Music Video made with Lightwave and Ipi Soft

**caralvive** · 08-21-2012, 02:42 AM

Hey guys,
I'm new here, I've been working on several small projects with Ipi Soft Mocap and Lightwave 3d, I'm not a 3d pro, I'm actually a film composer who likes to have fun doing some 3d.
Recently a famous Salsa musician friend of mine passed, and I decide to make a little tribute with this animation, it was made with Ipi Soft (1 kinect) and Lightwave 3D. I know there's still a lot to do in order to make it perfect, but due to my film composing schedule right now I decide to post the video as it is....enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ4OAVS_3EY

Film Composer
Carlos Vivas
www.carlosvivas.com

**Mr_Jones** · 08-21-2012, 08:25 AM

Great video but sorry to hear about your friends passing.
Thanks for posting this, I've been looking at getting iPi + 1 kinect. I'm not really a character animator so this is encouraging to see. Would you mind describing your workflow a little?

**kadri** · 08-22-2012, 01:20 AM

Sorry about your friend ! It is a nice video and tribute!

**caralvive** · 08-22-2012, 03:18 AM

Thank you guys, I apreciate it!

About my workflow, I've had Ipi Soft V1 for a little more than a year and although at the beginning it was a little frustrating trying to do it with Lightwave 9.5, when I updated to V 10, things got real smooth!

First, let me tell you, this tutorial really really was a life saver for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51juos0TsS8

I captured my motions with only one Kinect, I did it in one single capture from the beginning to end of the song which I put to play on the background for timing reference, (previously I recorded a little musical count down at the beginning of the song so I could start in sync) when capturing my motions I was trying to move as close as my friend did when he was on stage

Once I had the 3 min recorded (I made it in the first run!) I re-targeted my character in Ipi studio (watch the above tutorial)
Having already my animation on my character in Lightwave, it was just a matter of cleaning etc using LW tools, animating by hand the head (which I know looks horrible, lol!!.. but I really didn't have much time

)

I made the lip sync and facial expressions with the inexpensive and yet great "TA Facial Animation" which works perfectly with Lightwave check it out:
http://ta-animation.com/FA/

I also used Lightwave's Master Plugin "Universal Camera Selector" since all my animation was made in one pass, it was really cool editing and moving cameras at the same time inside LW, that way I didn't have to worry about editing to much in Adobe Premier later on.

Since time was an issue for me, I decided to render with LW's VPR, to some this may sound weird I guess (Don't know if that's technically correct or not???) but it only took about 5-6 seconds per frame so it got it really fast.

The whole thing took me 2 days (taking little coffee breaks of course!!) from modelling to final video editing, probably not bad for 3 min of video

Regards,
Carlos Vivas
www.carlosvivas.com

**BennyB** · 08-22-2012, 12:43 PM

Awesome work for 2 days! Enter it into the contest and win yourself ipisoft v2.0

http://blog.ipisoft.com/

**caralvive** · 08-22-2012, 02:24 PM

Thank you Benny, I just did it!....regards.

**ksnoad** · 08-23-2012, 02:16 AM

Very nice, especially for 2 days

Kev xx

**Greenlaw** · 08-23-2012, 10:22 AM

Your music video is fun and well done! Very sorry to hear about your friend. This is a fine tribute to him.

Originally Posted by caralvive

About my workflow...

Thanks for sharing your workflow! I love to hear how other artists are using iPi and Lightwave together. My wife and I too ran into a lot of iPi to Lightwave problems back in 9.6 days and nearly gave up on Lightwave at the time. But then 10.0 came out and made it completely possible for us to create our own 'homemade' mocap shorts.

These days, I'm a lot more enthusiastic about using Lightwave. I think the iPi-to-Lightwave workflow still has a couple of issues that make the process more work than necessary, but I also feel very positive that Team Newtek is paying attention and doing something about it.

Anyway, keep up the great work. I'll look forward to seeing what you do next with the system!

G.

**Mr_Jones** · 08-23-2012, 10:25 AM

What changed from LW 9 to 10 that made things easier?

**Greenlaw** · 08-23-2012, 10:46 AM

Significant improvements to FBX that streamlined the process of getting motion data directly onto a rig in Lightwave.

In 9.6 there were problems with rotation order which caused a mismatch between the orientation of the geometry and bones. They made improvements with 10.0 but now that I'm thinking about it the real fix arrived in 10.1. Now you can use Merge Only Motion Envelopes directly to your normal Lightwave mocap rig and it just works!

Other improvements to FBX allowed moving cameras and props between apps accurately. This finally let Lightwave play nice with practically any application in my pipeline.

There are still a few gotchas to be aware of, like offset weights and the requirement of dummy effectors at the ends of each chain if you use Lightwave Joints. If you make a special 'export' rig all is good but that's a lot of extra work that should not be necessary. It's unclear if the situation will still be the same in 11.5 but I hope they fix it--if they only correct the offset weight issue, I'll be a very happy user.

However, I have a feeling they will be asking users to abandon Lightwave Joints and switch back to Bones. This is just my speculation though. Have to wait and see what happens.

G.