Hi. I'm TJ Kemp, but I go by "TJ Studio"

I'm a 17-year old American Splatoon GMOD, (Mostly) a novice Vocaloid producer, & sometimes an MMD/MikuMikuDance animator! 【Stilll trying to practice with other things and motion tracing if you're wondering!】 My goal is to entertain you all with animations, and sometimes, Vocaloid original songs! My song specialty is EDM if you're wondering

Here is my recent MMD motion trace example!

https://youtu.be/fEZpAve5vEo

I'm gonna attempt to do some mocap for MMD later this month once I get paid from a YT network that I'm in (ChannelFrederator)

But I got two question!

1) Can the dual Kinect thing work with MMD? I wanted to use it so I can make some stuff easier when doing motion traces!

2) Since I saw the video on Vimeo where you can use iPiSoft for MMD. I was wondering, is there a way I can set up the iPiSoft stuff to MMD?

Even tho I haven't got the full version of iPi Mocap Studio. I'll still have fun using this software!

Thanks for having me here guys! :)

Just checking but, by 'motion trace' do you mean 'roto capture'? That's what we called it when we shot performances on video and then match-moved a 3D character over the footage--sort of a 'poor man's' motion capture. This was way back when I worked in The Box at Rhythm & Hues and well before we had access to a motion capture studio.

Anyway, Mocap Studio won't take existing video footage and create motion capture from that, if that's what you're asking.

However, if you can dance or know a performer who can, Mocap Studio will let you record original motion capture data.

Mocap Studio can output to BVH, FBX and other popular formats, and compatibility depends on your animation program. Check the wiki for details.

If you can export a compatible rigged character from your animation program, you can retarget in Mocap Studio and export the character with motion. Or, if you prefer, you can export the motion data as BVH or FBX, and do the retargeting in another program (possibly your animation program, or a mocap editing program like Webanimate, iClone with 3DXchange, or Motion Builder.)

The advantage with the first approach is that its direct and convenient; the advantage with the latter is that you have more control over specialized shading and rigging options that may be unique to your animation program.

A couple of thing to be aware of if you're using Kinect 2: this device captures at 30 fps, which works well for many motions but it may not be able to track very quick dance moves accurately. It's possible to capture dancing but you should expect to spend more time fixing tracking errors during sudden and quick movements.

If that's a big concern, you may want to look into PS3 Eye. PS3 Eye can capture at 60 fps, which is more appropriate for quick and less predictable motions.

However, PS3 Eye requires a larger capture space, and has special lighting and clothing requirements, so there are pros and cons with each system.

Another important consideration: with Kinect 2, you'll probably want to use a dual setup, which will require two capable computers to capture with (my preferred setup.) The original XBox 360 Kinect and PS3 Eye camera only require one capable computer for multiple devices.

Any of these setups work well for general capture but since you specifically mentioned MMD, I thought you should know what to expect from Kinect. I hope this is helpful.

Good luck and have fun!

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

...

Yeah, same thing as blocking the animation to a video, (old guys term now I guess), is still done regularly by many animators even these days, using 2 right angled set up cameras for the witness videos.

From what I have read, the conversion of the BVH, or FBX formats to VMD format for MMD is quite complicated, but I am sure it can be accomplished with patience.

Greenlaw is right that it would be easier to retarget the mocap to the MMD models with any number of external 3D programs, but that won't do the conversion to import the files into MMD.

I did a quick YouTube search for how-to, and not much available on the topic, maybe more info. directly from the MMD forums though.

I did find this article for converting BVH to VMD through Blender, if you haven't seen it: https://hogarth-mmd.deviantart.com/jour ... -706240555

Please post again if you get it working and it would be cool to see what you come up with for the dances inside MMD.

Good Luck!

...

Nevermind the two questions about this guys. I found out that you can use the MMD tools in Blender to export your motion captured animations (From BVH) to VMD (Vocaloid Motion Data) which can be used as a motion for MMD!

Here's the link where I found out how to do it.

https://hogarth-mmd.deviantart.com/jour ... -706240555

Thanks, guys! :)

Cool! Thanks for sharing your findings. :)

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!