(Animation) Lab Animation is being extended

Fixed the Link!

Originally, I was just gonna mocap the seated swelling video really fast and get it out after the initial mocap tests worked out super well, but then it turned into this.

I recorded about 11 mocap sets, I wanted to record multiple in one run so I could have a set to work with without having to throw on the mocap equipment again and setup the character just for 1 more recording, and I thought it'd be fun to record just a simple run of someone blowing up, which you're seeing now.

The start lags a bit, not sure why, otherwise, the rest of the playback is pretty smooth. The animation is going along nicely, so I don't expect this one should take too long, even though my estimates have been wildly off in the past and absurdly optimistic. Those were mainly constraints from animating however, with the new mocap system, it's absurdly faster while getting wildly better results, I couldn't do this level of animation if you gave me a full month to work on it, and it was just recorded tonight.

I'm was super excited to introduce the mocap rig into my workflow, and it genuinely makes it that much faster, it's honestly incredible how much of a time save this is, and I wouldn't have it without all of your support, so thank you thank you thank you!!!

Not only can I animate the subject incredibly well, I can also animate on-lookers, which would have taken a massive amount of time because of each individual I'd have to animate, but now I can just spend about half an hour to an hour recording a bunch and using whatever ones I need. It took a while on Star of the Show just to animate the 3 people in the background, and in my opinion, they don't look great, but they were background characters on screen for a couple of seconds, blurred from the depth of field, so it didn't matter as much. But extras can just be added without worrying about how long it'll take to animate them, and they'll be animated to the about the same quality of the subject in the video.

I'm planning on upgrading the mocap rig with some more trackers relatively soon, primarily so I can track a few more parts of my body.

The main issue I've been noticing with the mocap is the elbow solver in Mocap Fusion, which is the software I'm using to do all of this. Actions such as reaching around a swollen belly or lifting the arms and bending the elbows upwards mess with the elbow solver, and doesn't match where my elbow actually is, so you'll end up with the elbow just clipping the model which messes with cloth sim and looks terrible.

Unless foot tracking is completely omitted, more trackers just seems to be the solution unless I can figure something else out in the time being. I'll probably post the other mocap recordings here soon when I'm not working on this animation so you can see what I'm talking about.

But the future looks very bright for my animation ambitions, and its all thanks to you  all, and the mocap rig I could only afford with your support!