@olivS, I haven't tried rigging the empties yet. I've noticed a couple of tutorials here and there though. I'll probably check it out in 2.5. At some point it would be great to produce a video tutorial on the process. I hope to do this eventually.

There is a typo on that that first sentence which is in the second paragraph. it should be "but until becomes affordable, this is the next-best thing"

Agreed. for the most part. Mocap generally produces fairly accurate representations of a person's movements. However people are not, for instance, super heroes. They don't fly, jump from building to building, die (on command), or get blown away. For this reason among others, it will always be necessary for a talented animator to create drama from stock or custom motion capture data. Even regular life imitation, when it's not superheroes or space marines, benefits from adding drama and exaggerating motion and expression.

Mocap, of its own accord, is incapable of producing quality results. At the very least, it's dependent on the actor. It's standard practice to put a mocap suit on just about anyone and have them stand on the mat while the cameras record their movements. The problem is that real-life is not a good substitute for art, but the quality of the data will rise with the quality of the acting. Strong, dramatic acting in a motion capture studio will produce better results, better data, but this still cannot stand on its own in most contexts.

For that reason I tend to think of the benefit of mocap as high, but limited. Motion capture alone will never be a good replacement for good animation. In my estimation, it almost puts cel animation on its head. In cel animation, the lead animator creates the keyframes and other animators filled out the tweens. In good mocap practice (IMHO) the data gives the tweens, and the animator can emphasise the "key" motions.

Mocap data provides a great filler for the drama and motion exaggerations that should be added to all animations. Subtlety of motion that produces realism is difficult to duplicate, and slow to animate, so mocap is a great way to get this subtlety and realism and save some real time on a big project. However the results will never be great if a talented animator doesn't step in and do something with the data, and mold it to fit the mood and action of a scene.

Just my 2 cents.

Notice anything that those have in common? Yeah, the results are extremely stiff and low quality in the animation side (but really good quality in the artwork- go figure)

Motion capture is good for base animation that can be used for reference and guides. It shines in scenes where you need to have a CG character interact with a live actor- assuming of course that you go back and seriously tweak the animation on it. Think gollum or Davy Jones; both examples of Mocap done right. (actors need something to interact with, which the stand-in does very well) So Mocap has its place, and can yield really good results if done correctly.

At Siggraph it was a running joke, because there were dozens of companies there trying to sell mocap systems. Most yielded equally stiff results. Sadly, I think that's the direction the industry is going. I think part of the problem is that the actors in the suits tend to forget the very basic principles of animation: Exaggerate everything… Especially if you are aiming for realistic.

1. Design mocap system and display it at Siggraph.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

It was used in movies such as Posideon and if you remember that Pepsi ad where a guy flips all the way down the skyscraper like one of those glue toys!

Traceback (most recent call last):
file "", line 735, in load_bvh_ui
file "", line 357, in bvh_node_dict2objects
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'IpoKeys'