Mocap tool for custom armatures

For some time the mocap tool has worked with the game rig and Rorkimaru's proxy, and not just with the native MHX rig. The natural next step is to create a tool which works with general, user-defined rigs.



In this example, I was using Sintel Lite. The mocap tool is the file space_view3d_mhx_mocap.py, which comes with the MakeHuman nightly builds, and can also downloaded from svn. Load the file into a text window and run it. Two new panels appear in the User Interface window (N-key): the mocap tool itself (labelled Bvh to Mhx), and the Custom Armature panel. In the latter, press the single button labelled Initialize character.



A list of bone associations appear in the panel. The figure below shows how I filled it in for Sintel Lite. Since the legs are controlled by IK by default, and the mocap tool does not yet work with IK for this rig (not quite sure why), the legs must be switched to FK. The switch controls are bone properties of foot_ik.L and foot_ik.R. Once this is done, we load an animation as usual by pressing the Load, retarget, simplify button and navigating to the relevant bvh file.



And after a while the animation is loaded. This example shows the cartwheel animation which is the first in the scene in the movie.



Update 2011.03.06. Mocap now works with IK. The problem was that the IK bone in the Sintel rig did not use local locations. There are now also slots for the elbow and knee pole targets, which need be filled in if applicable.