DEMoCap 1.3 Released

This release focuses on three main additions: Waist control, feet-to-ground, head shifting and XML behavior element class support.

Waist Control offers 3 ways to handle hip motion transfer for human and creature type characters: direct, relative and relocation. Direct is what other apps are using (attach hip directly to your hip) and has various problems especially for creature rigs. Relative is useful for doing sitting type motion capture where it is important the character hip is exactly where your hip is. Relocation is the new mode which pulls the actor hips towards the feet to move it closer to the character hip. This is as if the actor becomes a short legged person. The relocation mode fixes a couple of problems of hip motion transfer.

Feet-to-ground adds to this solution by pulling the hips further towards the feet if the legs would not touch the ground. Instead of trying to compensate for length mismatch DEMoCap fixes the problem by moving the actor downwards. This fixes feet for various types of rigs compared to other systems. The final adjustment is done for logs by allowing for Limited Over-Stretching. This slightly enlarges IK feet targets to make sure feet always touch the ground. This works best for beast type legs which usually have a certain amount of over-stretch potential while still looking good.

Head shifting add support to track head shifting forward and backward and translates them to characters using artist defined shift animation. Similar to artist driven up-down animation this gives high control over how the motion captured neck movement should look like. Neck shifting adds these small to subtle neck and head movements which make your character captures much more vivid than conventional systems.

Last but not least XML Behavior Element Class Support has been added. This allows using the Drag[en]gine XML Behavior Elements together with the new Drag[en]gine support to add behaviors directly in *.deeclass files. You can now define element classes for your capture projects directly in your project data directory as *.deeclass files. By using the new GenericBehaviorElement as base class and adding all required behaviors in the XML file you can create all kinds of element classes without touch script code. The details you can read on the Wiki Page about XML Behavior Element Classes.

Furthermore these improvements and fixes are contained:

• Fixed wrong reset physics animator in getter.
• Added video player behavior.
• Added support to show in main view a remote camera for easier recording using video capture software.
• Added debug bones support.
• Fixed Dragonroo character and improved ik reach limit calculation for better pull to ground support.
• Fixed incorrect tracker to slot assignement if more trackers than slots are used.
• Fixed left knee not assigned correctly.
• Added support to visualize trackers.
• Fixed no chest tracker situation handling with bending moves used.
• Fixed wrong twist axis calculation.
• Blender: Added support for copying bone matrices subtracted (difference copy) and pasting bone matrices replacing or overlaying the current pose.
• Forgot to switch autotransform of leg IK chains base tracker to match waist.
• Fixed import rig in blender scripts incorrectly using animation import instead of rig import.
• Unreal plugin: Updated to engine version 5.4.
• Allow mouse to move out of game window.