[Soc-2011-dev] Weekly progress report 11 - Improving Motion Capture Workflow

[Benjy Cook]

This week:
- Other bone functionality coded for Point post retarget fix. You can
now set the point to be offset from a second bone, i.e. follow other
bone's path.
- Some UI code refactoring - will continue next week.
- Added functions for toggling DOF Constraints on user rig based on
range of motion in motion capture clip. Limit Rotation constraints are
added based on the min and max of each DOF of each bone in its local
space. Very useful to use with "range of motion"/calibration mocap
clips, that encompass the subject's full range of motion, preventing
IK/animators from creating physically impossible poses.
- Initial coding of path editing operator. Still needs some work, but
all the basic functionality is there. Select a path and the stride
bone (as active) and it will reparameterize the path to propel the
armature forward in the same magnitude of the original. Tutorial /
Show case video soon, once I finish animation stitching.
- Post Retarget fixes - added an Update Constraints button, that
recalculates all fixes. Useful for when the user makes some external
change to the animation
- Detailed email to mentor regarding things left to do, and final
deliverable. Will probably be an addon, and will be moved over to
bf-extensions once Joshua Leung's (Aligorith) work is merged to trunk,
possibly sooner.

Next Week:
- Animation stitching (combining two animations into one) will be done
by the end of this weekend.
- Complex Rig Retargeting - implement a new "Advanced Retargeting
operator", which successfully retargets complex rigs such as Mancandy
and Sintel. It needs slightly more input from the user for perfect
performance, and thus the separate operator.
- Subsample / preview option for retargeting. Does the same as regular
retarget button, but will only retarget every 5th frame or so for
quick looks before final result.
- UI Reorginization to prepare for deliverable.
- Documentation of functions, for scripters who want to use the
functionality without the UI / automate things, in preparation for
final documentation.
- Continue testing various rigs and mocap sources to make sure there
are no weird bugs in the various inputs the system might receive.

Other issues:
None.