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Rating: 
Summary: An excellent guide!
Review: At last a no-nonsense book for both users of the technology and those considering using it in their future productions.The first half deals with the checkered history of motion capture and it's use and misuse to date. Unfortunately most of the stories fall into the negative vein and concentrate on the cases where the use of motion capture turned out to be a costly mistake, but this is all to the benefit of the reader lest he/she should be aligning themselves to make the same mistakes! There is good practical advice on how to come out of a motion capture session with useable data and some extremely useful math to allow you to transfer it to your character. If you are using off the shelf software some of this may be superfluous, but if you have the opportunity to supplement it with your own proprietary code it could save you months of work. Either way it is genuinely useful in understanding how raw data can be used to drive a computer generated character. It is hard to find fault with this book. If there is one it is just that the reader is left wanting more of the invaluable 'war-stories' from those who have used the process in the past, and possibly more recently on projects like 'Titanic' and 'The Mummy', if those studios are willing to divulge the detils. Mr Menache warns that facial motion capture is beyond the range of this text but hints that there may be another one to follow to make up for this. It is comforting to see that he himself ran a motion capture studio for many years, and you can be sure that the sum of his experience is inside the pages. Just buy it BEFORE you start your production!
Rating: 
Summary: Why did I write a book about motion capture?
Review: Motion capture is a controversial technology that is used in computer graphics to generate animation from live motion performed by humans, animals or any other moving object. The end result is called Performance Animation, and it is as old as 3D character animation itself. It is controversial because it has been used unsuccesfully by studios as an animator replacement. The main purpose of the book is to educate users by sharing experiences from different types of projects in order to provide a clear picture of what can and can't be done using motion capture. It should also serve as a guide for planning and carrying out projects with the help of performance animation, making sure that the reasons for using the technology are correct and that the goals are attainable.
Rating:
Summary: fun to read
Review: Our department is working on Motion Capture research. This book helps us to direct a practical approach on not only academic perspective but also entertainment applicaiton.
Rating:
Summary: fun to read
Review: Our department is working on Motion Capture research. This book helps us to direct a practical approach on not only academic perspective but also entertainment applicaiton.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, useful, and well written.
Review: The historical overview in the first half gave an excellent and entertaining background. It tells the stories of various well known motion capture projects so readers can immediately relate to the real world applications of motion capture and understand what sorts of applications will not work. The technical information was well organized and clearly written. This is a must have for anyone considering motion capture as a part of their project! ---Scott Whitney
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, useful, and well written.
Review: The historical overview in the first half gave an excellent and entertaining background. It tells the stories of various well known motion capture projects so readers can immediately relate to the real world applications of motion capture and understand what sorts of applications will not work. The technical information was well organized and clearly written. This is a must have for anyone considering motion capture as a part of their project! ---Scott Whitney
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