Are SecondLife Avatars, 3D Animations and Motion Capture Ready for Dancers?
Summary: There are a number of efforts underway to make the 3D animated human form more lifelike. These developments are taking place both in virtual worlds such as SecondLife and with 3D animations initiated through motion capture systems. The end result will be the creation of personally-identifiable animations that move and act as their real-world counterparts.
These advances in 3D animation coupled with improved and less expensive capture technologies and animation software will, I believe, lead to large numbers of dancers experimenting with virtual worlds and different approaches to creating more realistic animations. Quality dance animations offer new avenues for creativity, marketing, studying choreography, revenue generation and the re-staging historical dance works. But the question remains how long it will take before the tools and software will be realistically ready for the dance community.
In this post, I cover:
* The Avatar Puppeteering project from Second Life
* Hands Free 3D's movement-based approach for controlling avatars
* The Laban Motion Capture Project at NYU
* The PhaseSpace active marker optical motional capture system
* Facial capture from Mova
Personalizing Behaviors of SecondLife Avatars
A limitation with 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life is that it is difficult for users to express personalized behaviors, expressions and movements through their on-screen avatars.
This year Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, has re-launched an effort called Avatar Puppeteering that is intended to make avatars more expressive.
A key component of this puppeteering initiative is to create "physical" avatars with human-like joints that can be manipulated by being "pushed, pulled, or rotated in real time for maximum expressivity and responsiveness." And these real-time adjustments in movements can be made while not allowing the avatar to rotate in ways that are unnatural to humans. You can't, for example, rotate your avatar's hips 180 degrees while both feet remain facing forward.
The following two videos from the Avatar Puppeteering project show how the joints of these avatars can be manipulated:
Controlling Avatars with 3D Video Cameras
An additional approach to simplifying the real-time, personalized manipulation of avatars is being developed by Hands Free 3D. I've highlighted their first video before that shows how a 3D video camera can be used to capture human movement that controls a Second Life avatar.
(Their second video shows how a 3D video camera can be used to control objects in SecondLife by simply using gestures.)
Laban Capture Project at NYU
While Avatar Puppeteering may add more personal characteristics to avatars and Hands Free 3D may make it easier to manipulate on-screen navigation and objects, the on-going Laban Project at New York University is addressing the high-end of the spectrum.
Christoph Bregler, associate professor of computer science, and Peggy Hackney, director of IMS Berkeley Laban/Bartenieff Certificate Program, are combining their respective expertise in motion capture and Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) to create personally-identifiable 3D animated models.
The current state of motion capture does not allow viewers of the captured animation to identify the unique "movement signature" (an LMA term) of the actor whose movements are being played back. You're simply watching an impersonal skeleton or animated character moving in 3D space. The resulting animated character can be designed to take just about any shape or form and be infused with its own personality. The point of the NYU Laban Capture project is, however, to directly capture the unique movement qualities of a live subject through a motion capture system, which is a difficult undertaking.
For background purposes, here's a good video of how the motion capture process works. In this instance an optical motion capture system with active markers from PhaseSpace is being used in conjunction with MotionBuilder and Maya software from Autodesk.
And here's the end-result of such a capture process, also from PhaseSpace, of a rhinoceros Flamenco dancer:
Mocap Already Available for Expressive Faces
When it comes to capturing and animating unique facial expressions lots of progress has already been made from a company called Mova.
This first video shows the animated results of the face-capture process:
This video shows how the facial expressions were captured:
Your Feedback and Thoughts
Are you thinking of using motion capture or performing in SecondLife? Please share your thoughts and stories.
How Tango Dancers Would "Walk" in Virtual Landscapes
Developers participating in the CyberWalk Project have created an omni-directional platform for simulating natural walking movements in virtual worlds.
Here's a video (no audio) that shows a user outfitted with a harness and goggles as she walks on this omni-directional treadmill to explore a virtual landscape:
In a recent blog post about CyberWalk, Roland Piquepaille points out that "Even with recent improvements in virtual reality technology, it's still almost impossible to physically walk through virtual environments." So this omni-directional treadmill represents important on-going research into how to capture the essence of human locomotion and port it to 3D immersive environments.
Tango Dancers Shed Light on the Art of Walking
Tango dancing is all about "walking" or the "Caminada." Tangueros devote years to practicing and perfecting their walk. After just finishing my first four months of obsessive tango dancing, I'm struck by how difficult and challenging it is to develop a fluid, elegant walking style.
So it struck me that maybe there is some synergy to be found by bringing together developers of virtual-world walking systems with tango dancers who have created a variety of approaches to "walking" in different settings.
While watching the following seven tango dance videos that emphasize walking, I encourage viewers to consider the different aesthetics, movement patterns, weight changes, musicality and styles. Which of these elements can and cannot be captured on an omni-directional treadmill? Does the "walk" of tango dancers offer treadmill developers new ideas or insights about how they would like users to be able to navigate through virtual environments? And how will these treadmills capture the movements of two people simultaneously as in partnership dancing?
Enjoy the following videos as you consider these questions:
"Tango Italiano" with Shastro and Maria:
Tango by Julio Balmaceda and Corina de la Rosa:
Candida Andritsch and Jose Vazquez dancing in a fountain:
Pablo Rodriguez and Noelia Hurtado at Brussels Tango Festival '08:
"Perdizione" - Tango dancing in a supermarket:
Dario's Tango Guide - El Abrazo (Embrace) and Caminada (Walking):
