Hi all,

Question, if I am only going to use one camera would you recommend kinect or Sony?
Next question, do they come with the required USB cable or will that be separate?

Thanks in advance for taking the time, I'm pretty excited about this it looks really great.

If you are going to use only 1 camera, then you can only use Kinect, Sony is a minimum of 3

Don't even try it with one Eyecam, as was mentioned you need at least three. Go to Amazon and pickup a Kinect for $75. You'll get great results.

Thanks very much I will pickup the kinect. :)

The advantage of Kinect: Small space, easier calibration

Disadvantage of Kinect:Small capture area. Loss of tracking when turning in a 360 (anything the Kinect can not see will not get tracked.

If I had the space I would use the six camera PS3 set up. This software requires you to learn how to use it. It not push one button and get instance results.

Dale

I just tried with Kinect. It works nice. Avoid hiding arms or legs, but some times Kinect seems to "know" where they should be.
White floors are BAD. It tends to wobble the feet capture. Use average lighting in the room and uncluttered back plane and NO clutter between talent and Kinect camera at all!

While recording do a little time 5 sec with NO actor or talent visible at ALL. That is very important! Keep running and ask the talent to get to the scene and get into "T" pose, perfectly squared.

Do not do too fast motions. If you need action moves, consider "playing at slow mode" to speed up the capture later.

In general, Kinect capture will do a lot of nice jobs. Others you will have to tweak. But.... Isn't it the fun of animation? We have to do something!!!!

Mike

Good tips!


I'm surprised to hear that but I guess solid white might affect how the IR system works. I have noticed that black surfaces can affect the IR, but I'm not sure if it tended to absorb the IR signal or if the signal was 'bounced' because of shininess. I do know that shiny surfaces can reflect the rays and affect accuracy.

Generally speaking, room lighting shouldn't affect the IR signal but, yeah, 'average' lighting is probably ideal.

G

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

I'm actually shooting a lot of Kinect captures today and I can confirm part of the above: Kinect apparently has problems with anything that has a solid black surface. In my background there is a black guitar and some electronic gear that's also solid black and Kinect cannot resolve this; the data has no depth, it's just appears as 'holes' in the image. My guess is that solid black surfaces absorbs the IR signal which needs to be reflected back into the camera. Normally, this shouldn't have much affect on capture but I ran into an interesting situation today: I was wearing a shiny black belt, which appeared to 'sever' my torso to the Kinect.

Solution was to simply remove my belt. (Luckily, my pants did not fall down.) :)

Dark gray and brown seem fine though. (What I'm wearing today for the shoot.)

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!