MOTION CAPTURE
FOR 2D ANIMATION

Unified Mocap for Face, Body, Hand and Puppet

Motion LIVE 2D is pioneering the way to blend 3D motion capture devices to 2D animation. The motion capture for Cartoon Animator adds an array of mocap gear and the ability to easily set up any drawing, character or creature as a live digital puppet with real-time animation. Make the move with Motion LIVE 2D and go from keying poses to capturing performances.

BREAKTHROUGH WITH 2D MOTION CAPTURE

motion capture - showcase fast production

Fast Production

Create character animations with time saving mocap instead of keyframing. Evolve and iterate production quickly with instant feedback real-time character performance.

motion capture - showcase live performance

LIVE Performance

Any character created in Cartoon Animator can come to life with realtime motion capture for face or even full body control of digital puppets.

motion capture - showcase live interactive event

Interactive Event

Use motion capture to interact with audience and scene elements during performance. Live capture lets characters interact with viewers.

REAL-LIFE USE CASES

Animated Mascot for Livestream

ASIFA-South transforms their brand mascot into a livestream star with real-time face mocap and hand mocap technology.

Animated Commercial

Sergey creates professional commercials at production value with Noitom Perception Neuron Mocap suit and CTA.

Educational Training Video

Wiixt Studio incorporates mocap solutions into their video production for 2D mocap animation for modern e-learning.

Mocap Solution Review

Watch Kdsketch animate her illustration in real-time with just a webcam and Motion Live 2D Plugin.

Hand Puppet Toolkit Demo

Animate and control puppet actors by hand! Use the template to customize 2D hands for your actors.

PERFORM-TO-ANIMATE 2D CARTOONS

motion capture mocap animation - synchronous full-body motion capture

Synchronous Full-body Motion Capture

  • Live-perform full character animation including face, body, and fingers.
  • Synchronously capture motion data streamed from different gear, saving data in separate motion tracks for further editing.
  • Single interface to live preview animation, start / stop data recording.

motion capture mocap animation - body live performance-1
motion capture mocap animation - body live performance-2

Effortless Upper-Body Live Performance

  • The best way to kick-start an upper-body talkshow using affordable simple devices: Webcam (Facial Mocap) and Rokoko Smartgloves.
  • Alternatively you can use depth-cam enabled iPhone for CPU-free, highly accurate face tracking. Know more
  • By turning on the Head Driven Body Movements, you can get natural upper-body motions when you move forward/backward or move your head Up/Down.

Increase Productivity with
Multi-pass Recording

  • Be able to separate mocap sessions and layer them together. For example, adding hand capture to an existing body mocap project, or adding facial expressions to a character that only has body animation.
  • Option to blend motions by masking out unwanted body parts. For example, combine the upper body animation with another motion’s lower body movement.

CHOOSE YOUR SOLUTION

 facial mocap animation - solution webcam

FACIAL MOCAP (Webcam)

facial mocap animation - solution iphone

FACIAL MOCAP (iPhone)

hand mocap animation - solution leap motion
hand and body mocap animation - solution perception neuron
hand and body mocap animation - solution rokoko smartglovers

HAND MOCAP

BODY MOCAP

START YOUR CARTOON MOCAP JOURNEY

WHAT’S MOTION LIVE 2D ?

Motion LIVE 2D is a mocap platform for Cartoon Animator. It supports 2 features; one is 2D motion capture and the other is Motion Link from iClone for 3D motion editing.  

Facial Mocap for
Real-time Production

With Cartoon Animator's Facial Mocap, now anyone can animate characters with their facial performances. Not only can you use webcams to track your expressions with head and eyes movements, but you can also generate natural body animations driven by head position. This fun-to-work-with solution is perfect for virtual production, performance capture, live TV shows, and streaming web broadcasting.

ANIMATE WHILE MOVE YOUR FACE

Real-time Face Tracking - Webcam and iPhone

  • With the Motion LIVE 2D, you can utilize any webcam or iPhone X to capture exquisite facial expressions and instantly project onto virtual characters in Cartoon Animator.
  • Accurately drive character facial expressions including; head angle, brows, eyeball rotation.
  • Simultaneously control 2D mouth sprites through live capture or via traditional audio lip syncing.
  • Connect with an iPhone (With True Depth Camera) to a PC or Mac through shared Wifi, Hot Spot, or USB cable.
  • View Manual >


Head Driven Body Movement

  • During facial mocap, you can add upper body motions to a virtual actor by capturing your head movements.
  • Blend Value for the head : Head Roll, Head turn Up/Down and Head Scale. Adjust the Strength Value for them to drive body motion by the head.
  • Adjust the Character's Arm or Forearm Rotation while capturing your face for correct facial and body animation.
  • Set an idle motion when mocaping for naturally breathing movements. Simulate human breath, cat/dog tails, wings flapping or spines bending.
  • Direct one-click motion blend to Live Performance.
  • View Manual >

360 Head Turn and Feature Based Facial Strength Filters

  • Control the global or individual signal input strengths; for brows, eyelids, eyeballs, mouth, jaw, cheeks, and head rotation.
  • Customize the head turning degree. 3D style characters with up to 360 degrees of motion for rich performances.
  • Easily capture stylized characters with the proper strength settings when toning down or exaggerating animated features.
  • Save your fine-tuned settings for specific characters in a custom library.
  • 2D Art 3D Power >    View Manual >


Real-time Lip Sync and Audio Recording

  • Not satisfied with the recorded lip motions? Then use the Timeline editor to quickly edit motion clips, alter speeds, blend or refine your captured phoneme expressions.
  • Turn on the PC microphone for simultaneous audio recording to have complete control over talking lip shapes.
  • View Manual >


Zero Pose - Flexible Capture from Any Angle

  • Ideally, accurate mocap is done with a Webcam or an iPhone straight infront of you, but that's not always possible with a computer monitor in the way. For this we provide the Zero Pose function for the best possible calibration results.
  • No matter where you place your camera or iPhone, the unique Zero Pose design will quickly recalibrate the angle offset of your face, and accurately standardize the facial tracking in one-click!
  • View Manual >


Customize Your Own Sprite-based Expressions

  • Custom import facial animation sprites, or convert whole expression sets directly from Photoshop layers.
  • Fine-tune or exaggerate characters' facial expressions by altering facial sprites, or adding different levels of Free Form Deformations (FFD) to each facial feature.

2D Character Designers >    PSD Pipeline >

Supports Various Face Profiles

  • CTA will automatically choose the appropriate face profile for front-facing characters, or angled-facing characters.
  • Control the global or individual signal input strength; for brows, eyelids, eyeballs, mouth, jaw, cheeks, and head rotation.
  • Easily capture stylized characters with the proper strength settings when toning down or exaggerating animated features.
  • View Manual >

Highly accurate facial motion capture

Cartoon and 2D character animations have widely been used for everything from entertainment to education, to infographics and YouTube marketing. But traditionally, its labor intensive requirements have prohibited live usage. Now, the LIVE FACE profile (iPhone Facial Mocap) for Cartoon Animator, allows you to do instant facial motion capture on any 2D characters with the help of the TrueDepth Camera and a Wi-Fi connection. Use it o generate live shows for YouTube, Facebook Live and Twitch!

Real-time Cartoon & Live Show

Super Fast Real-time Cartoon Animation Production

  • Turn any image into an animated character with the free bone tools or character templates.
  • Seamlessly connect with Photoshop through in/out PSD layered templates.
  • A proven daily tool for multi-million subscriber YouTuber production.

Live Streaming
line

  • Works with major livestreaming tools including OBS, Xsplit, and FFSplit to superimpose talking characters on top of major broadcasting platforms like Twitch, YouTube, Mixer and Facebook.
  • Apply green screen backgrounds to realtime character performances for easy color keying.

    View Manual >


Major Features

Perform to Create Direct Facial Mocap

  • TrueDepth Camera of iPhone can track up to 57 face signals.
  • Accurately drive character facial expressions including; head angle, brows, eyeball rotation.
  • Simultaneously control 2D mouth sprites through live capture or via traditional audio lip syncing.
  • Connect an iPhone X to a PC or Mac through shared Wifi, Hot Spot, or USB cable.

    View Manual >


Flexible Capture from Different Angles

  • Ideally, accurate mocap is done with an iPhone right in front of our face, but that's not always possible with a computer monitor infront. For this we provide the Zero Pose function for the best possible capturing results.
  • No matter where you place your iPhone, the unique Zero Pose design will quickly recalibrate the angle offset of your face, and accurately standardize the facial tracking in one-click!

View Manual >


Supports Various Face Profiles

  • CTA will automatically choose the appropriate face profile, for front-facing characters or an angled-facing character.
  • Optimized facial mocap for two major modes:
    • Sprite-based characters animate by switching and deforming expression sprites.
    • Image-based characters are made through the photo-fitting method and use morph animation.
  • View Manual >


Feature-based Facial Strength Filters

  • Control the signal input strength, globally or individually; for brows, eyelids, eyeballs, mouth, jaw, cheeks, and head rotation.
  • Easily capture stylized characters with the proper strength settings when toning down or exaggerating animated features.
  • Save your fine-tuned settings for specific characters, in a custom library.

View Manual >


Customize your Own Sprite-based Expressions

  • Custom import facial animation sprites, or convert whole expression set directly from Photoshop layers.
  • Fine-tune or exaggerate characters' facial expressions by altering facial sprites, or adding different levels of Free Form Deformations (FFD) to each facial feature.

PSD Pipeline > View Manual >


Audio Recording and Timeline Editing

  • Not satisfied with the recorded lip motions? Then use the Timeline editor to quickly edit motion clips, alter speeds, blend or refine your captured phoneme expressions.
  • Turn on the PC microphone for simultaneous audio recording to have complete control over talking lip shapes.

View Manual >


Reuse Captured Motions on Different Characters

  • Through CrazyTalk's universal facial architecture, recorded motion data can be cleverly used on other human or non-human characters.
  • The same facial animation data can drive both sprite-based and image-morph based characters, while being applicable for both front and angle facing actors.

View Manual >

SUITABLE DEVICE

The iPhone facial motion capture works Cartoon Animator Motion LIVE 2D with the exclusive TrueDepth camera system powered by sophisticated high-res sensors. The iPhone tracks faces with a depth map and analyzes subtle muscle movements for live character animation. The Reallusion LIVE FACE App enables the iPhone to live stream captured facial mocap data directly to a PC or Mac, transforming the iPhone into a powerful 3D biometric mocap camera.

*LIVE FACE Profile only works with devices with TrueDepth Camera (Face ID).
Please refer to the iPhone and iPad models that support Face ID.

Upper-Body Animation Triggered by Face & Hand Mocap

Hand Mocap

Leap Motion Controller

Hardware Try
or

Rokoko Smartgloves

Hardware Try
Facial Mocap

* With Head Driven Body Movement

Webcam

or

iPhone

Facial Mocap

* With Head Driven Body Movement

Hand Mocap
hand motion capture mocap animation - leap motion controller

Leap Motion Controller

* Only supports
Leap Motion Controller 1 & Orion v4.0 or v4.1 SDK

or
hand motion capture mocap animation - rokoko smartglovers

Rokoko Smartgloves

Hardware Try

Exceptionally Agile
Rokoko Smartgloves

Animating 3D finger and hand motion is notoriously difficult, and the price of professional quality tracking devices has historically been out of reach for the vast majority of creators. With the Rokoko Smartgloves, a new era begins with professional, quality finger and hand tracking for less than $1,000. Time to start your creating!

* You’ll need to purchase a specific profile key for your specific mocap device.

hand motion capture mocap animation - rokoko smartglovers

HAND TRACKING AND DIGITAL PUPPETS

Hand animation is a tedious endeavour, but now with 2D Motion LIVE hand animation is affordably streamlined. Generate delicate hand animation from Mocap Glove for 2D bone-hands. Beyond generating natural hand and finger mocap, bring any type of creature or object to life with realtime puppeteering.

EXTREME FUNCTIONALITY & EASE-OF-USE

From Fingers to Whole Arm Kinematics

  • Detect wrist rotation for automatic 2D hand facing change (Auto Hand Flip).
  • Return to natural Idle Pose if hand-tracking signal is lost.

Posture Presets for Talking Animation

  • Place characters in the scene with performance ready poses.
  • Easily capture natural talking gestures by starting with a full range of posture presets.
  • Various sit and stand styles for front view and side view characters.

Gesture Mirror and Duplication

  • Two-hand animation made by one hand performance.
  • Swap left and right hand data for mirrored view.

Add Natural Gestures to Body Motion

  • Record hand and body motion capture simultaneously.
  • Add articulated hand gestures to an existing motion clip.
  • Sample the Hand Keys for gesture refinement.

Flexible Palm & Elbow Facing

  • Direct arm and palm facing with arm motion.
  • Change the movement and hand facing direction

Hand Pose Editor &
Natural Gesture Selections

  • Access a library of bone-hand pose options, which includes reaching, holding, counting, sign languages, and casual ones.
  • Set hand pose keys in the timeline for smooth gesture animation and alternate palm facing via Hand Flip track.

UTILIZE THE HAND LIBRARY OR CREATE YOUR OWN

Plenty of embedded bone-rigged hand styles and puppet samples are ready for your character. Still not enough? More addon libraries will be released, and you can also follow the PSD Hand Pipeline to create your own.

SIMPLE 4-STEP SETUP

hand motion capture mocap animation - connect mocap hardware

Connect Mocap Hardware

Connect mocap gear, open the device software, and activate data streaming.

hand motion capture mocap animation - select source device

Select Source Device

hand capture can work with face and body mocap at the same time.

hand motion capture mocap animation - choose tracking range

Choose Tracking Range

Finger tracking, hand & wrist, to full arm IK

hand motion capture mocap animation - set zero pose

Set Zero Pose

Set hand Zero Pose and fine tune the hand motion strength.

hand motion capture mocap animation - record and edit

Record & Edit

Timeline edit for final animation production. Learn More >

SUITABLE BODY MOCAP GEAR

body motion capture mocap animation - device logo b neuron

Noitom provides suits for body, hand and finger animation that adds a complete mocap solution at an affordable price and range of suits from indie to pro studio.

body motion capture mocap animation - device logo b rokoko

Rokoko body motion capture in one markerless suit, enabling creators on all levels to turn any space into a professional motion capture stage.

body motion capture mocap animation - device logo b xsens

Xsens motion capture solutions are unmatched in ease-of-use, robustness and reliability. Xsens produces production-ready data and is the ideal tool for animators.

GROUNDBREAKING 2D FULL-BODY MOTION CAPTURE

Through Motion LIVE 2D’s unified mocap interface, the mainstream body motion capture systems can synchronously work with face and hand capture devices to become a full-body mocap solution. Moreover, the body, face, and hand mocap data can be separately saved in different layers for further editing.

THE KEYFRAME ANIMATION KILLER

Capture Smooth & Natural 2D Motion

  • Mocap applicable for 3 major character angles - Front Facing, 45 degree, or Side facing.
  • Even when the character’s body is only setup for one direction, keep capturing without breaking the 2D character.
body motion mocap animation - Capture Smooth and Natural 2D Motion

Mocap Posture Adjustment & Correction

  • Use absolute T-Pose to have a clean start for most characters with normal body shape.
  • Offset the T-Pose to best adapt mocap motion to the character’s unique body shape
  • Offset Settings for Ground, Neck, and Torso gives you the power to adjust or refine your actor’s posture even during mocap.

Foot Stabilization & Floor Contact

  • Get rid of the annoying foot sliding problem by adjusting the Foot Stabilization Threshold.
  • Effective Floor Contact for Feet and Hands, give the power to capture 2D actor’s ground motion such as sitting on the floor, kneeling, or push-ups.
  • Foot Lock and Stretch Animation.

Camera Tracking & Position Lock

  • Turn on Camera Tracking to keep your mocap character at the same place, and not moving off the screen during capture.
  • Position Lock allows users to generate Root Motion which can be saved for Path Animation, or create motion loops for games.
  • Unlock Position Height - the actor animates at the same spot, but is able to jump up.

Multi-pass Recording

  • The most flexible and productive way of utilizing mocap for fast production.
  • Separated mocap sessions each for face, body, and hand, and layering them together to form a full body animation perfected by timeline editing.
  • Use Body Mask to capture and blend the selected body part, a perfect way to mix motion with the existing motion library, or use upper-body capture for full-body animation.

SIMPLE 4-STEP SETUP

Connect Mocap Devices

Connect mocap gear, open the device software, and activate data streaming.

body motion capture mocap animation - select source device

Select Source Device

Assign to body and hand in case your mocap suite contains mocap gloves.

body motion capture mocap animation - choose facing angle

Choose Facing Angle

Select the matching angle of your character type (0, 45, 90 degree)

body motion capture mocap animation - set T-pose

Set T-Pose

Initiate with T-Pose for a clean start, or initiate with a pose offset.

body motion capture mocap animation - record and edit

Record & Edit

Timeline edit for final animation production. Learn More >