Some months I waited for Version 3 assuming the software would be able to work with 2 (better 3) kinectsv2 including handtracking.

As I also program in several languages for more than 20 years I did not and will not exspect, any time schedule is exact nor the program will have no errors.

It would have been ok for me, to try/buy version 3 if there were a annoucement, when 3 kinectsv2 will work with handtracking,even when I have to buy 2 other pcs for distributed recording.

BUT it's not ok for me, to do this on a rental basis. If I understand it right in the case Your company quits or for political reasons there will be no way to buy a subcription, the software is gone.

Please make it possible to buy the software (even at a slightly higher Price) and provide a time table for the "Things to come"

First, AGREED, HIGH subscription charge will hurt their product!

This is my experience so far, yours may differ, take it as you will.... I am just offering an opinion, not to demean the work of iPisoft!! Version 2 works fine for me!!

I will just say, I am glad I did get version 2 just before this new release, I received a one yr subscription for version 3 as well, so was worth it at the time, but in testing in the last few days with version 3, I will say...

The camera calibration is faster and better for PS Eyes, shame it couldnt have been updated in V2 like that, but I dont have much problem now with version 2, except it is a slower process and does fail sometimes and have to re-do it. (80-20 failure or less in V2).

Very Important in V2 that all cams ground plane is precise or tracking will suffer, where V3 has made it more of an automated calibration, but still using light based marker tracking. (BUT.. actual cam heights are different to what iPi calibrates them to).

MY OPINION: Some things better, some things not so much over version 2, as of now.

There will be more upgrades coming to version 3, as version 2 support will stop for the most part now, but at this time, unless you are a fan of pretty ribbon based UI's and not the inner workings, Version 2 works just as well at this point in the release for me... The tracking itself may be a bit better, especially in center of mass (hips rotation) and arm tracking, but not drastically, compared to the 90+% raw tracking I get now with V2 and better jitter removal outcome in V2!

The test is when I export it to 3ds Max or MB and how much clean up is required and I can see the jitter now in these programs, where V2 had very little and less bone clicks... easy to remove the clicks, but not much can be done with the visible jitter and its not like I have changed any of the way I operate the program.

Tracking time has been increased (less % rate fps), may be for some reason they thought was needed for better tracking, but .50 fps (or lower) @ 2.50 ptpf tracking in high res. with same system I use for V2, seems a bit slow. (I usually get .72 to .85 fps @ 1.38 +/- process time per frame in high res. tracking V2)(Info. does say this will be increased in later updates, but now it is slower). Even the jitter removal speed is slower, basing this on the outputs for V2 were accurate anyway, but visually it looks slower also. (So, either there is more of a drag on my GPU/CPU now, or, its just slower by design).

(When I am tracking 4000+ frames of complex animation for 1 minute of action, in V2 taking several hours just to track/back track in areas, not including post-clean-up, slower isn't better for basically the same, if not lessened results).

Low res. I can get .72+ fps tracking, but it causes more jitter, even after full 5 steps on every option of jitter removal added and full 5 steps of trajectory smoothing added, they dropped smoothing to only 5 steps now. (I have tried all different settings variations on short capture tests, I have to blast it all to max or exports really suffer in other editing programs).

I am sure it was upgraded mostly for the Kinect 2 support, but I rarely use Kinects anyway, and wont even attempt the use of Kinect 2, its technology is just not there yet for good captures I need and want, without an incredible amount of post clean up.

A few other things were added, the ribbon system (for those that care), a video trimming feature on recorder, larger quad-cam view on recorder and some other updates, more are said to come in the future for tracking speed and actor manipulation, you can see them on the ipisoft.com site, but not in this release at this time.

I use 4 PS Eyes and get very good tracking results with V2, even after export to other programs for clean up.

I have learned how to manipulate the V2 program to track very well for me, so I will continue using it, until it is obsolete for me.

I will do more testing with V3 while I have it for the year of course and wait for further upgraded features.

Download the 30 day trial and test it yourself, is all I can offer more.

V2 should remain available, even though support and updates will not be offered soon.

Yes, I feel also a subscription charge for V3 will hurt their sales, but it's their product and their loss or gain.

I am running comparative tracking of exact same recording, recorded in version 2 and calibration file recorded in version 2.

I will submit the videos in next post showing the differences in tracking quality and time of tracking and show uncleaned at all except iPi jitter removal and smoothing.

Then I will post another set of each exported to 3DS Max Biped and maybe in Motion Builder also.

Last set will be projects only retracked backwards where necessary to solve any loss of tracking issues and re-export to MAX Biped.

Maybe, if time allows, I will run it in MAX with a custom test character.

Importing a character into iPi Studio doesn't show exact same results as when characters are added in different 3D editors, but I will add a character into iPi to show it.

Working on them now and youtube links will be posted here when finished.

May record a short scene in version 3 recorder, just to compare the recordings, but as it looks, either recorder and calibration file will appear and work the same.

Recordings are not backwards compatible, but are forward compatible.

V3 with same settings as used in V2 is taking twice as long to run the tracking ROI in hi res setting with all tracking boxes checked.

There is no extra drag on my CPU/GPU, so this was done by design... CPU is using less than 10% @ 3.00G of 8G of memory installed on machine. GPU unclocked.

I will show all times and s/f in videos for comparison also.

Thank You very much for Your explanation and efforts

Of course, this is not an intended behavior. We did not see the tracking performance degradation with new version on our test machines. Quite the contrary, there was a slight speed-up and we plan to improve it further in later updates.
However, we've made vast changes to computational code compared to V2 to make these future improvements possible, so it needs some time to "mature", getting rid of errors and inefficiencies. Would be great if you help us by providing the following info:

• Your graphics configuration (what GPU, how many)
• Configuration of project on which you see this behavior (number of cameras - PS Eye, I suppose?)
• Is the tracking performance stable low from run to run and on different projects?

Here will show the difference I experienced from V2 to V3 tracking: (I use 4 PS Eyes).

I have very few tracking issues with V2, it works well for me on the complex actions I capture, even in poor lighting recording scenarios.

I create 1 min.+ captures for dancing as a regular process as well as other actions of that length.

These tests were with a 2:00 recording using V2 recorder, so I could show same video in each test.

Recordings done with V3 recorder had no difference in tracking time than shown below.

These are rough recordings, unedited just to show tracking times basically.

V2 tracking with Moves, no retracking to clean any mistracking:

Link: http://youtu.be/mQiJSSEfDkk

V3 tracking with Moves, no retracking to clean any mistracking:

Link: http://youtu.be/Wq5gFi1f788

The videos show briefly the tracking speeds for each version, both run in hi res. and V3 takes twice as long to track same video sequence.

I will say the tracking itself was a bit better, but very slow, approx. 3 hours 45 mins in V3 compared to approx. 1 hr 58 mins V2 for this test and consistently double on

every test so far in V3.

Also, without use of Moves in V3, (which I recorded the Moves in V2 and re-opened in V3 to get to work in this test), the wrists twitch alot even after JR and smoothing

applied, which causes bone twitch on export to other editors. I know you are working on the fix now for V3.

I generally use the Moves on all recordings, as it helps in the tracking of the arms in V2.

I can run V3 in low res and get about same tracking time as hi res in V2, but it increases jitter, even after JR/Smoothing applied, with same settings I generally use.

I don't know what other ppl are experiencing, I would like to see some posts, but seems the subscription will keep a lot from even trying/using it.

Import into MB or 3DS Max requires more smoothing to be added before export from iPi (for me) to get a better output from both.

The visible jitter said in above post on import to 3DS Max was corrected, as it was I made a retrack on a small area and didn't re-run the jitter removal again, which

would have taken another 22-24 mins. to re-run on a the 1:00 recording test. V2 would have taken 10-12 mins.

I will post other videos of export into 3DS Max soon for comparison, but so far, both relatively comparable.

My computer config. is:

i5 3.70G processor (1) 4 core

MSI Radeon 7770 GPU (1) unclocked

240G OCZ SSD where programs reside.

There was no drag difference on CPU from V2 to V3, runs at 10-15% for both.

I have no trouble at all with tracking times in V2, I suspect what I am getting in V2 now is normal, or above normal for most, so should be at least comparable with V3.

Yes, V3 is slow on every tracking sequence attempted so far. (Records from V2 or records with V3).

If you want, put a tracked recording you did on V3 on a Cloud link to show me and I will re-track it on my machine and see if any differences, then again, I don't know

the power of the machine used for your test environment to get the results your saying you get, but should be no difference on my machine from V2, which works

fine.

I understand it is a new release and may have issues, all do, I am just testing and showing my personal outcomes as of now.

It is a good product for what it is, but there are many advances in this field now.

I found the test files in the Wiki for V3, apologies for not remembering they were included in Wiki...

I will re-run them and see if any difference.

Videos of a brief Female Dance Demo recorded and processed in V2, only forward tracked video 1 time and added JR/Smoothing/Moves data.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghA8rTEdBEI


Video of same dance exported for 3DS Max biped, no cleanup done in Max, but 30 mins. cleaning and would be fine for character attachment, hands always do that, which has to be corrected every time when reoriented to any custom character. Other corrections have to be made also for proper rig fitting, but not hard to do.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhRjLRC6y0A


Video of re-tracking of iPi V3 sample files in Wiki, basically to show processing speeds, consistent with any other I've tried in V3.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cCHT3pg5Ug


Video of a different tracked video in V2 than in previous post, showing processing speeds I commonly get in V2, it can be seen it's visually faster and tracking fine as usual. That is my common dress for recording as it works well for me.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmhzrK20lyc


Video of same dance imported to Motion Builder, unedited.

http://youtu.be/Y-1bp-gxVy4

Hello,
v3 tracking speed should be the same as v2 or a little bit faster.
This is the only report on v3 tracking speed drop so far. We're trying to reproduce it on our testing hardware to track down the issue. Looks like this speed drop is specific to particular hardware configuration.
The only recommendation so far is to check if you have the latest version of your GPU drivers. If not, please upgrade to the latest version and try again.

_________________
iPi Soft

Yes, all my drivers are kept up-to-date regularly, same config. I use on V2.

I uninstalled program and re-installed it, now re-running tests, and will post results.

I don't usually have install issues, but sometimes it happens.