Before committing to buying a standard license, I wanted to be real clear on a couple of things.

Can we use IPI Mocap (or any other mocap software for that matter) to record animations for ''unusual'' bodies? For example, instead of having 5 fingers on each hand, having a pirate hook, or a wooden leg (no knee/s). Almost none of my characters have 5 fingers and a few have stiff limbs (they don't bend).

Should I do all animations manually or get a Kinect and IPI Mocap? I really want to avoid animating manually, although I'm used to modifying mocap animations.

Thanks in advance!

I'm new to the forum, but I thought I could help.

The short answer is yes. You can retarget motion capture data, ( in this case the iPi motion ) to any character using whatever software you have.
iPi, simple does the motion acquisition, and not the re-targeting itself. So once you have the capture data, output it to whatever software you choose. ( Motionbuilder, XSI, Maya..etc ) and re-target it to your 'unusual body' as you say. It's a pretty standard technique.

I'd recommend reading up on the technique... it's standard, but not trivial.

Another consideration is, to be sure your capture actor, 'acts' like they have a peg leg.. or you'll have to deal with that during re-targeting.. or post-cleanup.

Cheers!

kungfukoi
www.kungfukoi.com

_________________
Jeffrey Dates
http://www.kungfukoi.com

iPi Mocap Studio has built-in retargeting tools. However, they may be insufficient in certain situations.
http://wiki.ipisoft.com/Animation_export_and_motion_transfer#Motion_Transfer_and_Custom_Rigs

Ah, look at that! See, I hadn't seen that yet! Awesome, thanks vmaslov!

I stand corrected.

:-)

_________________
Jeffrey Dates
http://www.kungfukoi.com

Thanks! That helped a lot.

Hopefully you won't mind a follow-up question: Should I go out of my way and create custom rigs? The only reason I did them in the first place was so I could have an easier time rigging and animating, but now that I've decided to use this software, should I just go with regular human bodies, and (correct me here if I'm wrong) let iPi Mocap take care of the rigging? It seems that by making custom rigs I ended up having to work harder, and I'm not that good at rigging, so if anything, I could just go with 3ds Max's biped. I love that thing.

What do you think?

iPi Mocap Studio won't do the rigging for you. What it can do is to retarget an animation from the actor's model to an existing rigged character. Built-in retargeting is optimized for transferring to bipedal (usually human-like) characters.

Yeah klaw12.

You really should read up on re-targeting. You can keep the rigs you have... and re-target the default iPi rig to them.
So the motion of the iPi rig drives your rig. They offer several examples of it in the wiki.

_________________
Jeffrey Dates
http://www.kungfukoi.com

I misread one line in that wiki, but now everything makes sense.

Now, I don't wanna create another thread just for this, but a motion controller on the head is used to improve its tracking and on the hands to allow the software to track them when it rotates, right?

So in a fight scene, for example, you would need a few controllers to track both the hands (when punching) and the head (optional. When dodging).

Thanks!

The latest version of iPi does head tracking successfully.
And for arms and fists.. you're good right out-of-the-box.
It's when you want wrist rotation that you'll want to find a supplemental solution as you suggested. ( or you can just rotate the wrists by hand in your 3D Program )

_________________
Jeffrey Dates
http://www.kungfukoi.com

I'm sorry to disagree with this. I have a dual Kinect Box 360 sensor setup. I've tried many angles, but I have succeeded only in tracking up-and-down head motions; Ipisoft doesn't track side-to-side head motions, at least with the kind of sensors I have.