Question What's the current best practice for creating animations?

[legitimateaxes]

There's all sorts of things like Timeline, other plugins, built in patterns, motion capture, etc. Some of the information I've found could possibly be out of date. I have a valve index with 3 vive motion capture devices. There's a guide on the reddit wiki that is 4 years old and explains how to capture motion using the built-in motion capture system. This is probably fine but, is there a new, better way I should use? Is there a decent way to convert motion capture from video to vam animation?

Could someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

 

[SPQR]

i think most people use external software to record motion capture to bvh and then use bvh player to bake it in vam animation and then move it to timeline

 

[legitimateaxes]

i see, and looks like bvh motion capture is a lot to get into. so far i've found a somewhat adequate basic approach to animation by using things like doll / cue / force plugins but its not great. thanks for the help

 

[SlimerJSpud]

I found a little trick that makes simple things look better, or do more than they did originally. I describe it in this thread. If you have some motion created with a thruster, you can link body parts of the atom receiving the thrust to the one making the thrust. Linking the rotation of feet, head, or knees of the receiver to the motion of the thrusting atom (hip, abdomen, etc.) can make the receiver squirm and thrash. One of the thruster plugins also has some randomness dials you can enable. It doesn't take much work to set up. You do have to be careful not to create a positive feedback loop, which can lead to explosions, or fractured skulls...