With this Unity package, there is now a low-cost alternative to professional Motion Capture! Simply plug in your trusty HMD and motion controllers, jump into the virtual Mocap studio and start wiggling around - The plugin will harvest positional data at runtime from your VR device and automatically animate a humanoid character. The plugin will match your actual head and arm movements and generate IK leg, arm, knees and feet animation accordingly!
Obviously it's not perfect (feet stuff is still kinda spiffy, thanks Mecanim), but it's a great place to start for iterative animation work if you need complex humanoid animations for game cutscenes or real-time video. After recording your takes with the Unity Recorder, a viable workflow would be to send your animation into Maya or Blender with the FBX Exporter to tweak them, as you would with other animations recorded from inside the engine.
An clean FBX file of the rig is included in the package if you wish to use it.
Inputs
Motion Controller Trigger - Press and hold to record takes. Motion Controller Grip Button: Press to force IK on feet - this is convenient for scenes that need a little more detail e.g. sitting down.
Dependencies & Requirements
- Unity 2019.1 or later suggested
- Have "Virtual Reality Supported" enabled in your XR Settings for that Unity Project.
- Package Manager Version of the Unity Recorder
- A VR headset with motion controllers (Tested on Oculus Rift CV1, ought to work with the HTC Vive + Wands and maybe with WMR headsets)
Install process
Unlike most of my other packages, this repo does not only contain a package but also a sample project. While you can install the package onto any other Unity project, you can open the correctly configured sample project to check things out first - if you're then happy follow the instructions below.
This is a plugin that makes use of Unity's new Package Manager feature. Just drop the com.alexismorin.openmocap folder into your packages folder (found at the same level as the Assets folder) and it should work out-of-the-box. If you're using an older version of Unity (not really supported here, but can be made to work if you're courageous), take the com.alexismorin.openmocap folder and then drag it anywhere into your regular project hierarchy.
TODO
- Hand motion (fists, fingers, etc).
- Make walking IK less spiffy.
- Record volume and pitch data from HMD microphone to use for facial animation.
- Record audio tracks from HMD microphone for scratch audio takes.
- Simple blinking/expression data system inferred from audio.
- More robust XR multiplatform support.
Per usual, this was spat out in around... 7 to 8 hours? Enjoy it in all it's bugginess!