Character Animator - A 2D Real-Time Animation tool from Adobe

Adobe has just unveiled a new 2D digital puppetry - or have we all agreed to call this field real-time animation now? - application called Character Animator. A demo of the software is provided in the video above, but essentially it's a tool for animating 2D bitmap (Photoshop) and vector (Illustrator) still characters in real-time using a camera, microphone, head tracking and facial mo-cap.

In addition to basic mo-cap and lip sync capabilities, it also allows users to create programmable behaviors and will support the creation of 3rd party plug ins. I haven't tried it myself yet, but it looks like it could be a very easy-to-use and potentially powerful tool for creating basic 2D animated characters in real-time.

Adobe Character Animator is currently in beta and available for testing by After Effects CC users. You can learn more here.

Via The Labyrinth.

Real-Time Motion Capture in Blender at last!

NI Mate is software that imports Kinect motion capture data in real-time into 3D apps and they've announced that Blender is the first application that they're supporting. When I was working on the aborted Panda Puppet project several years ago I realized that one of the things Blender really needed in order to become a practical and effective tool for digital puppetry was a straight forward method of accepting motion capture data in real-time, so I think this is very exciting news and long overdue!

It should be really interesting to see what people start doing with this new capability in Blender. 

NI Mate is now available in open beta for both Windows and Mac OS X (Linux support is coming soon). You can register to participate in the beta and download all of the necessary software at www.ni-mate.com.

Via BlenderNation.

Facial Capture Using Blender 3D

The latest version of Blender 3D was released recently and has a bunch of great new features. One of the most impressive is motion tracking, which enables you to reconstruct camera animation from video and film footage, and composite 3d rendered object into movie clips. The Blender community has been busy exploring the possibilities of this new feature and several people have been attempting to use it for rudimentary motion capture.

As you can see above and below, the results so far look pretty good!





If you're feeling ambitious and want to try this for yourself you can find a tutorial here.

I've always believed that Blender had the potential to become an ideal (and totally free) professional tool for creating digital puppetry. Although I don't believe that this works in real-time - I haven't had a chance to try it myself yet - this is a huge step in that direction and suggests that we can look forward to a lot more amazing things in the future.

Via BlenderNation.

Motion Capture, Performance and Avatar

Some excerpts from a "making of" documentary about Avatar and its pioneering use of motion capture.

Digital Puppetry Round-up

It's been far too long since I've updated Machin-X, so to try to catch up here's a look at bunch of interesting things that have been happening in the past few months:

Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research are working on a system for "motion capture on the go" that utilizes body mounted cameras, which opens up some intriguing technological possibilities (via Tech Crunch).

In Australia, Jason Saragih is working on an interesting system for doing facial puppetry. His work on facial expression recognition looks particularly impressive so far.

Check out the visual insanity that is the Unreal 3 graphics engine.

Using the Kinect for digital puppetry keeps getting easier.

Digital puppetry with Wiimotes, using the Unity 3D engine.

Blender continues to be expanded and refined. The latest stable version (and last of the 2.5 series) Blender 2.59 was recently released and a number of exciting new features are being planned for future releases, including better support for motion capture and an improved real-time animation system.

Finally, old puppetry meets new technology with the "Naked Puppet" digital sock puppet.

First Kinect Motion Capture Series - Under the HUD

Under the HUD is what looks to be the first motion capture web series created using the Kinect. It was made using the OpenNI and Brekel Kinect hacks, as well as Autodesk's MotionBuilder and Maya software. Although the animation isn't completely fluid or elegant, it's not bad either. The important point is that, as Fast Company points out, until recently you needed to spend thousands (not the millions claimed by FC) to do this.

Episodes are coming soon; you can follow @thwackers on Twitter and visit the Thwackers website for updates.

Via Kinect Hacks.

Why Realism Doesn't Work in Animation (or Machinima)

Salon.com has a great interview with character designer Shannon Tindle. The article mostly discusses character design and why so many animated characters (like the ones in the recent "Gnomeo and Juliet") look terrible, but also touches on the subject of motion capture animation vs. animator-driven key frame animation.

Shannon is very diplomatic throughout the interview, but makes his feelings known about movies that skew towards realism in terms of both their design and their use of motion capture. Here's what he had to say about "motion capture" animated movies like The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol:

"All I know is that the studio that Disney formed to produce those films, Image Movers, doesn't exist anymore. "Christmas Carol" is one of my favorite stories of all time. But with those films, it doesn't look exactly like a real person and so it becomes something in between. In any animated film -- stop-motion, CGI and 2-D, and I've worked in all of those mediums -- you need to make a clear statement. Any time you waffle, if you're somewhere in between reality and stylization, a straight line and a curve, people feel it and they tend to have a bad reaction to it."

To me this is also one of the biggest barriers preventing real-time animation from reaching a more mainstream audience. Machinima might be getting more and more popular, but it's appeal is still very niche compared to mainstream animation. The movement in most real-time animation is driven by "realistic" mocap and/or skeletal tracking. At the same time, it's difficult to find an example of a real-time animated character that exhibits as much personality as Mickey Mouse did in the early Disney cartoons of the 1930s. I think there's a direct connection there; in order to be successful in the mainstream, audiences have to be able to connect emotionalally with the characters they're watching. As Shannon points out, it's much harder to do that using realistic motion or design.

Many Machinima creators are really innovative and do an excellent job of working with and around the limitations in the software they use to make their movies, but what they really need is a platform that allows them to create better, more emotive and relate-able characters so that their imaginations can be set free.

Salon.com article via Cartoon Brew.

CalArts Teaches MoCap

It's not secret that most traditional animators hate motion capture (often with good reason). Well, the good traditional animation minded folks at CalArts decided to have some fun and produced this video as the opening for the school's annual showcase of student showcase last week. It's pretty funny and apparently got more laughs than just about anything else that was screened.

Via Cartoon Brew.

Conan O'Brien Gets Motion Captured

Conan O'Brien recently paid a visit to Lucasfilm and among other things spent time goofing around with ILM'sreal-time motion capture system , which looks really impressive (the motion capture segment start about halfway through the video above).

Link via Cartoon Brew.

James Cameron Talks Avatar

Businessweek posted an interview with James Cameron today. In it he talks about his new in-production movie Avatar, which will be utilizing a brand new motion capture-based, real-time animation system that Cameron has been developing for a few years. Interesting stuff.

Via CinemaTech.

Disruptive Animation Technology

The Oscar nominations were announced today and the fact that two of the three nominees for Best Animated Film relied heavily on motion capture has not escaped the attention of many blogs on the internet. Some animators think this is the end of an era.

This isn't really anything new. Anytime a new technique or technology comes along and disrupts an existing art form the old guard get bent out of shape about it for a decade or two until things settle down and a new equilibrium is esthablished. In the 1990s puppeteers griped about the popularity of the then-new computer graphics in special effects work. Traditional animators griped about rise in popularity of 3D animation. Now computer animators are complaining about the rise of motion capture.

This seems silly to me. Photography wasn't the end of painting, electronic devices won't replace books anytime soon and despite the popularity of computer animation, old fashioned stop-motion animation is undergoing something of a renaissance. The tools and process of animation may change, but it will never go away any more than puppetry will.

I have no doubt that when (and I believe it's a matter of when, not if) real-time animation/digital puppetry/Machinima/whatever you want to call it really takes off there will be a whole new round of moaning and groaning about how it will be the end of this artform or that technique, which of course is rubbish. There is always opportunity for smart and skilled artists in these types of transitions. For example, any decent real-time animation system is virtually impossible to put together without good traditional animation skills. Ditto for motion capture, which looks awful in it's raw form.

BTW, work on Panda Puppet this week is coming a long very nicely and much quicker than I expected. I hope to have some demos or screen shots up sometime next week.

Acting and "virtual puppeteering"

Bill Nighy's motion capture performance was used to create Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Earlier this week Variety ran a good article about the growing use of motion capture in feature films and how actors are increasingly been utilized as virtual puppeteers to create fantastic creatures and effects. Most of the article deals with Bill Nighy's impressive mo-cap performance in last summer's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Monkeying around with technology

There's an interesting article on India's Deccan Herald website about King Kong, Andy Serkis and whether or not he should be eligible for an Oscar for his role in the giant ape's astonishing performance. I think most people agree that Andy was robbed when the Oscars failed to acknowledge his work in Lord of the Rings. Certainly Andy isn't the only one responsible for bringing Kong or Gollum to life - the performance is built by a team of artists and animators - but how is that different from actors working with hair stylists and costume designers? Is this acting? Puppetry? Something else entirely?

These are questions that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is going to have to tackle eventually.