It’s been a shorter week but nonetheless full of tons of work to do. Due to the problems that developed last week, these last few days my primary focus has been with the motion capture data that is being used for Professor Duesing’s animation. Sadly at first I continued to run into the same problem repeatedly, you’d think I would have learned after the first time…The motion could not be imported onto the skeleton of the characters that had been built. The initial thought was that the motion data itself was flawed. To check this I simply took an old model that I knew had successfully been used with motion capture data and applied the new character motion to it. It worked perfectly. From there began basic trial and error. I was eventually able to apply the motion to the correct character by transferring the old skeleton which held the motion to the model. The problem with this however, was that there was then a glitch in the leg data where the character’s legs would twist around as it walked. I had a meeting with my mentor towards the end of the week and mentioned the problem that I was having to her. It was suggested that I try retargeting the motion between skeletons. I did a little research on the subject and basically what retargeting entails is that the motions and key frames from one skeleton are reapplied to the skeleton of a different character. As long as the joint names of both skeletons align to some degree, there should be no problem in transferring the motion. After playing around with the settings I was finally able to successfully place the motion capture data onto the characters! It was an exciting moment, plus I was able to show Professor Duessing, who was satisfied with the work. In addition to working with the motion capture data for the art project, I continued working on the swirling objects scene. For some reason I had difficulty replicating the work I had been doing, which does not help in the long run, so I had to retrace my steps somewhat and fix a few glitches within the process of my work. Eventually though, I was able to create an emitter of flowers and animals from a central point around the character which spun around his head during the specific portion of the scene. The particles of geometry, such as flowers and leaves, are slightly less restrained along their path curves so the next step I will be taking is to adjust the motion settings to more effectively control their movement.