Final mocap with keyframe

Below is my final motion capture with the keyframe aspects added in. In a previous post I had managed to get the motion capture to a workable stage with the cleanup of the data. I found that in some areas the performance wasn't as strong as I was hoping it to be, this may have been because of the data not being very accurate when recording. To get around this, I emphasised certain actions whilst trying to keep the main performance at the core. I found it hard to distinguish between what makes it motion capture and what makes it keyframe. Surely by animating over the top of the data turns it more into keyframe, so what is the point of motion capture? It's trying to find that fine line between the two, keeping the integrity of the actor's performance whilst ensuring the animation has weight and believability to the movements.

I chose to use iPiSoft as it was a more accessible piece of technology that is becoming more commonly used. I wanted to see how well markerless technology could capture a performance. It had its issues with the accuracy of the data, however when it did capture something, the movement came across as realistic and had subtle motions within it, something that may not have been able to be achieved with keyframe. Through doing this project I can see the benefits to using motion capture, it's a quick way to get a base performance down or to work out the layout of a scene in 3D space. If you do add keyframe into motion capture you have to make sure that there is stylistic consistency between the two, and for this reason it is why games companies may choose to use motion capture without the use of keyframe. It ensures that throughout the game the animation is of the same style, something that could be hard to achieve with keyframe if the animators have not had much experience with that. Both motion capture and keyframe can have their strengths and weaknesses, however it should be about the performance and the believability of a character. If an audience can connect and empathise with a character because of the believability and performance, then that should be all that matters.