It's PS console that tracks PS Move position based on image from PS Eye or PS4 camera, not the camera itself.
So there is no positional data we can easily use. We need to implement a similar tracking algorithm that runs in PS console. It just look worthless from the point of the main purpose of our product.

Yes, just really need to track a couple moving points/objects in space. Point lights would be fine. I'll look at SynthEyes, thanks. Would be great to find something that does this realtime or very close to it on my laptop.

-M

If you need the tracking to be really accurate, IMO, a realtime solution probably isn't the way to go. Realtime is typically more useful for interactivity, like in a video game. If you need the tracking data to be accurate, it's better to go with something that doesn't take a lot of shortcuts with its results.

That said, tracking a single point in space doesn't seem like it should require a whole lot of power. But then, I'm not a developer, just a user. Sorry, I don't think I have a good realtime solution to suggest.

There are a number of good 3D tracking programs out there though. I mentioned SynthEyes because it's fairly inexpensive and it's what I've used the most. At places where I've worked in the past, we also used Mocha Pro, PF Track, and Boujou--but these are more expensive programs and I don't think you'll necessarily get a better result, just possibly a different one. There are even a few free and open source tracking programs out there but I've never used them.

If the data is just for compositing and fx work, the 3D Tracker that's built into After Effects is actually pretty decent too. There are plugins/scripts available that can transfer the AE data into a 3D animation program (I've only used the 'link' tools for LightWave but I'm sure other 3D programs can link to AE too.) The catch is that the AE data tends to be more 'functionally' accurate than 'real world' accurate but, depending on your requirements, that might not matter.

Just a few more thoughts. Hope this helps.

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Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

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The issue with camera tracking for the hands positions isn't as straight forward as simply setting the marker on the hand, even with SynthEyes, the tracking will constantly drop out if attempted and you will not get any rotational values for the object tracked without having additional tracking marker point attached to the hand, if the purpose is to add a mesh object, (say an arm mounted weapon), to the hand for a CGI video process.

SynthEsyes, I believe, is one of the only programs that offers multi-camera tracking, most are single camera tracking, but any system you will have to use an additional program to stitch the multi-camera videos together afterwards.

It seems you are getting into more time and effort than it would be to just upgrade your laptop to handle iPi tracking, if your use is for character animations, it would be less time and irritation, and the quality of the tracking is really high quality, although not real-time, but there is no real-time solution I have ever seen that is as accurate as iPi can accomplish in it's cost range of course, with far less glitching and clean up, and even the clean up isn't bad when the camera set up is optimized.

Looking into making your laptop work with the iPi program would seem to be a better choice to me with an Nvidia GTX 970 or better graphics card and a slight RAM increase, if that is within your budget to do, because you aren't going to get very good quality out of free programs available to do the same things differently, with more headaches, more cleaning or paying for other professional tracking alternatives to use, all adding up to $$$ anyway.

Blender does have a really good camera tracker also, but single camera tracking and it's free software and combines many processes in one application, (modeling, animation, texturing, video compositing/editing, audio editing), full range 3D package really, but getting used to it, if never used it, can be a bit daunting, although there are 1000's of YouTube video tutorials on specific features to make it easier to figure out.

If you are just playing around with this as a hobby, I guess that it would make sense to keep it cheap, but if doing it professionally, then you need at least semi-professional hardware and software, or deal with the less than optimal results and more time, which to me adds up to $$$.

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Unless I've misunderstood, it sounds like all the OP wants is positional data, not rotation. Syntheyes should work fine for that. But it really depends on how the data is meant to be used in the end.

For greater accuracy, multi-camera is preferred if the camera has to be locked down since a single nodal camera cannot record parallax movement. But if you input accurate environment/camera data, a single camera can work fine with Syntheyes even when it's locked down. In most cases with visual fx anyway, a single camera is all you need--but I'm not sure this is the intention of the OP.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

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YEAH, i hear ya, not a very good explanation of what the intended use is for, but if it's for animating a skeletons hand position, I would think an animation program over a camera tracking option would work easier, don't you think?

Seems like more of an issue with the laptop hardware, than what program to choose to me.

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For anyone who finds this thread and is interested in what I ended up doing, I simply ended up using kinetic and iPi software for my project. I got a full body mocap and brought it into Maya where I used the wrist joints as markers for my animation. So I didn't get any rotation.

As for other options I researched, here are my notes on other PS Move options:

Move.Me
Sony app, free for academia, but requires PS system as intermediary.

PS Move API
10/1/16 Looks good. Some projects integrate it into Unity.
Main page: https://thp.io/2010/psmove/
Looked at the projects mentioned here, none is a standalone data-capture-and-output tool like I’d want to use.
Forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/psmove
10/1/16 Posted here, asking for an application that makes it easy to capture PS Move data and get some sort of file out.
Reply: none exists. But hacking the API to dump what I want should be straight forward.

I think the PS Move API is a good bet if you can do a bit of programming. If you're able to find something, I'd love to know!