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"Illusion of life" and motion-capture?

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"Illusion of life" and motion-capture?

Hi everyone,

I'm writing a paper on animation and got to the following issue.
When I'm watching animated films the ones where they relied on motion capture seem to be missing something. While adding realism to your animations usually is a good thing those characters appear to be missing a certain amount of "personality/life" making it harder for me to properly relate to them.
Could you help me pinpoint what exactly causes this? Does this have to do with acting for animation that is different than for life action, or is it the level of subtle "noise" in movement?
Or am I totally thinking in the wrong direction... All help is more than welcome!

P.S. I heard they dont use any mocap at Pixar (and PDI?) at all for their movies. Is this true, and if so why not? Does this has to do with the visual style of their work or is there a more fundamental/principal reason?

Some thoughts...

I'm not an expert by any means, but by extensions of common sense and what would be practical, I think both questions can be answered by the fact that broad overacting, exaggerated motions, etc... are more entertaining and more easily understood to represent the actions they are representing.

With motion capture, you literally -are- adding realism, but most of the animation I've seen is successful (both monetarily and from an interest standpoint) because of how unrealistic it is. Kicking a football doesn't make a motion capture person do 40 flips in the air, etc..

As far as Pixar and PDI, there are workers on these boards who could ultimately clarify, but I think the answer is both visual style AND necessity for artistic integrity in making truly animated movements...

There's an article on Slate which addresses this issue.

In 1978, the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori noticed something interesting: The more humanlike his robots became, the more people were attracted to them, but only up to a point. If an android become too realistic and lifelike, suddenly people were repelled and disgusted.
...
When an android, such as R2-D2 or C-3PO, barely looks human, we cut it a lot of slack. It seems cute. We don't care that it's only 50 percent humanlike. But when a robot becomes 99 percent lifelike—so close that it's almost realwe focus on the missing 1 percent. We notice the slightly slack skin, the absence of a truly human glitter in the eyes. The once-cute robot now looks like an animated corpse. Our warm feelings, which had been rising the more vivid the robot became, abruptly plunge downward.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102086/

Hi guys,

Thanks for the posts, this is pretty usefull but i'm not done yet.
I did see the something like the slate article a while a ago (only that one was solely about robotics) but hadn't linked it to this yet.
But if this was the main problem than why does it seem to work for some characters? I thought Gollem was done pretty good, although there the creepy-thing might be in favour of his character. I know this was mostly keyframed as pointed out by jason but is sure does LOOK like motion-capture. The Hulk however, while technically no less impressive, seems to be missing those emotional qualities gollum does have.
When looking at the trailer for the upcomming movie "the Polar Express", although the second trailer looks a lot more promissing than the first, I cant help but wonder why it looks so bad... It hasnt got the hyperreal look so that isnt it. Their using this new system to capture the motions where they can get both body and facial capture of multiple actors at the same time enable-ing the actors to have better interaction with eachother. So what went wrong?

In relationship to ScatteredLogical's post.
A Watership down (1978) is pretty realistic animation in my memory (been a while since I last saw it) but that certainly wasnt less interesting. I dont think only cartoony animation is worthwile though i do agree Mocap isnt much use in that area. As i see it slapstick-style animation isnt that often used anyways at the moment. Even in movies like Finding Nemo they are going for "realistic" motion and images. For example i see distance fog, caustics effect from the surface, particles on currents in the water, aswell as the propulsion of the fish and so on.

If you got anything that might be of use in my paper please feel free to add. All rants appreciated :P

PS
I'm still looking forward to some Pixar/PDI animators explaining whether its true they dont use any mocap at all and why. So if you happen to have some time... please enlighten me.

of course if we're going down that road, there's a vast difference between realistic *rendering* and realistic animation. Animation in my opinion is about idealized movement, its about what we need to see to read something clearly, what we *expect* to see when something moves, not what is necessarily reality. I mean, people don't usually present their hands before they pick something up, but it definitely helps the audience understand that this character is picking up that object.

Ender

But if this was the main problem than why does it seem to work for some characters? I thought Gollem was done pretty good, although there the creepy-thing might be in favour of his character. I know this was mostly keyframed as pointed out by jason but is sure does LOOK like motion-capture. The Hulk however, while technically no less impressive, seems to be missing those emotional qualities gollum does have.

You have to remember the Slate article which states that we have problems with HUMAN characters that look 99% realistic. Gollum and Hulk are inhuman monsters (maybe 80% human), so we're not in the process of being fooled into thinking they're human. Hulk was missing emotional qualities partly because his character had far less emotional range than Gollum.

You can also check out this article:

This chasm — the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori’s thesis — represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness. The slope leading up to this first peak is a province of relative emotional detachment — affection, perhaps, but rarely more than that.

http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html

Mocap == EVIL ??

Good point Ender about the difference between the rendering and the motion. Although very interesting, photorealistic rendering and it's implications on relating to characters was not was i planned to write about. Could I conclude from your post that if the actors used for the capture would show more anticipation and acted in a more theatrical manner this would make the "animation" better? Or is the focus on Idealised, making animation with less non essential "noise" preferable. (but leaving the secondary actions)

Also I didnt get the idea a lot of people here are in favor of using mocap as an animation tool. Is this just because you dont consider this to be worthy of the word animation, since you dont get full control over the character? Or is it something else?
There's got got to be some good sides to it seeing how polular it is, especially in games, vfx, and animated series. Or is it just because its fast and therefor cheaper than having a team of animator work for weeks on an episode?

I dont think much people here know this example. It's a dutch TV series called "Cafe de Wereld" which aired every night, commenting on yesterdays news. In order to be able to do so the entire show is based on mocap and rendered out on a daily (?) basis.
You can see an episode here and find some more info on MOTEK 's site.
What do you people think about this serie in particular or mocap series like Roughnecks in general?

I haven't used mo-cap beceause I've never had access to facilities to try it out. But I have had an actor act out an entire script and used the video reference as a template for animating a cg character, though I hand keyed all the animation. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but of course I had to adjust the animation and get rid of some of the motion noise to make it seem less jittery. Perhaps as you were saying, if mocap actors exagerrated their performances a bit instead being subtle the result would be less jarring? Interesting hypothesis.

mo-cap = mo-crap

Definitely no mo-cap going on at PDI/DreamWorks (that's from experience), and I know for a fact there's no mo-cap going on at Pixar (as should be obvious, even without insider info).

A few reasons. Mo-cap is no good for exaggerated stuff. Mo-cap is cumbersome and in many cases slower than having an experienced, talented animator do the same shot from scratch (i.e., there is no real time or money savings, unless your goal is second-rate, weightless animation). Mo-cap can't really be done for characters that don't have human proportions (unless you don't care how wonky they'll look). Even the very best mo-cap system can only convey the most rudimentary information about what a person is doing with their face (see Polar Express as a recent example). Most animation, even 'realistic-seeming' animation, requires significant exaggeration to look 'right,' and mo-cap is an impediment to that. There's more, but that's off the top of my head.

mo-cap = restricting

i am not sure how much of this will be mere regurgitation of the same thing, but my two cents would be that mo-cap is much too restricting. there is no creativity in mo-cap, at least on the side of an animator, or 'clean-up' artist. the actor provides the movement and the tweaking of that movement is extremely difficult without completely deleting keys and key framing what might look or read better. but then what would be the point of using mo-cap? it just seems that more dynamic poses and gestures can be achieved through key framing rather than being restricted by what the actor gives us. i agree with others that animation tends to need exaggeration in order to read clearly... actors can't always give us that.

"i love the graph editor"
[ChrisMagovern.com]
and visit me on myspace...

Art of animation=no mo-cap

If we use mo-cap so no need to animators, just go on,bring some actors and do a real movie...right??...an animator is an artist...so where is the art of animation???...i don't agree with mo-cap..but of course u can have references from acting, expressions, moving in general (as pictures,movies,or anything) and u exaggerate and animate them with your own way....THX

If we use mo-cap so no need to animators, just go on,bring some actors and do a real movie...right??...an animator is an artist...so where is the art of animation???...i don't agree with mo-cap..but of course u can have references from acting, expressions, moving in general (as pictures,movies,or anything) and u exaggerate and animate them with your own way....THX

If you want to see the fallacy of mo-cap with animation look at how rotoscoping was handled in the past.
Animation is MORE than just moving about on screen, Its timing and using certain tricks of same to hit the audience emotionally, albeit below their perception range.
Live actors and m-capturing cannot do that without skilled animators augmenting the scenes.
Example, a finger point with a bit of flourish on the end of the getsure, where the figure "snaps" as it points at something needs a bit of over-extension added by an animator. The actor's physiogomy and the mo-cap system isn't going to be able to capture such a gesture in its fullness. The animator provides that bit of flourish so the pose will read, and read emotionally because the audience will not see it consciously--unless they've been trained-- and it would be far too restrained a gesture otherwise.
That's the REAL Illusion of Life.

--Ken

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

been a while...

Hi, it's been a while since my last post but I had to go without my home internet connection so I wasn't able to post any sooner.
Thanks for all your reply's and please have a look at the following.

I did have a look at rotoscoping and while it was first seen as a wonderful new tool, producing always fluid motion, it was then discarted as being non artistic.
When watching Snow White (1937) the human characters like snowwhite, the prince and (in a somewhat lesser extend) the queen all seem so much less vivid then the dwarfs. This difference in performance is ofcourse also because of the limitations on their abillity to portait a living human and the difference in presentation. The dwarfs being charicatures and the humans fairly realistic.
Fairly recent there was a film depending heavily on rotoscoping, Waking Life (2003) While I must admit, I couldnt get myself to watch the entire film, Waking Life is also being claimed to prove rotoscoping is at the least an interesting tool in the animators toolbox. I heard people state it should have gotten the Academy Award nomination instead of Jimmy Neutron (2003).

From the previous reply's I think I may conclude that the areas motion capture seems to fail most are the lack of exaggeration and control of timing.

When I was just reading "Acting for Animators" I came across the idea in there that the difference between an actor and an animator is the way they come at the subject. As Hooks puts it:
"Animators are oriented towards what stage actors call results." An animator is concerned with how to move to indicate a certain emotion (how many blinks occur in an excited moment) while an actor is taught not to play results of his characters inner motivations. Instead he is searching for his intentions which result to actions, played in pursuit of objectives. The appropriate facial/body movement will then occur naturally.

Could it be that this difference in approach is what shows in motion-captured animation in comparison to key-framed animation?
Not showing the required amount of detail to reveal the impulse behind the motion? Or is it just motion and not what we're looking for namely, a performance?

Although virtually all the previous reply's have been very helpfull I havn't yet discovered what makes hand animated sequences so much better.
When looking at the principles of animation as layed-out by the disney studio way back in the golden-age they just about all seem to be in some way applicable to motion captured scenes aswell, as they are mainly about 'making things move right'. Yet, as previously already stated, animation is more then making things move. Is it perhaps so that just following all those principles doesn't (necessarally) lead to good animation?

That Acting for Animators quote you put in is fascinating. It has become the first thing I've ever printed out and put in my reference from this forum. Hmm. I might have to go buy that book...

Ender

Although virtually all the previous reply's have been very helpfull I havn't yet discovered what makes hand animated sequences so much better.

I think it's probably pretty obvious to most professional animators. Some of the fundamental "principles of animation," which make it so interesting to look at, are avoided when you take directly from life: squash and stretch, exaggeration, and appeal.

How interesting would an action or comedy film be if they endeavored to make it realistic, rather than exaggerating scenes and characters?
Why is Modernism so much more interesting to view than realistic paintings?

Of course, if you're trying to composite a believable CGI human into a live-action film, motion capture is very useful. If you're making a cartoony feature like Shrek, it's not as useful.

erm...of course Modernism being more interesting to look at than realism is a matter of opinion...

So is motion capture vs. "hand animation."

Being animators, I felt it was pretty safe to assume that most of us prefer the inventive and the imaginative.

Just a quick thought...

I dont seem to completely grasp this yet...
I think we can all agree that for certain situations it is useful and for others it apparently is not. There is for some reason a difference in perfomance for live-action and for animation. The way I look at it, animation is, at least in that area, closer related to theater than to cinema.
I sometimes get the idea people(animators) just want to say mocap is no good, this doesnt help much. Although I'm not so fond of it myself i'm looking for reasons.(I only have limited experience with mocap.)
The things I'm hoping to discover for myself are the reasons that lie at the root of the mocap problem and how to create better animation with (or without) it. Hence my last question in the previous post.

When looking at a lot of productions they hire athletes instead of actors or even worse did it themselves. But what if, in order to get a cartoony animation for example, we would have strapped Charly Chaplin in a mocap suit?
In my expectation he should to be able to deliver what is needed. When you watch those movies he is virtually a cartoon. He's got exaggerated movement, great timing and appeal. What makes that this would still not work, or would it? (besides the fact Chaplin is no longer among us...)

The Question of Artistry (Dec. 1999)
...
Most agree that the term motion capture already has a negative connotation. In a way, I see motion capture being in a similar situation to limited animation, which also has been derided in terms of its aesthetics. Like rotoscoping, limited animation and motion capture are seen as "technical cheats," to use the words of Greg Pair, of AMPnyc. He notes that the same stigma attacked CGI when it first appeared, but he thinks "when technology and output improves, motion capture will be seen as yet another new medium and not a replacement for the traditional media." He also suggests that some of the disdain for motion capture stems from a fear of losing jobs to this technology.
...
... one of the biggest problems is "that the community of vendors have exaggerated the capabilities of the technology and are given to making claims that are almost guaranteed to offend anyone working in animation: usually, regarding how much cheaper it is, how much superior it is to traditional animation, etc. Today, it seems that America remains less accepting of mocap than other countries, where the technology is being used in entertainment to a greater extent. In any case, I find it interesting that this process has a lack of respect within the 'mass art' of animation but much more support within the fine arts-particularly dance and music (not to mention other areas, such as the sciences). Usually, it is the other way around; in this case, however, I have found more fine artists who lock favorably on motion capture, while the immediate response of animators (except those working with motion capture, of course) has been strongly negative.
...
Motion capture also can be described as a sort of 'sampling', a term that is perhaps most familiar in terms of music, when bits of pre-recorded music, dialogue or other sounds are recorded and mixed into a new composition (I've already made the comparison between record 'scratching' and the type of animation that occurs in real-time animation). It seems common for supporters of motion capture technology to compare its process to music recording. Brad deGraf and Emre Yilmaz go so far as to describe it as "a new kind of jazz." It is also not difficult to see parallels between motion capture and certain types of electronic music, such as the Theremin, an instrument that translates human movement into sound. This is not to suggest that all or even most motion capture has reached the level of artistry one might associate with accomplished musicians and music technology, but rather a way of conceptualizing how motion capture might work and, in some cases, does.

Maureen Furniss, editor of Animation Journal, Savannah, Georgia

http://www.animationjournal.com/

thanks harvey! this look promissing....
I'll read it tommorow. Couldnt find it on animationjournal but found it elsewhere. For others interessted you can read the whole article here:

http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/furniss.html

P.S. your new avatar looks much better! :)

Thats funny. That's a teacher of mine.

I can get you in contact with her if you want...

Ender

Just a technique...

hey everyone,,,i don't agree that mo-cap is cheating because it's a technique that an animator use to finish work more quickly (technology is playing a role here)...Exactly like 3d animation and 2d animation...in 2d u must do inbetweens..but in 3d u must'nt...so...but i'm still saying mo-cap isn't a style...Only a technique that i will'nt like to use it.. :) ..thx

There are also a couple of good articles on AWN.

http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.11/3.11pages/kenyonrosenthal.php3

...
Heather Kenyon, editor-in-chief of Animation World Magazine: Some projects though are completed by using traditional computer animation techniques on top of the motion capture data. Doesn't this seem to be the "best of both worlds" solution?

Seth Rosenthal of ILM: That is a viable solution, but with the proper direction and the understanding of how you are going to apply that motion in a scene, it is possible to bring in an actor and get a complete performance. Even for a performance with complex interaction with characters say, in a background plate, and difficult timing issues, it is possible to capture data and, this is of course without secondary hands and face animation, put it directly into a shot.

There are a variety of techniques and tools available and none of them replace the other. They are all just more colors on your palette. We are working with the entire spectrum. We have motions that we use directly. We have motions that are heavily modified or enhanced by animators to great effect. We also have motions that we use purely as reference. They are all great ways to use motion capture.

However, to incorporate all of these techniques into the same pipeline is challenging. This might be one of the things that holds people back from using two different techniques on one piece of animation. ILM has a remarkable R&D group and very deep expertise in technical animation techniques; so animators here have access to good tools and techniques. The strength of the work that we have done to date -- you can't see it yet! -- is largely a result of having some extremely bright and talented people attack the problem of applying and using data effectively.
...
Motion capture can provide animation for a character. But animation is just a starting point and doesn't buy you much if you don't have good modeling, lighting, compositing, texturing, and everything else that makes a shot work. That's one reason there is so much cheesy-looking motion capture out there. It seems so easy! You get motion that looks very real, but if you don't have a way to incorporate it into a pipeline to make good CG images, then you are not accomplishing anything. No matter how good the motion capture is, if you don't have a way to incorporate it into images that look good, then all you really have is great movement.
...
When it is used naively or primarily for simple economic motives, you end up with characters whose motion does not match their design. You get cartoony looking characters that have this hyper-real motion that is disconcerting. On the whole though, it is another tool that will add to our ability to create compelling media, to put more, and more varied, characters in films, television or games.
...
HK: Another one of our articles in this issue mentions two stop motion directors, , who are exploring in their stop motion work `working with human actors without conventional live-action methods.' In a way, you too are working with live actors but your final product does not technically include live actors.

SR: Yes, but one of the limitations is that the audience is seeing real motion, and if your story or images don't make sense with hyper-realistic motion, then there is going to be a clash. This draws a circle around the whole application of motion capture. As soon as you don't want this realistic motion or the high resolution that motion capture provides, then you very quickly get into territory where you should have skilled animators and artists creating the motion. In the big picture, of all possible things to animate, those suitable for motion capture are a small group. There is a huge advantage to using the tools appropriately, but there is a penalty for using them for unsuitable applications.
...
I definitely empathize with animators who are frustrated with exaggerated claims or expectations that are placed on motion capture. I can see why some would object to it being called animation, but that does not mean that it is not an art. It is just a very different type of art. It is much more about performing, directing talent and being able to benefit from the spontenaity of live perfomance. Performance arts always have the potential to create incredible momements that are completely unplanned. That is part of what makes movies and theatre magical. Motion capture has that dimension to it and I think that will lead to some great work.

and Puppetology: Science or Cult?
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.11/3.11pages/degrafmotion.php3

I guess the reason why mo-cap doesn't work sometimes, is because we don't look into the screen looking for the same stuff we see in real life. Look at motion pictures, with real people, and see how it becomes necessary to suspend the actors with wires, use slo-mo or speed up the shot, or create miracles in edition. I assume no one believes tht a Karate actor can jump 3 meters, or that Arnold can fall from a plane onto the roof of a car and just mess his hair, or that the cool fight scenes frim Matrix were made in real time.

I guess the reason why mo-cap doesn't work sometimes, is because we don't look into the screen looking for the same stuff we see in real life. Look at motion pictures, with real people, and see how it becomes necessary to suspend the actors with wires, use slo-mo or speed up the shot, or create miracles in edition. I assume no one believes tht a Karate actor can jump 3 meters, or that Arnold can fall from a plane onto the roof of a car and just mess his hair, or that the cool fight scenes frim Matrix were made in real time.