Hi i have 1 ps-eye & want to mocap the motions from my head to my upper chest is that possible ?? i 'm having trouble tryin to figure out the set up since i most likely want to be in a sitting position example behind a desk-- where & how far should the ps-eye b mounted etc & what is the configuration & calib. settings 4 such a thing if it's possible? Thanx in advance.

Hi
Our software is intended for full-body motion capture. We will release the support for head (not facial) tracking later this year, but also only in full-body scenarios. Any way, iPi Studio will not produce good tracking results using single RGB camera. If you are interested only in facial/head/upper chest tracking, there are some products that you may give an attention to:

* Faceware by Image Metrics http://www.image-metrics.com/Faceware-Software/Overview Realtime facial tracking.

* Mascard by Di-O-Matic http://www.di-o-matic.com/products/Software/Maskarad/#page=overview Face and head tracking from recorded video.

* Faceshift (currently in Beta) http://www.faceshift.com/ Realtime face and head tracking using the Kinect sensor.

Yep, maybe too little, too late by then. There are already plenty of people working on implementing direct support for Kinect in their 3D software of choice. I recently watched the Kinect for Blender project and was very impressed with the direction and depth they have achieved already and are heading.

As far as the facial trackers you suggested, Faceware is a facial motion tracking service and not a in house do it yourself software package. Maskarad at $1500 hasn't keep up with current developments and is way over priced in the post Kinect marketplace. Really the only promising option of the three is Faceshift that does use the Kinect technology but is not ready for prime time, has no suggested retail price, and only a 30 day demo version. Of course the good news is that now that the new 1.5 SDK and Kinect Studio is out people are hard a work making this a reality!

Unfortunately, we did not not experimented with partial-body capture, so cannot give you a practical advice. You can experiment on your own. However, if you do not want to use multiple cameras, you'd better try a depth sensor (Microsoft Kinect or ASUS Xtion) instead of PS Eye.

I think you will want iPi Express with a single Kinect for this type of capture. With the currently running sale, this will cost about $350 for both software and hardware. It will be a lot easier to use and results will be far superior than what you might get using a single PS3 Eye camera.

To use the software with PS3 Eye, I believe you'll need to get at least Standard, which costs $595 for just the software, and if you're going to spend that much money you may as well get four PS3 Eye cameras or two Kinects (plus repeater cables) to make it worthwhile.

IMO, if all you're interested in is upper body capture, you should go with the first option. Single Kinect works fairly well when you're standing in place or sitting, so it should be ideal for upper body.

Hope this helps.

G.

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