Hungry Hero
Hungry Hero is a motion-captured short film done entirely from scratch. This was our first time using motion capture and creating a film while learning all the software and hardware. Additionally, all the acting was done ourselves. There is a brief behind-the-scenes at the end of the video.
Duration:
October 2023 - December 2023
Team:
Enoch Hsieh, James Komany
Engine and tools:
PhaseSpace Motion Capture, MotionBuilder, Maya, UE5
What is Hungry Hero?
Hungry Hero is a story about someone who wants to buy food but has to complete a quest to earn money to buy food.
The overall storyline is simple as the purpose of this project is to learn how to use the mocap system. As well as figuring out the pipeline for how all the software and hardware communicate with each other.
Process
Everything, besides asset creation, was done from scratch with no prior experience. We had to self-teach every software and learn how to troubleshoot with the hardware and software. Below is a simple breakdown of our process and the pipeline we made to create this film.
Motion Capture Recording Session
During recording sessions, we would wear these mocap suits where the PhaseSpace system would record our movements. All the red LEDs are being captured in the space and would then be translated into MotionBuilder.
The choreography for the sword fight was all self-taught and improvised. We had no sword-fighting experience until that day. There are still some imperfections that had to be worked out but we at least know what to be aware of for next time.
Rigging Process in MotionBuilder
Once all the motion capture data are recorded, we would have to rig up actors and then the character to the mocap data points.
For every take, the process seen above would have to be re-done every time where the mocap data has to be re-rigged to the character. This process has been cut and sped up by 20 times. The rigging process takes around 30 - 40 minutes per take.
Recording in Unreal Engine
When the characters are rigged mocap data points, we then use a plugin to import the animation from MotionBuilder into Unreal Engine.
From here, we would then set up the shot with the animation and do the camerawork we want to record the shot and render it. This entire process repeats for every shot and take we have in our film.