in Axis Neuron. Every time calibration is performed to correct a specific limb (feet, hands or even a single finger) something else gets broken. This is why manual calibration would fix all the trouble. But I don't see PN working on it since they are busy with other stuff. This is why I'm considering buying the iClone 6 software package.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: I am aware of all the possible options in the Axis Neuron software being the owner of a Pro License. None of the available options solve this issue.

Simply said.... Can we rotate the bones realtime during a mocap session? (To fix inadequacies in the bone alignment)

I've just checked out the trial of iClone 6 and it was a horrible experience to engage with its character controls. It is clear that this software is pretending to be "Animation software" yet ironically it absolutely is not in any way Animator friendly compared to the industry standards. I'll pass on this one and stick to Maya and Blender.

Men I totally agree with you, apart from the fact the characters look wee bit realistic there apparently was no innovative ideas behind it like e.g the type of rig you want to export your character with i.e based on industry standard human ik or the 3ds max cat.....not forcing people to use the complex skeleton they rig their character with and also as far as the so called compatibility with human ik is concerned, I don't see it when you import human ik animations into it and use it with their highly unorthodox rigged character even though it works there a lots of twist here and there, which can be edited but imagine editing 40% of an animation, for 10 animation files, it's bound to get cumbersome

Funny, I have been animating with iClone for a long time. But, if you're happier with Maya or Blender, by all means, go ahead. For all others, there are knowledgeable members to assist you further.

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Instead of "Fixing" PN bones.... retarget the animation to any rig.

When a skeleton has nice animation and the limb(s) are not perfectly aligned to the mesh....
One way to solve this is by retargeting the animation from one skeleton to another.

Importing a character to iclone, via 3dxchange....
You map your characters bones to use Reallusion bones.
This allows your character to use iClone animation tools and motions.

Retargeting animation requires mapping bones to "Transfer" animation from one skeleton to another.
Maya does this.

The end result:
Animation applied to desired rig, with correct bone "PRS"....position, scale, rotation.


Cheers