Further Clean Up

Here is the result of the clean up after making those required adjustments and in the sequence of the film. I attempted to blend between the second capture of the rushed walk and the first capture but the result was not very appealing so the next best option was to adjust the first capture to fit with the previous walk and action. Although after viewing it in the sequence some of the actions aren't aligning with the set, as he rushes off he walks off the path.

Constraints

In this sequence, James is holding a pencil in one hand and he has a backpack that he is clutching to with the other hand. To constrain the objects to James while he walked they each required a joint and a rigid bind. In MotionBuilder, a child/parent constraint was applied to the joints of each object. The left wrist effector was then connected to the pencil constraint and the chest effector for the backpack.

Scenery & Camera Test

From Maya we connected the scene through the "send to" options to test the environment and the cameras. This allowed us to adjust the direction of the action in relation to other objects and to achieve the desired result. Above is an example of this with some further clean up and blending of takes. The cameras in the scene were animated in Maya and the pause in James' motion is due to timing and the camera being from his point of view. The rushed walk away has some criticism because of its pace, the unusual arm movement and the relaxing feel at the end of the shot. The next step would be to possibly slow down the rushed walk a little and then extend the shot to feel as if the character is completely following through with the rushed walk. The current rushed walk is a part of the recaptured data and a solution could be to blend it with the previously captured data.

Recapture

We decided to try and enhance the motion of the character by recapturing some shots. With the first attempt we lacked with experience in directing and after applying the capture to the character some of the action felt too realistic and more natural than we envisioned. So with the second attempt we aimed to achieve more personality from the actor that would help to reduce the overly natural feel to the motion. 

Character Walk Clean Up

With my assigned shot from the motion capture I began cleaning up the shot by straightening out the initial walk. As you can see below, we were restricted to the spatial set up of the motion capture and this resulted in having the actor walk in a circle/square which would allow us to develop the full walk within the film. Using "Story mode" within MotionBuilder I was able to cut the square/circle walk into sections and then realign them using the "Match" setting within story mode. From this point it was a matter of fixing any jerking or jumping actions and creating a smooth blend between the separated shots.