Was very interested in purchasing this software as it seemed to be reasonably priced when I was first inquiring about it. This was less than a year ago.

I keep checking back to this website after I've saved some money and the price keeps going up, yet I still see more problems posted than actual results from the users. In fact the lack of results is very troubling. It just seems to me that the price increase is not justified. I know of no other software package that has had multiple price increases in less than a years time, and these price changes have been very significant.

It's now at a point where I'm probably not going to be purchasing it sadly, I think if you lowered your price you would make far more money in the long run. Anyone else feel this way?

If you go to www.metamotion.com, it's running about $495 USD. That beats pretty much everyone!

That's not true. We only had one price increase so far - when beta ended and we released 1.0.



It is natural for people to write about problems on a tech support forum.

Unlike any other mocap vendor, we offer free trial of our system. So you can see for yourself if it works for your application or not. After 30-days free trial ends, you still can perform capture and motion transfer. Only export is disabled. I don't see where is the problem.

Hi

I felt compelled to answer in this thread and share my experiences. I bought IPI DMC when it was still in beta and have used it successfully on several productions. I have to say it is truly a FANTASTIC piece of software and even at the full price, I think it’s a bargain. My only gripe is the slow speed of my graphics card and that is down to me

I feel guilty for not participating more and so I have uploaded a clip to youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiSYCD6fUD0 this shows a test animation of the raw output of IPI applied to a character and rendered in lightwave. I did have to stop IPI on a couple of occasions to correct misdetection of the legs when they cross but it is not difficult to do
I want to emphasise this is raw output and has not been processed at all, apart from converting to fbx in an old version of motionbuilder, which I bought back before it was swallowed by AD
CAMERA SET UP
I am using four logitech cameras in a full circle (I set this up before the wisdom was to have them in a semi circle and to use ps3 cams) also, they are all just over 2 metres off the ground. I have persevered with this set up as it seems to work for my space, which is actually my living room. This gives me a capture area of approx 3 metres x 2metres. Not huge, but pretty good.
The hardest thing with the cameras in a circle-square arrangement is calibration, not so much the waving the light in the air bit but the ground points definition. It is very difficult to avoid occlusion of the light when placing the maglite on the ground and you have to work around it. As a result I leave the cameras set up all the time and just redo the calibration when it starts to drift over time as I cover and uncover the cameras
CLOTHING
I have found that I get good results with a black short sleeve over a florescent long sleeved teeshirt, which I bought from a shop on e-bay I’ll post the link if people are interested. In addition, I use bright gloves, (they are exfoliating gloves bought from boots in the UK) which I think help the tracking

I would say this software has given me, a no budget freelancer the ability to produce animations I would have thought unimaginable a year or so ago

Спасибо I hope the translation is correct!!

I'll jump in too. Like skin12002, I bought iPi Studio about a year and half ago, and have seen the program come a long way in that time. I haven't used it in a full production yet, just small tests so far, but my wife and I are currently working on an independent music video and we intend to use iPi Studio for much of the character animation.

I took the system to work a couple of times in the past year and demoed it to my department at Rhythm & Hues. Not long ago, I used it successfully to animate a character in a previs test, and this definitely got some attention here. We don't have iPi Studio in my department yet, but it's been under consideration.

The system as it exists isn't appropriate for high-end production work (don't expect to make Avatar 2 with it,) but it's definitely proving it's usefulness to me for smaller projects like previs and 'indie' film productions.

In the early days, the program's speed was an issue for me; calibration and tracking used to take forever. Since that time, they moved much of the 'heavy' work to the GPU, and the program suddenly became very practical to use. The addition of PS3 Eye support streamlined the process, and made it even more affordable.

This is just my opinion but if you consider the entire system costs a fraction of what the 'next level' of motion capture equipment goes for, I think it's a very good value. When iPi Studio's developers add the next batch of requested features (head tracking, prop tracking, improved supervised tracking, and FBX support,) iPi Studio will look like a bargain.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

It's perfect! :)
Thank you!

I have that version myself. Do you know how I go about activating it again?

I could have sworn the first time I was looking into this software it was either $300 or $400 then $500, maybe I'm mistaken then. I still stand by what I say otherwise.

I'll give you Zbrush vs Mudbox for example. Mudbox is backed by a huge company (Autodesk) and has tons of exposure just from that. Zbrush on the other hand comes from Pixologic, a company that up until recently had only one product...Zbrush. Both the products do the same thing mostly, both have there ups and downs with no clear winner.

So which one has the larger user base? Zbrush by far, the user base of Mudbox is only a fraction of the size of Zbrush's. Why would that be?

My opinion:

1. Zbrush was at the $500 mark, a reasonable price that many can afford.
2. Zbrush offers lifetime free upgrades
3. Zbrush was quick to show it's possibilities within a game engine

You raising your price is going to kill your sales. Yes this is much cheaper than static systems (that are far easier to use), but is that the price at which people will buy it? That's the question you have to ask yourselves. Again those systems cost multiple times over what yours does, but it is a far superior system at this point.

The $6000 systems aren't your competitors, you really have none. You just need to price this at a point people will buy it.

You're not mistaken, but you're also talking about an very early beta product. The version at the current price is a finished product.

Here's the scoop: a year or two ago, iPi Software made an introductory offer to the public to participate in beta testing iPi Studio for $495. I thought this was a fair price at the time for a program that was in its infancy, completely untested in a production environment, and coming from a startup company that had no track record for releasing finished software yet.

Naturally, they kept the price low because they knew they were asking users to assume a bit of risk, to spend a considerable amount of time experimenting, and to buy special equipment for testing. For example, many early testers bought a set of expensive Logitech cameras, only to replace them later with a set of PS3 cameras when that feature was added.

The price for iPi Studio only went up this summer after the software finally came out of beta testing and was released as version 1.0. This should not have been a surprise because the planned price increase upon final release was clearly mentioned on their web page during the beta period.

What a new iPi user gets now for the current price is a significantly better product than what was available to early adopters a year ago, plus they get the knowledge for proper usage and equipment that didn't exist back then.

Considering that, I feel the current price is fair. Not to mention, the iPi Studio system is still far less costly than any other motion capture system on the market. (And no, they are not paying me to say that.) :)

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

I would have to disagree with you completely, $20 is too much for an unfinished product, let alone $500. I do beta tests to help out companies and that's why they are almost always free, or people pay people to test them for them.

My main point with this is you are causing yourselves to lose money because of the price. The only reason people buy 3dsmax and maya is because they are professional products that offer tons of support and companies buy them, hardly anyone buys them individually.

Which is what I'm getting at, a company looking at this product is going to have the money to just go with the real thing, but most individuals aren't going to get it because it's out of there price range, your current market niche doesn't exist.

I think this product has potential but at this price point it's just not going to sell.