I was able to calibrate and find ground planes easily for 6 cameras. Or, so I thought.

When I load that calibration scene while trying to setup for tracking, the iPi t-pose character is completely off camera for 4 of my cameras.

When I calibrated, I did NOT check 'auto-detect initial camera positions', but set the approximate positions by hand as I'd done successfully before with 4 cameras.

The calibration seemed to go smoothly, just like for 4 cameras, but took longer.

Anything obvious come to mind that I could be messing up to cause this?

How does one verify a calibration is successful?

I shot another calibration, and now I'm not having the above problem. I changed nothing, so I'm not sure why the 1st calibration failed.

But, now - with 6 cameras, when I tell it to 'refit pose' with 'enable foot tracking' on, the character's feet jump up a foot off the ground. This can be lessened somewhat by making the character's height shorter, but they are still way too messed up to leave 'enable foot tracking' on.

I've tried with both white socks (no shoes) and black shoes. With Black shoes, I have to set the color of the shoes myself or it seems to think my light hardwood floor is the shoe color (instead of black). Seems like it would have a lot of contrast between the black and the light hardwood floor, so this is confusing?

I didn't have this problem with 4 cameras.

But, I'm shooting 6 cameras at 60fps (with almost no errors) rather than 40 fps (with 4 cameras). I"m also shooting during the day with some ambient light coming in the windows in addition to the two large 1000 watt softboxes I've got pointed up at my 22' ceiling. The floor may have a bit more light on it and some light reflections from the windows.

So far it seems to be tracking ok (actually excellently) with just the single 'enable shoulder tracking' checkbox on., but I can see that the feet don't exactly match the model at times. They are way off as to where the actor is moving at times.

The legs, arms, torso, etc. are tracking right on the money for some last dance moves with arms- probably due to the increased frame rate, 6 cameras, and the fact that I'm now making sure the 'background' region of interest has a valid empty background.

I may try more softboxes and shooting at night to get rid of the daylight floor reflections from the light coming in the windows.

1. Does more light help the cameras get a clearer image with less noise?

2. The ground plane displayed while tracking seems quite high off the ground. I was careful to select 6 ground points. Maybe this is my problem with the feet jumping up to almost my knees when I turn on 'foot tracking'? How can I insure my ground plane is ok? What should the ground plane look like while tracking?

BTW - with 6 cams at 60fps it's taking about 2.9 seconds per frame to process with GTX 285 2GB.

Thanks for posting. I just upgraded to six cameras myself but haven't tried them out yet. (Busy working on environment this week.) Your post gives me a few things to think about and prepare for. I'll let you know if I run into any new problems.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

I tried again at night with 6 1000 watt softboxes. I was still unable to get foot tracking to work. I think it might be the newest version of iPi, as that did change from when I was using 4 cams.

I didn't see much difference in image quality by going to 6000 watts, but there does seem to be a magic number of watts needed to get 60 fps. I'll generally quickly switch to 50fps, then back to 60fps and start recording as for some reason, after a minute or two, the error rates tend to start increasing (even when not recording) at 60fps.

A small issue: If I tried to use foot tracking, and 'refit pose' totally messed up the lower legs and feet (like the model pulled his legs up by bending his knees), simply unchecking 'foot tracking' and doing a 'refit pose' didn't fix things. The feet would be really messed up and I had to close iPi, reload the scene and start over.

But, I'm getting excellent results while tracking with 6 cams. It's dealing well with legs crossing each other, arms behind the back and swinging around fast. I haven't actually had any problems at all so far in limited testing.

I don't have them in a perfect circle. It's more like 3 at one end of a rectangle, and 3 at the other

BTW - for new users, be sure that when you load your calibration scene after loading your capture AVI, that when you switch to different camera views, that the brown 'virtual cams' are located exactly where the real camera are. That seems to indicate a good calibration.

I wish there were a way to determine if the ground plane is set up properly, or maybe I'm missing the visual indication, as it always looks like it's a bit high?

When iPi Recorder is not capturing, I occasionally see dropped frames, especially if I'm doing something else like opening directories and typing notes. I think this is because Recorder's priority is being allowed to be interrupted when it's idle. When the software is actually capturing, I don't see the dropped frames. I know that's not necessarily helpful for your situation, but I thought you should know that seeing some dropped frames when iPI Recorder is sitting idle may be normal.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Wow! - You are absolutely right. I'm capturing and after 5 minutes there are almost no dropped frames, in face, all 6 are now showing 0 dropped frames per minute, so it's gotten better as I've kept capturing.

Thanks so much!!!!

Where do I go to download the new 6 cam software?

If you have iPi installed, I think it will auto update. Mine did.

You must have a license for 6 cameras.

Yes, the software should auto-update, assuming you have an active internet connection. If it's been a long time since you updated, you might want to uninstall Recorder and DMC, download and use the standalone installers. The installers are on the main website under Downloads.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

OK, then I will have to boot up the program. I have Recorder and DMC on my laptop so I'll just delete those two and reinstall the newest versions then. Thanks...