Best use of Mocap

Human motion creates emotion, and what better things are there for demos to aspire to?

Lapland Studio, a premier Finnish motion capture studio, is proud to present the "Best use of Mocap" competition for ASSEMBLY Summer 2007.

Your goal is simply to include mocapped animation to your compo entry. The best entry will be chosen by the representatives of Lapland Studio. The winner will receive one full day of motion capture work at the studio free of charge.

The rules

• Use one or more sets of the provided mocapped animation in your ASSEMBLY Summer 2007 compo entry
• You can modify the mocap data in any way you feel is necessary
• Any compo with motion is accepted (e.g. short film, demo, gamedev, intro, oldskool demo). Still images or music competition entries can't participate
• The winner is chosen by representatives of Lapland Studio. If no entries reach the desired quality level, Lapland Studio can opt not to give out the prize
• The compo participants give Lapland Studio the right to use the compo entries in the promotion and marketing of the services of Lapland Studio.
• All general ASSEMBLY Summer 2007 competition rules as well as the rules of each individual competition (from which an entry participates in this competition) apply to this competion.

The mocap data

This mocap data is provided by Lapland Studios for free of charge use with any, non-commercial demoscene productions (not limited to ASSEMBLY Summer 2007 compo entries). Credits for the mocap work must be given in the production ("Mocap data provided by Lapland Studios, www.laplandstudio.com"). Please note that you will also in this case give Lapland Studio the right to use your production in the promotion and marketing of the services of Lapland Studio.

Download the mocap data (ZIPed FBX file, 1,7 MB)

Technical guidance for the mocap data

The LS_mocap_clips_Assembly_07.FBX file contains six different full body animation clips (fingers not animated and T_stance contains only a static skeleton):

• T_stance
• Walk_loop
• Walk_rope
• Sneak
• Joggle
• Hammer_time
• Shadow_boxing

Here are some general instructions to get started with these motion-capture-based animations:

In order to get the animation clips to use (and you are not familiar with .FBX / MotionBuilder) you will need a 3d software package such as 3dsMax, Maya, Lightwave, XSI or Blender. These packages are able to import .FBX one clip at the time.

At the first import use Add to new scene-command to bring the skeleton to the empty scene. T_stance contains only a static skeleton standing in T-pose and it can be used as a basis for your character. Save the modeled and skinned character in the native format of your 3d-package. When you want to bring any of the actual animations to the skeleton, have the character file open and use the import command with the Exclusive merge button on in the Import dialog.

1. Create an empty scene
2. Import LS_mocap_clips_Assembly_07.FBX
3. Add to new scene -button on, import T-stance
4. Model and skin your character and save (you can add any additional rigging such as finger controls or morphs on top of the skeleton/model but do not alter the hierarchy of the base skeleton)
5. Character file open, import any of the clips Exclusive merge-button on.