Hi guys,
just got myself a standard version and 6 PS3 Eye cams and now trying to figure out the best setup to capture complex motions. Unfortunately the official 'Scene Setup Guide' is limited to the maximum of 4 cams in half-circle and has no suggestions how to use the additional 2 cams to the best advantage. I found a few posts from the iPi Soft developers mentioning a full-circle setup so I assume the full-circle setup is better than a half-circle. But how about more advanced setups? Some of my scenes include rolling on the floor and shooting wile lying down on the floor. Will I get better results if I place one cam on the ceiling and point it down? Is it up to me how to place the cams or are there any certain limitations where you say “don’t waste your time, this will definitely never work”. In the normal half- or full-circle setup is it better to point cams parallel to the floor or is it OK (or better) to point some down/up? I think that the proper camera setup is the key to the good final result (and less time spent fixing errors) so maybe you should update your scene setup guide and give more example/advices how to place the cams depending on the number of cameras and what kind of motion is being captured.

Thanks for the awesome piece of software!

Full circle with six cameras is better if you have the space, but because of my limited space I have mine arranged in a slightly wider than semi-circle. This works very well for me and with the extra visual overlap I feel there is actually a higher degree of precision within this semi-circle. The downside is that occlusion may occasionally be a problem, but I haven't seen any major problems with this yet. That said, I'm thinking of moving one camera to the rear, high up to complete the coverage.

BTW, semi-circle with even four PS3 cameras still gives you more accuracy than Kinect, but at the expense of more complicated setup.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Yes, occlusion may be a problem if you capture complex motions and have not enough or badly placed cameras. There are plenty ready-to-use simple animations out there so I think many people buy iPi software to capture something a little bit more complex than walking, running or jumping in front of the camera and this is the reason I don’t understand why the scene setup guide only suggests the semi-circle and nothing else.

That said, even a four cameras in semi-circle formation works surprisingly well. Here's an old test I did that illustrates a variety of motions: Deform Test (Yes, I know, I really need to post some new stuff) :)

This test had four cameras arranged in a semicircle facing a corner of a room, and the the motion with the most occlusion is the 'circle walk' at the end (0:30). If you look closely, you can see a brief occlusion issue with the right arm but other than that the walk is pretty accurate, and the arm motion interpolated by iPi Studio is acceptable. Bear in mine that what you see here is raw data too; no tweaking.

(The other main issue in this video is the rotating feet during the twist, but this is a rig limits problem and not an occlusion issue. This happens regardless of camera position or number of cameras, but it's rare. It's also correctable in other 3D applications.)

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!