Development of an XML Web based motion capture data warehousing and translation system for collaborative animation projects

Abstract

While motion capture has been hailed as a way to achieve extremely realistic animation in a cost-effective manner, many animators are reluctant to use it or to intermix it with keyframing techniques in situations where they are required to collaborate with other production personnel due to the lack of consistent software performance. The myriad of different file formats and the performance of those formats across different animation packages have limited the penetration of this technology into the production environment. The author details the development of an ASP web based application which archives segmented motion capture data into an intermediate XML format and then allows the users of the system to dynamically retrieve the data in standard Biovision segmented data format (BVA), Lightwave 3D motion dump format, and Adaptive Optics Associates (AOA) motion capture format. The net result is a dynamic web enabled systems that allows users of Avid SoftImage 3D, AliasWavefront Maya, Newteck LightWave 3D, and Kinetix 3D Studio Max to exchange segmented motion capture data.