The Doppelganger project was an experiment in remapping mocap data onto arbitrary objects. Various dance movements were performed by Pei-Yi Ko and captured using a Vicon 8-camera system. I created a C++/OpenGL application that not only loaded and played back the captured data (as CSM files), but that could also load a proprietary format - BOD files.

BOD files consist of two parts- a list of connections and a list of offsets. The list of connections is a set of paired marker names, where each pair represents a line to be drawn upon rendering. For example,

LFHD LBHD

...means that there should be a connection maintained between the Left Forward HeaD marker and the Left Back HeaD marker. Taken as a whole, these connections provide the visible skeleton that is drawn at render time. The second half of the BOD files consists of an ordered list of offsets. Each line is a set of X, Y and Z values by which each marker should be offset from its captured position. This has the effect of changing the initial pose that the motion is based on. Taken together with the list of connections, it then becomes possible to apply motion captured on a human to non-human subjects, such as a chair.


To see a video of the project in action, click here.
In the demo, I load a CSM file, load a BOD file, and then finish off with a disco effect.