Bonjour les iPiSoftiens ! :-D

As I have said before in this thread [here : http://forum.ipisoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8953&p=22490#p22490] I come back to you because I still have some problems with the tracking. During my firts tries, we were talking about lack of light and grain effect. First, I tried to record by day in the same room where I've done my first attempts. Here is the result : a disaster. The backlight in the window always messed up my calibration. Thereafter, I tried in another room. A shed. With more space... But still the same problem with backlight... Impossible to succeed my calibration... Finally, I re-tried records by night in this hangar but with 2 spotlights + 1 neon light ! ... Yes ! The software tell me that my calibration is perfect ! I try to record a very short take with a T-Pose as a test and... Always the same problem of deformation. Even if it's better than at the very beginning, it's still not right ! The lower body is refit correctly. It's even pretty well tracked in motion ! But the torso and the arms go in all directions (the torso is well refitted in the T-Pose but goes silly during the tracking). I'm pretty surprised because 1) I see often messages of guys who get problems with feet and lower body (eg: in the beginnig of the thread that I posted above), not with the upper body ! And 2) because I compare with others iPi mocap videos and I see that they manage good with records which do not seem to me to have better quality than my records... or so little... For example, this video posted by Greenlight, few days ago : https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... KPNE0BTMjE

Anyone can explain me ???

This is some pics of one of my last tries in comparison :

However, finally, I think I've got the best area for my setup : An outdoor place. On a deck, close to a swimming pool (and to my daddy doing a few strokes if you look closely on the pics, lol) ... I've made some tests yesterday and for the first time, I've got a good refit on my T-Pose. The skeleton has adjusted very easily. The tracking is better too. It's almost correct. I paid attention to record by cloudy day, with not too abrupt lightning. In fact, I've recorded in the evening, around 8h (I live in the south of France so there is lot of sun here ^^ ) and cut off from the direct rays of the sun by a wall of the house. I added just one big spotlight. This is some pics in black clothes, long sleeves t-shirt then black pants + short sleeves red shirt. It's essentially the arms which mess up. Sometimes just one. Sometimes the two... Also, I get a leg which mess up just at the moment when I kicked. This is the "critical moment" of my record (the rest is not bad) :

I see the main problem in uneven lighting. As result different cameras see your clothes in different colors. For instance, in the first post some cameras see blue and others brown.
Specifically, you should avoid placing lights glowing directly into cameras. As overbright picture makes even colors less distinguishable. Ceiling lights usually work best.
For me, your evening outdoor session would be better with just natural lighting.

When shooting with such directional lighting you can try to improve tracking by adjusting the position of the light source in the scene to match actual light in the video. There are controls for this on the Scene tab. You can see the light source (yellow sphere) if you zoom the scene out.

When trying to capture motions with different body parts crossing each other you can get better results with multi-colored clothes. I mean one color for torso, other for arms and another for legs. Like you wear dark pants with red T-shirt at one of screenshots. This makes easier for the software to distinguish overlapping body parts.

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To be honest, I have never gotten good tracking with natural colored hands, always looses tracking too easy, try wearing light material, solid color gloves.

Feet should be covered in a solid color footwear also, one color shoe and sole works better, and non-shiny.

Last images for red shirt, natural arms, dark pants should be fine, solid dark colors for hands and feet work and track better.

Agree that scene light in iPi Studio should match the brightest direction of world light, move the light with the blue box filled with numbers above the place light button, left click hold in this box and drag cursor through this box to change the scene light positioning, scroll view port out to see this light better.

Personally I think it is the hands and feet not covered properly and hair should be off the back of the neck to expose rear of neck, use hair tie, or rubber band to at least bunch hair, or tuck under knit cap used in prior screenshots and tuck hair inside, loose fly away hair will make head tracking poor, since no Move controllers are being used.

All of this should help tracking, as lighting isn't that bad you used on the outdoor scene anyway, works best when 1 side of performer is lit more than he other, but rear side shouldn't be so dark, small wattage fill light at rear will help this.

That kick action is a very basic action for iPi to track fine, so the issue is in the hands and feet covering, in my opinion, even in lower light conditions with grainy footage it should track Ok, as long as the lighting is more equally distributed around the performer to not have very dark areas on the clothing from not enough light on the shirt, as dark, or black color will always look dark of course, so use of a brighter color T shirt would be suggested in lower light conditions.

Try these suggestions and see if your tracking quality doesn't improve greatly.

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The lighting you have will cast hard shadows on the performer and surrounding area, which will confuse tracking.

When I need additional lighting, I prefer using a couple of softboxes. These are lights with a hood and diffusing cloth in front, so each light casts very soft shadows. If you light from both sides, the subject is evenly lit with very little noticeable shadowing. Softboxes can be bought inexpensively if you shop around. (I got mine from a company called Cowboy Studios.)

If I'm indoors and I don't have softboxes but want to use additional photo lamps, I bounce the light off the ceiling. This illuminates the area with a softer light and avoids pointing the source at a camera.

For outdoors, however, it's probably best to use natural light that exists before sunrise and after sunset, or shoot on an overcast day. This means you'll have plenty of light with almost no shadows.

Hope this helps.

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Greenlaw
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