If the motion tracking is not as accurate as you would like, you may need to adjust your lighting. See how in this video.
- Lighting for facial capture in Character Animator is simple but important. (jazzy music) Character Animator does an amazing job at capturing the movements of our faces, mouths, and eyes. But it can only be amazing if it can see the details. Now, enough light is important. Webcams are pretty good today but low light really breaks down the image. So one of the things that you need to watch for is a harsh backlight.
A real harsh backlight can actually end up shadowing a lot of your face, and as you can see as I kind of move into it that the light actually obliterates part of my face. And as you saw we actually lost tracking there just for a second. So you want to try to keep a flare from going directly into your camera from your lights. Strong overhead lights can also be a negative for you. 'Cause as you can see, my eyes, they're rather sunken anyway, and with the overhead light really shadows my eyes so it's going to be harder for the camera to pick up my iris.
And you can see the eyes jumping around a little bit on the character when they shouldn't be. And I'm still surprised at how well it picks it up. But give your camera enough light to be able to pick up your eyes and your irises so that the software can track it. So the best way to light is just to have nice even lighting, in particular if you could have some light directly in front of your face. So what we have set up here is a nice soft LED light just above eye level but not too high coming straight in, so it illuminates underneath the bridge of my eyebrows, you can see my irises very clearly, you can see the dots on my face, it's tracking me very clearly, I have a little bit of a backlight so it just kind of separates my head from the background so it can see the outline very clearly.
LED lights don't heat up, so they don't heat up the room and they last forever. So take just a moment to get better lighting to help Character Animator help you. (jazzy music)
Author
Released
1/29/2018- Creating a list of production needs
- How the varied styles of animation impact production
- Creating usable digital puppets
- Working with drawn characters, objects, and CG characters
- Adding value to the look of your production
- Exploring various audio recording options
- Organizing files for production, backup, and transport
- Using animation cycles
- Building and editing a scene
- Troubleshooting issues
- Tricks for enhancing your production
- Post-production and delivery
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Related Courses
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Introduction
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What you should already know1m 33s
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Using the exercise files2m 58s
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1. Pre-Production
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Storyboard1m 46s
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Create list of assets4m 55s
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Budget4m 58s
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Create usable digital puppets10m 56s
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2. Puppet Production Issues
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Working with objects5m 37s
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Working with a CG character9m 17s
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Layers don't track with head3m 18s
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3. Add Production Value
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Add breathing to a character2m 36s
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Let your character walk8m 58s
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Use wind on your characters2m 18s
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Create pose-to-pose movement1m 34s
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Have a character grab a prop3m 30s
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Multi-part actions5m 7s
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4. Audio
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Find your missing microphone1m 36s
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Record the clearest audio2m 53s
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Use prerecorded audio1m 50s
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5. Production
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Use animation cycles4m 12s
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Retakes and editing4m 40s
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6. Troubleshooting
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Dangles drop too far4m 24s
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Eyes don't focus2m 2s
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Keyboard triggers don't work3m 47s
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Object distorts when dragged3m 26s
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Eyes disappear when blinking1m 49s
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7. Tricks
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Where to set your camera1m 53s
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Slow motion recording3m 44s
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Hold prop upright1m 54s
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8. Post-Production
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Export scene as a movie4m 33s
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Make changes for a client5m 18s
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9. Delivery
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Deliver a final project2m 19s
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Live production2m 58s
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Export to Facebook Live4m 28s
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Export to YouTube Live5m 20s
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10. Wrap
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Conclusion
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Next steps1m 13s
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Video: Lighting for the best motion capture