Rotoscoping. Tried and tested affordable alternative to motion capture.
Things you need.
- 2 ccd cameras
These are your typical, security or babysitter cam types. Don't need color or sound and look for the made in asia ones, not great but usually alot cheaper and still works.
- 2 tripods
Cheap lightweight types or anything that can prop up the cameras (which are tiny and light anyway).
- Video splitter
This is the main cost. The kind that you usually see for store security, that takes a few video inputs and outputs to tv as splitscreen. Again, you really only need the B/W one, so a lot cheaper.
- Video capture card
Dont need a fancy one. I used a GForce4 card with video in. Its crappy 320x240 avi capture but thats all you'll need as your not editing the next blockbuster.
Other items.
- TV (any old one)
- Video cables from both cameras to video splitter, from video splitter to TV and PC for capturing.
- Lots of masking or gaffer tape (okay, you don't need alot but always comes in handy
)
- Whiteboard marker/Pencil or scotch tape
- Video editing software (again you dont need fancy one, just typical cut/trim, export avi. There are usable freeware/shareware ones)
- Ample space to set everything up.
- Actor or person doing the motions.
Okay I think thats all. So very quickly, this is how to setup up and how it works.
First, find the spot you're going to use and where you're going to place the person. Put down a cross on the ground with masking tape. Setup the cameras at the front and side of the spot. Use the marker/pencil/scothtape and make a cross on the tv screen. Adjust the camera positions until the crosses on the ground and tv line up. This does not have to be spot on. Just abouts is good enough.
Now, get you actor to do his stuff. Capture the splitscreen output. Once you've captured all you need, the rest is done on the pc.
So, lets say you've captured a cool disco move, lets call it disco.avi, and you captured it at 320x240. I used a 4way splitter. which should have front camera,side camera and 2 blank. Bring the video into your editing software. Crop the front camera, which will be 160x120 and scale it back up to 320x240. Yeah, so your actor is nice and smudgy, it doesnt matter as long as you can see all the motion. Save this out as discofront.avi and do the same for the side view.
Load up your 3D software, I was using 3dsmax at the time. Load up the model that has been setup for animations. Set the frame rate and length to that of the video. Load up frontdisco.avi as a background in the front view and likewise for the side view. Now just start keyframing the animation to match up to the movements on the video. I generally start with keyframes every 5 frames then add where required.
Its really fast to do since you have the front and side views synced.
