Animate from a Recording with DeepMotion AI! (Tutorial)

Today I’ll be showing you how to make animations MUCH easier using DeepMotion.

First, sign up at DEEPMOTION - AI Motion Capture & 3D Body Tracking.
When it said “Company”, I just put “Individual”:
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When it asks what your interests in it are, put game development and whatever else you want.
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You can also put Other then “DevForum” under the next question if you want.
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Then, do the CAPTCHA.

Then it should verify and all that. Then you’ll see this:
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Just check your email for a link.
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Then just enter a password to use on the account:

And a security question.

Then you can sign in to your newly created account.
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And if you ever forget your password, it will ask you the security question to confirm.

When you get into the dashboard, you’ll want to press “Animate 3D”.


Then hit “Get Started”.

It will list off guidelines to making a good and working video to Roblox animation, so just try to follow them.
If the guidelines happen to confuse you, here’s how I took my video:

  • I rolled up any long sleeves to show joints well.
  • I made sure nothing was in front of me (that would block some of your joints, hence probably glitching the animation)
  • Make sure the camera is far enough to get your full body. (the guidelines say it should be 6-20 feet (1.8288 - 6.096 meters) away from you.)
  • This doesn’t matter as much, but make the recording kind of high brightness and contrast. This way the AI will see the joints better.
  • Make sure your clothes don’t blend into the background too much, or else the AI won’t recognize your joints.
  • Make sure your clothes are more patterned (such as striped) instead of a solid one color.

Anyway, once you’ve done all the perfect positioning of your camera and all that, just record. Note that you only have a max of 10 seconds of time per animation on DeepMotion’s free version. You can buy the full version for more time. Here’s the pricing:

Anyway, back on track. When you finish recording the video, if you don’t have a countdown timer for videos like me, then just use a video editor to trim off the ends where you turn on the camera. Once again, make sure the video doesn’t exceed 10 seconds.

Once you’ve exported it and stuff, go back to DeepMotion. Press the “Next” button.
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Then, you can drop the file there. Also you are reminded in the website here the caps on the video for certain plans:
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Now, it should be getting to work. It’s uploading and analyzing the video with an AI.

Eventually, it should say “Upload Complete”. Just hit “Next” again.

THIS IS IMPORTANT:

Make sure you select “Roblox R15” when asked which rig to use.


Now hit “Next” once again.

Now I recommend turning on this “Physics Filter” option, it just helps with your arms not accidentally glitching through each other basically.
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Also make sure FBX Output is on!! Otherwise you won’t be able to export it into Roblox later on.

Then just tap this “Create” button:

It will tell you how much of your free time on your account it will use, and remind you of all the options you selected, just to confirm.

Now, just hit “Start Job”.

You should see a spinning box with a progress bar and percentage on it:

Just let it do its thing for a bit.

When it’s done, it should show this pop-up:
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Just hit “Awesome” because it’s awesome.

It will then let you preview the animation on a rig with the original recording behind you:


basement moment

Anyway, you can scroll down a bit and hit “Download”:
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Again, make sure it’s set to FBX:

Then hit “Download”.

The file is a ZIP file, so what I did is take the FBX file, (IMPORTANT: MAKE SURE YOU GET THE ONE THAT DOESN’T HAVE “T-POSE” IN THE NAME.) and I dragged it into my downloads folder. You could drag it in any folder, but that was just my go-to place.

Now it’s time for Roblox Studio!

So I’m just testing it out on a Classic Baseplate, but obviously it should work in any game.

Now, take your R15 NPC to animate (or if you don’t have one, just go Plugins, then find Rig Builder (it’s pre-installed on Roblox Studio), then you can do any, but I am choosing Block Rig. Also, make sure it’s R15, not R6. The animation won’t work with R6.

Anyway, once you have your NPC/rig, open the Animation Editor built-in plugin:

Then, click the NPC and name the animation whatever you want.

This is where the fun stuff happens. Press the 3 dots in the animation editor:
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Click “Import”, then “Import from FBX”.

Then navigate to the file:
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It should actually open the animation that you did a dance from!

It may be a little glitchy, but it’s definitely better than nothing.

Now with the animation, you can do whatever you want with it! You can Publish to roblox and make a script play it on the NPC if you want, or just admire in in Studio.

Thanks for reading my tutorial!

@xander5610 @WaterCanxiety @TwinPlayzDev (people who seemed interested and wanted to do this, just @-ing them for the tutorial.)

54 Likes

seems pretty useful for some people

5 Likes

Yes, absolutely! It can save animators hours of manual work.

6 Likes

Yoo, now I don’t need to learn animating, I can just pose

4 Likes

This is amazing dude! Im bad at animating so this is sooo helpful ty

4 Likes

This is insane. This will make it easier for more complicated or realistic animations!!
tysm for the tutorial!

3 Likes

wait until you realize you can only record 30 seconds of footage(in total) PER MONTH. You also can’t upload animations longer than 10 seconds using the freemium plan. What a joke.

2 Likes

Yes, I mentioned that MULTIPLE times in the tutorial. Anyone who was reading carefully would see that I actually provided links and screenshots to the pricing and the limits of the free version.

4 Likes

This is exactly what everyone needed. Great work, well guided tutorial as well.

I was so curious how all the famous Animators out there are doing this and able to recreate famous movements so easily!

Technology is amazing now!

I would honestly love to create a Youtube Tutorial on this? What would you think? Ill use your tutorial step by step.

4 Likes

The official channel made a YouTube tutorial. But you still could.

2 Likes

It’s not a joke for such advanced technology. Have you even tried it? Don’t judge it before you try it

1 Like

i have tried it. I quite like it. It’s just the 30 seconds recording time per month and 10 second cap of which I dont like. The tech is quite cool.

4 Likes

Well then, I guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow!

2 Likes

By the way my friend just kept making more alt accounts for that but yes it is pretty annoying. I don’t animate or need any animations that often though, so I’m fine with it.

Something else I found out:

Originally I thought you had to face towards the camera for it to work, but according to the website’s creators, you can face sideways as well and it should still work fine.

Just made a TikTok tutorial on it by the way! This is only part 1, but part 2 will be out tomorrow:

Edit: It’s the next day, here’s part 2! How to convert a video of you dancing to a #Roblox animation! (Part 2) #RobloxDev #aimocap #deepmotion @indeepmotion @roblox #robloxdeveloper #mocap

We’re lucky he’s even giving us free time at all.

20, maybe even 50 or 80 dollars would be a reasonable price if this was a plugin.

5 Likes

And I also made a TikTok tutorial on it a couple months ago (links are in the original post’s solution.)

Now that you say this, I believe Roblox will implement this (not sure if it’s DeepMotion or if they made their own ai mocap) into Roblox Studio directly, for free.

yoo seems cool,thanks to the ai and you too! ill be making anims for my games with this from now on,and that solves my animator finding problem

1 Like