Motion Capture VS KeyFrame Animation

[MzCatieB]

ok so i have wanted to post this for a while to see what people think.

for people who don't know recent games have been using motion capture some what religiously and i want to know what your opinions on it all is.

i personally love KeyFrame animation more cause i feel like it has allot more personality.

 

Keyframe Example:

 

Motion Capture Example:

 

[Samdb]

I'll have to say key frame, it looks like you can do so much more with it than motion capture.

[KaareKanin]

I hate key frame, it seems so overplayed and childish to me. It's just like a clown at circus or a children's TV actor. It's just so utterly fake

[virtualTune]

keyframe! It takes so much more time and effort to do a nice keyframed animation. Calling it "overplayed and childish" is honestly quite immature.

[Nicktrance]

Without quoting the Tacos ad, they both have their uses. motion capture definitely makes more sense if you're trying to make a more immersive and serious game. Keyframe makes more sense in game which is aimed at being more cartoony and fun as opposed to realistic.

[KaareKanin]

keyframe! It takes so much more time and effort to do a nice keyframed animation. Calling it "overplayed and childish" is honestly quite immature.

I guess it was hard to extrapolate what I meant by my comments, so to expand, I guess I could put it another way:

To me, key frame animation always seems to include unnatural motions that gives me the distinct feeling it was put there just to give children more enjoyment. It's an old classic for humorous effect, much like we would see in old black and white movies with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Little Titch. One major difference necessitating this form of humour is that back then the was no dialogue to support the moving pictures. As the movie industry matured, this simpler form of entertaining has been limited mostly to entertainment aimed at children (with notable exceptions of movies like "who framed roger rabbit", which every child should see never the less). The human brain isn't normally fully formed until sometime in its twenties, couple an immature brain with less education knowledge and experience, and it becomes pretty apparent that most children won't appreciate more sophisticated forms of humour. I suspect this is much of the reason why excessive motion is so widely used to please children audience. As to why kids like this form of entertainment I have a theory. Children playing very often consists of a lot of running and general movement. When a small kid runs around and wawes his arms, I'm sure there's some sort of chemical feedback to the body telling it that this is fun, probably as a part of some sort of evolutionary way of making sure that children get enough exercise so they get fit enough to survive in the wild. I'll admit, I have no backing of this, but it's only a quasi theory "of mine". Anyway, I suspect that by association, kids seeing characters on screen doing excessive movements, they'll enjoy it because of the way they play themselves.

As for what I said about overplayed. It's much the same effect you see when you get actors that only know ho to act in theatres to do a movie. Stage actors must play their movements across the audience. People sitting up in the gallery should be able to see what the actor does, what the actor feels and so on and so forth. Going to the theatre is in many respects a more distant experience than going to watch a movie. In a movie, directors can play around with the cameras, so that when a character expresses sorrow or joy or any other emotion, the best way to convey this is often to show a camera up their face and have the actor do a realistic facial expression. The problem is that when a hardened stage actor gets a camera shoved up his/hers face, all they know to do is to play emotions that's distinguishable across long distances, so while it might look brilliant on a stage (and stage actors are often considered the best ones) it looks way out of place in a movie. I would say overplayed. This is what I feel I see in key framed animations, overdone head movements and facial expressions, and it ruins all suspension of disbelief. It might very well be that these movements are put in so that young children more easily can read their expressions (these are one of the abilities that comes latest to the brain), but to me, it looks overplayed.

All in all I found it easier to just say childish and overplayed the first time, but there you have it, some of the thinking behind my personal opinions on the subject

But immature? And this from a guy who enters a debate by commenting on the guy behind the arguments rather than the arguments itself? Heard about rocks and glass houses?

As for your comments about time and skill, neither of those guarantee good end results. As for using it as an argument that key frame is better than motion capture, let me ask you this: which do you think needs more time and skill, creating the technology behind motion capture and the years upon years of actors perfecting their acting skills, or animating what is mostly fairly basic shapes? I know which one I respect the most at least...

(Some of my arguments above might contain factual errors, but the accuracy of details shouldn't be the focus of further debate, but rather the point and idea behind the arguments)

[virtualTune]

Alright I agree the way I acted was rather stupid and well...immature. But I will try and explain why. 

 

I am a VFX Artist and I have been working on a keframe animation for the last 2 months. The final movie will only be 1 minute long, yet it still takes all this time to perfect the animation itsself. 

If I would be using motion capture, this would be far easier and faster. Of course I am not saying it didn't take time to develop the technology, just like it took time to develop the 3D Software. 

 

My argument is that once I have the captured motion, all I have to do is sculpt the 3D model and add the bones for realistic movement. With keyframe, I start with a blank canvas, I model from scratch, I have to analyze real-life examples to know where to put bones (if I am not creating a fantasy creature).

It is much harder to get emotion across in Keyframed animations than with motion capture because all the subtle movements that the MC records have to be seen and replicated by me. 

This is probably why you think it looks childish, because the easy way to keyframed animation is by exaggerating major aspects of showing emotion which gives the whole animation the overplayed look. 

 

I just saw that the original post was aimed at gaming specifically. So let me add that in gaming, unless you are going for the cartoon look like that in Team Fortress for example, motion capture is surely the better way to do it. It saves a lot of time and money, and it gives developers more freedom to worry about other aspects of the game.

[Daban]

Keyframe, but like someone said: If you are going for a realistic/serious feel then motion capture is better

[Beskamir]

for the sake of making something look real I rather Motion Capture.

[JordanMac]

keyframe is good but motion capture just gives another level of realism to a game or animation.