In our third week, I started working on character animation. This time, instead of traditional keyframe animation, I tested motion capture to see if it could speed up our animation process while fitting our realistic theme. I began by filming a reference video, focusing on a crucial part of our story – the transformation animation of the main character, the Doctor. The Doctor’s transformation required preparatory movements, which I captured as my reference.
Since this was my first attempt at motion capture, it took some time to get the process right. To ensure the smoothness of the motion, I did a lot of frame cutting and used animation layers for adjustments. Below are the results of my motion test. Although there’s room for improvement in terms of flexibility and fluidity, I’ve pretty much figured out the motion capture process. I learned how to redirect skeletons in Maya and how to bake frames on controllers for easier future animation edits.
