Hello,
we plan on using a 8 camera PS eye setup in a couple of days.

Now, we have been thinking. Would it improve tracking quality (Or rather, get rid of loosing track of body parts, when they are infront of another)
if we use clothing that has different colours?

We were thinking of one color per leg, per hand, per arm, one for the body, and one per foot.

Would that improve tracking in any way, or decreese the times that IPISOFT looses track when a body part goes infront of another? In theory it should not happen that often anymore, due to heavy contrast between the different body parts.

Does it even work at all?

Thank you!

Hi,

No, doing this won't help, iPi analyzes actor for single colors for tracking for each main part (i.e. hands, feet, pants, etc.).

I would suggest setting some cameras to best cross-view the actor, (but with 8 cams it would seem they would have to do this anyway. I use 4, so positioning is different for my particular use), this way one part behind the other is picked up by another camera better and keep hands a bit off the body, as well as always keep a slight bit of separation between the feet when closer together or crossing them helps.

Room lighting also matters, but strong direct overhead lighting I personally wouldn't recommend, if you can avoid it. (My opinion).

Clean contrasting room/capture area is another good practice.

Clothing I chose with V3 was light blue T-shirt over a red long sleeved shirt, medium gray tighter legged pants, black socks or solid colored non-shiney shoes, and black gloves along with Move controllers, black or dark colored cap or head wrap is optional. (all solid colors).

If you are using JPG compression on recording, be careful also, keep setting a bit high 75% or more.

You may still loose tracking at some points anyway, its just the nature of camera capturing, but if you catch problem area while post processing is running and reposition the body part, it usually will correct itself. If not, it will have to be fixed in an external 3D editing program. (slight foot slide in tracking usually gets corrected with jitter removal, if not too far off). Usually after I run the tracking, I go to areas I think need to be better and use back-tracking just on that area, per Wiki Docs.

I usually get very good tracking, especially now with the latest update, but of course, your results may vary.

Hope this helps and Good Luck.

Awesome.
Thank you for your quick answer and all the tips. Really appriecated.

So it is best to have a solid color for every major body part. I.e. one colour for both legs, one for both arms, one for body.

Thanks!

Yes...

Contrasting to room or studio walls and floor colors.

I find it works well to have light walls and floor,(non-shiney), if possible, or hang light sheets around capture area, then the program has no choice but to recognize the clothing color.

Good Luck!

Snapz is correct. The optimal clothing in practical terms is long blue jeans for pants (regular fitting, not baggy,) a single color long sleeved shirt and a black t-shirt pulled over. I have a green long sleeved shirt and a long red long sleeved shirt--the color I use depends on how it contrasts with the background. Shoes color is not too important but they should have enough bulk to generate enough volume to the tracked accurately.

You also want to avoid shiny or reflective clothing. In general, you want to minimize bight 'shine' and hard shadows.

That's for PS3 Eye but some of the rules apply to Kinect capture too. Kinect doesn't care about color but preserving a human shape that the software recognizes is still important. In the case of Kinect capture, I find it helpful to wear soft boots to give my feet a little more 'bulk' for accurate feet capture.

Generally, you want to software to produce a human shaped volume it can track accurately. It should be obvious that baggy or otherwise loose clothing will produce poor results but over the years I've seen some curious examples posted in here. :)

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

I switched from:
Black running trousers
Red t-shirt over black longsleeve shirt
Red socks

To:
Blue jeans (boot fit)
Black long sleeve top
Black shoes

And it massively improved tracking. The first getup was for ipisoft v1 with three Logitech QuickCam Pro's, and it worked well. Turns out the new software with 6 PS Eyes much prefers a simple set of clothing. As do I, I looked a right nana in that lot :) I don't even need the overshirt now.

The lighting has two problems - one, as the actor casts a shadow it changes the background so it no longer gets removed from the video. Two, if your head is close enough to the light source it can get very shiny and cause some tracking issues. As I'm doing my capture in my double garage and I'm 2 metres tall, this is an issue for me :D

..

I did the same in my testing and used darker pant color (dark blue or black) and just a long sleeved shirt (lighter blue or cantrasting to blue pants) all black shoes or socks.

The difference was the darker pants did have less variance and shadows in color, especially where light doesn't hit much between the legs.

I used mid-gray pants before, as I was afraid the black gloves I use would conflict with a darker color, but didn't really seem to be an issue.

I do though, try to keep hands off the body at all times by at least an inch (or to character size when needed) and adjust later on export when needed.

Where I did see an issue is on turns in the shoulders, (when using track by video option), the shoulders would lag and snap, where I didn't have that with the T-shirt over

the long sleeve, it would pull the shoulder around better, in my opinion, but either way works.

I just chose the T over the long sleeve.

That is using a 4 camera, full circle (4 corner) set up, those who use more cameras, may not have had this effect.

..