Hello :-D

I was wandering if newer ( more expencive) lap top can handle 6 cams setup? I have really good desktop pc and it will work good with 6 cams (havent bought them yet) but the problem is if we want to do mocap somewhere outside where there is no electricity :-)

-Is Intel® Core™ i5 2.30 GHz,8 gigs of ram and nVidia GeForce GT 540M good for 6 cams ? ( my brothers lap top )

-Is that good for 4 cam setup?

-Can I perform a 360 turn with 4 cams?

-And generally as for the lap top should I aim for stronger graphics card,more processor power or something else?

Thank you ;-)

I need to use a i7 quad core desktop with multiple USB cards and an SSD for capture to be able to capture video from six cameras, and that's pushing it; iPi specs recommend a six core system for six cameras.

I have to move my computer to an offsite 'stage' when I want to use six cameras. It's a hassle but worth it if I really need a large capture space or complex motions. That said, I try to plan all my shots to use the dual Kinect configuration as much as I can because it so much more convenient.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

A long time ago I was capturing four cameras with an old dual core laptop. To do this I needed to use compression and lower video resolution. The main bottleneck I had to overcome was the hard drive (I wound up using a homemade eSATA mini-RAID) and the number of USB controllers available.

With a more recent laptop, this should perform much better, especially if it has an SSD and at least two USB controllers.

Anyway, to get to the point, six cameras may be out of the question for a laptop but four is certainly doable. And yes you can do 360 motions with four cameras, quite well in fact.

This test done a while back using a desktop but it was only four cameras arranged in a semi-circle:

iPi Deform Test

Good luck!

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

yeah,moving your pc to another location can be frustrating.

I just saw this video,it's in French so I don't understand the word of it.This guy is using lap top with 6 cam setup but I see that mocap he gets at the last tutorial isn't really that good.So this basically proves that it's possible to do that but at a cost of loosing quality.He probably recorded with compression and low video resolution.
http://vimeo.com/28002466

I have a question about camera heights...Should I put all 4 cameras at height of maybe 2 meters and angle them down or set them up as they say in that wiki user guide ?

It's not too bad. I have all my cables bundled and labeled so it's very quick to disconnect and reconnect. My cameras are already setup at the site so setting up there only takes a few minutes. Kinect has me spoiled though...it's just so easy to just roll out some cables to the living room and shoot. :p


Thanks for posting that. I always find it interesting to see other people's setups and how they make the software work for them.


The thing to keep in mind is that you want to maximize your visual coverage. Setting the cameras high will cover the motions very well from, well, the top. However, if you crouch down, your body may be occluding your legs or arms from this angle, and may result in tracking errors. Remember, iPi Studio can't track what it can't see. (It can sometimes make a good guess but there are limits.)

IMO, you should stagger the heights so the cameras can see the action from many angles as possible. Also, I think the calibration and tracking system may work better if all the cameras are NOT aligned symmetrically and all at the same height.

Optionally, you can use different setups for different motions. Naturally, you will need to record a new calibration video any time you move the cameras.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

So camera setup depends of the motion I want to capture.

Basically for every shot there is some planning and little bit of camera tweaking,but there is always fun at the end :-DDD

I just saw mrbones video,he managed to do head tracking with dual kinekt,is that possible with PS eye cams ?

Don't read too much into that. Obviously you do not want a different setup for every motion--that would be insane. All I'm saying is is that if a setup you have isn't capturing what you need because your performance is occluding parts of your body, you can simply move the cameras to improve coverage for that motion. (Or just change your performance.)

This is less of an issue with six cameras but with four or fewer cameras it becomes harder to get full coverage so you may need to position the cameras to favor certain motions.

If your camera setup has good wide visual coverage, you should be able to shoot almost any motion with it--that should be obvious--but with fewer cameras, you may be sacrificing some accuracy. If the camera setup has narrower coverage, your range of activity may be smaller but accuracy may be improved for motions that favor this setup.

That said, a semi-circle configuration with staggered heights will cover a lot. For example, all the PS3 Eye capture demos I posted online in the past were done with only four cameras in a semi-circle at between 4 and 7 feet height, and I was able to capture 360 degree motions with very little trouble. If you only have four cameras, this is the configuration I recommend for most situations.

But if I had to record motions where I was crouched down a lot, rolling on the floor, or crawling and I wasn't getting good tracking results from this configuration, I might try positioning some cameras higher and some lower to expand coverage for this pose. (That's theoretical--I've never had to do that. I did record some crouching motions as a test for work a year or so ago and my semi-circle setup worked fine for that.)

The bottom line is, there are tried and tested rules that work for most situations but if you have a special case, you need to experiment with the tools and figure out what works best for you. For me, keeping things simple and straightforward, for the software as well as for me, works best.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Thank's man,this was really helpfull :-)

I don't want to be a pain in the butt but can you tell me if it's possible to do head tracking with PS eye cams and also what is the best type (color) for the background and floor-Is the green screen the best way to go ?

Head tracking isn't possible yet. A while back iPi Soft mentioned in a post that they were working on a solution but no official announcements yet.

In the meantime, you can add head motions in many animation packages. If you browse some older posts, you'll see examples done using game engines and different 3D programs. It's usually just a matter of targeting the head joint to an animateable object.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!