What animations do you need?, We're looking at creating animations, potentially for Moviestorm.

[kv]

You guys just want girl-on-girl action, admit it, huh!

oooh oooh I`ll get the mud pit out

[iceaxe]

Interesting blog post.

I have a character who has been very keen to whip his weapon out and wave it about a bit. If you can include some penetration shots too then that would be all the better. I'm sure you're already on the case.

[chatnoirstudios]

A few more from our wish list:

• Tapping drumming fingers
• Rubbing eye - disbelief
• Mouth guard gesture
• Ownership gestures
• Bored/interested gestures
• Partial arm cross gesture
• Nail biting and the collar pull
• Thinking gestures [1] [2]
• Headache gestures [1] [2]
• Napping on a table, on a chair.
• Man/woman slow dancing
• Biking

[kkffoo]

Dancing as a couple could be useful also, generic slow dance would probably get used most.

From my point of view the most useful 'after-dark' animations would be more transition poses, unless you are actually making porn movies then passion wins over thrust and fits better into drama productions. This would make the sequences usable clothed and semi clothed also.

Long sequences could be edited around, and having the poses available at different heights would be useful...so the same animation at different heights...ground, bed (sofa if appropriate)
so a romantic kiss, he lying on top, could be used for bedroom scene as well as romantic picnic.

Some suggestions,
couple roll together, transition from she to he on top, and / or vice versa,
lots of staring into each other's eyes and looking away overcome with passion etc etc
male kissing female body (eg arms)
better transition onto bed (ie get the 'twitch into position' MS bit out of the way before getting onto bed)
kiss against wall
neck kissing

as for the thrusty bits (if you are inclined to do these)
focus on reaction shots (In fact the face is most important part)

also hands, the bum grab, kissing fingers, hands are just as important for close ups

classic movie shot is dressing table mirror , female sitting, male leans over caresses breasts

This is more after eight than after dark & remember this is movie fantasy stuff, so the couple are both looking / thinking about partner rather than Tottenham Hotspur or shelving.
If you have a focus group for feedback I could see it being helpful to have women of varying ages in it.

I think it will be challenging, I suggest you try something simpler first, but if you can make these couple interactions work it will be a huge bonus. Anything which involves twining around or complex couple interactions will take Chris weeks to do manually.

[Chris Ollis]

. Anything which involves twining around or complex couple interactions will take Chris weeks to do manually.

Weeks is quite an exageration Kate If we took weeks to an animation we'd still be on Alpha release 0.2

As a rough guide we can do anything from 2 to 20 animations a day in the office depending on complexity (including conversion between genders). Mutuals take longer because you need to do the Male/Male, Male/Female, Female/Male, Female/Female variants to cover start position and gender options.

The reason animation packs take so long or get put off is because all the transitions to and from base poses and multiple variants that need to be done are just very dull to do

[rgr]

I know this list is exhaustively long, but I forgot to mention one animation that would be really great to have -- reading a newspaper! Having different variants of this would be cool -- looking back and forth on a page, changing from the left page to the right, turning pages (which should probably be done by bringing both pages up to the middle), stuff like that. And, of course, picking up and putting down a newspaper

I could definitely have used this in my most recent film. Having somebody read the paper while having a conversation gives a totally different feel than just having a conversation.

Thanks again!

rgr

[daleh]

All great suggestions, I am just gonna add a little thing, actually a gesture rather than a full animation, it's been mentioned many times before, by myself and others, its tiny, but please please please....

Close Eyes (With a Follow up Open Eyes)

- so we can control how long the eyes remain closed for, andhopefully can be done at any time, whether the actors standing, sitting in bed, lying dead on the floor.

So many times in things I've done where I either wanted the eyes shut but they were open, for example using the shot at posture but really wanting to use it more for knocked unconsious type thing, only t ofind the actors a eyes wide open, so having to constant;ly shoot from angles that dont reveal the eyes.

Or to just be able to show thactor closing his eyes then openeing them again. Well I have used blinking and the slowing the scene down in an external editor to get a rough effects, but wpould be so great to have control of it from within MS.

[ed]

For reading a book sitting down, I will have to think about that one. OF course you can lay a book on the person's lap and have him look at it. I am trying to think of things we have them holding while they are sitting down that could be hidden so it looks like they are holding the book.

Reading a book sitting down already exists. I have a character reading a book whilst sitting in Looking for The Truth (if you don't want to play the whole thing to find it, scrub through to about 07:30).

Attached File(s)

 vlcsnap_2010_08_20_14h22m53s216.png ( 827.04K ) Number of downloads: 7

 

[ed]

I don't know if these already exist in a pack that I don't have, but there doesn't seem to be a bow (as in "end of the performance" type of bow).

A short, Japansese-style "hello" bow would be good, as would a fully-hinged waist "OMFG they really loved me" kind of deep bow. And perhaps a more moderate bow, somewhere in-between these two extremes. There would need to be solo bows, and there would also need to be hand-holding bows for several performers (because luvvies are llike that) in a row, holding both hands, holding left and holding right. Accompanying curtseys would make up a nice pack (and, dare I say it, these would probably all fit with the After Dark pack. Is there a dog collar?)

Oh, and on a similar theme, I noticed that there doesn't appear to be a wiping-the-mouth-with-the-back-of-the-hand gesture.

[luxaeternam]

Thought I'd bump this thread since I was wondering whether there were any new developments, or has the arrival of mo-cap with the Kinect thingummy changed anything?

[Chris Ollis]

Thought I'd bump this thread since I was wondering whether there were any new developments, or has the arrival of mo-cap with the Kinect thingummy changed anything?

Having spent a day playing with the Kinect and getting some data I can safely say it'll be great once someone does it properly. At the moment the BVH data output is a bit rubbish (as with most BVH). Once someone writes a decent FBX recorder that can handle more bones I think home mocap studios will be very easy to set up. Although seeing as I was running it through my cheapo (<£200) netbook, it's not so much home studios as portable ones.

[luxaeternam]

BVH? FBX?
These are not among the three letter abbreviations I understand (like LOL and WTF ). If you'd care to explain, I'll make every effort to understand.

[Chris Ollis]

BVH? FBX?
These are not among the three letter abbreviations I understand (like LOL and WTF ). If you'd care to explain, I'll make every effort to understand.

BVH is the old mocap format "Biovision Hierachy". You can find loads of old bvh files online most of which are pretty much absolutely useless due to not including hands or fingers, and being captured poorly resulting on floaty and twitchy motion.

FBX has become the modern standard with far better import/export between the major 3d packages.

[chadaproductions]

One animation I would really like to see, for a project we are working on now is someone "escorting" somebody out of a room, i.e, taking them by the shoulder or arm and pulling them away. The best I've been able to do is to get the puppet to point at the person he is escorting out, and following him from a short distance but it looks rubbish. If you could make that I would be eternally grateful.

[plowbrain]

SMOKING!!

I want this animation more than ANYTHING!!

[primaveranz]

SMOKING!!
I want this animation more than ANYTHING!!

Yup

Attached File(s)

 Smokey.jpg ( 140.71K ) Number of downloads: 8

 

[mcornetto]

Smoking is good! And characters spontaneously combusting would be great too ;-) Just kidding on that last one.

I would like to see more leg animations. There just aren't enough. And a rub your tummy animation. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to use that. More nervous, frightened variants are good too. More eye motion. That's all I can think of right now.

[kkffoo]

I's like some longer, looped, standing idle animations, mostly for background characters. The ones we have seem to intrusive for this purpose.

[the_nomad]

Great minds... I was just heading to update everyone on Strange Company's progress on this when I saw Kate's bump above.

In short - we're still looking to do animations for Moviestorm. However, it's probably not going to happen immediately. Shortly after I posted this thread we changed the way we're making Death knight Love Story (exciting new renderer, amongst other things), and for the next couple of months at least all my mocap time's going to be eaten up with that.

However, in good news, once we've finished the DKLS shoot I'll have a bunch of experienced mocap actors sitting around getting bored, so at that point things might start to happen quite quickly.

The MS guys have been very helpful giving us the info we'd need to get the mocap into Moviestorm, and we're pretty confident that we can do it now. It's just studio time that's limiting us.

So, that's the update. Sorry it's not "here's the pack right now", but hopefully soon-ish it will be!

(Note for completeness: if anyone DESPERATELY needs an animation right now, you could give me a call and we could see what we can do. However, I'd be getting our team to do it in consultancy time, so it'd probably be expensive, for "commercial production company" values of expensive. I suspect that most people would be better to wait for us to start turning things out as above, but I thought I'd mention it!)

[kkffoo]

That sounds exciting! Glad to hear you haven't given up on this idea.