Hi.

Maybe I'm missing something, but after having worked through the PS Move
calibration/assignment to bones and finally orienting towards the camera on
a frame I don't feel like I've gotten the trackers "right". Is it possible to add
the ability to manually orient each PS Move (by using the built-in rotation controls)
according to our needs?

I'm guessing this may be something fixable within MotionBuilder (bake to skeleton,
create a new layer, change orientation axis), but I'm thinking the ability to do it
on the track data within iPi would be wiser.

Here's an image of what I'm yapping about:



As initially stated, though....maybe I'm missing something?

Thoughts or enhanced ideas welcome! :D

Hi,

If I understand what your saying it sounds like you may have misinterpreted the procedure for tracking with a PS Move controller.

The initial matching step is intended to line up the controller to the camera--this tells iPi Mocap Studio what the correct heading position is for the device and it does not affect the orientation of your actor's wrist (or head if you're using the head tracking option.)

The second step is to manually rotate your actor's hand (or head) to the device's orientation--this is done by finding a frame where you have a clear view of your hand in the background video. Then, you rotate the wrist (or head bone) to visually match the rotation of the controller.

Finally, Click Apply Motion Data. This is the step that automatically re-orientates your actor's wrist (or head) to the controller for the other frames in the current frame range. If the result isn't what you expected, you can use Undo and try again using different adjustments

Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy. Hope this helps.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Hi Greenlaw,

Thanks for your assistance!

Yeah, I guess I'm still not getting it, and think there's a bit more control that needs to
be given over to set the axis manually. (even if it's just a "flip up-axis" checkbox)

In my image, you can see how the head and left hand axis are flipped/negative (also see
values on right). I'm guessing this is due to how the PS Moves were initially calibrated to
Recorder in the device setup.

I'm not able to set them to 'positive' up within Studio, so that means I need to rotate
the model's head and left hand 'upside-down' for this to track properly? This approach
does not seem to work. :( Lots of flipping and craziness going on.

Still open to hearing what I can do to fix...I've got about 40 tracks that I'm really not
able to re-record, and the whole point of using the PS Moves (and setting up custom
DIY head/hand rigs) was for greater fidelity...

That's pretty weird...I have experienced some issues with drifting over long durations or fast movements, but not axis flipping. Makes me wonder if the data is faulty, like the bluetooth dropped the signal or something.

Elsewhere, it's been suggested that when you calibrate your devices, it should be away from the computer monitor as its magnetic field may influence the reading. I do my calibration directly in my performance space.

Also, I found it helpful to bring the BT device closer to the performance space by attaching it to a repeater cable. This puts the controllers firmly within range and minimizes interference from other devices. (Like large screen TVs and computers.)

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

These coordinate axes represent the coordinate system of the motion controller itself. Blue axis goes from bottom (USB port) to top (sphere), green - from back (trigger) to front (buttons), red - from right (START button) to left (SELECT button). There is no sense in orienting this axes "according to your needs". They should match the real orientation of the controller in the scene, so we can use its measurements to get rotations in the scene coordinate space. When the floor is horizontal, the only needed adjustment is to correct the rotation around vertical axis. That is done with matching with camera.
The difference that you see shows that PS Moves were differently oriented around their lengthwise axis. Controllers 1 and 2 have SELECT button down, and controller 3 has SELECT button up.


This is not a very correct explanation (sorry, Dennis :).
Assuming you got proper orientation of controller's coordinate system. To apply its data, you should manually set the bone's orientation to match the orientation of the same bone of an actor on a video, for a single frame. For example, rotate the Head bone of the model so the head orientation of the model matches an actor on a video. Rotation of a bone does not change the orientation of the controller. That gives the system a correspondence between controller's and bone's orientations. Hitting Apply Motion Data forces this correspondence to other frames.

Hi vmaslov.

Thank you for your reply and explanation. Now I know how to orient the PS Move for
future motion capture sessions.

Unfortunately, and not just to be argumentative, I have to disagree with this statement:

There is no sense in orienting this axes "according to your needs".

I've spent a good degree of effort, time and money getting my capture session together.
My takes are recorded, but due to an error in rotation of the physical device during initial calibration
(since the information you've just posted doesn't seem to be on either the wiki or in the help files),
I cannot directly fix/adjust them within iPi Studio. From this perspective it makes a bunch of sense to
be able to check a box re-orienting an axis from a negative direction to a positive.

As it stands now, I've got no direct ability within iPi Studio to re-gain usefulness of the PS Move data
---negating the whole point of using the additional devices in the first place.

Hopefully you can consider adding this option in, as there is a good chance it will be useful for others
as well...not to mention allow me to adjust and make useful the data I've already captured. ;)

Cheers.

Thank you! I stand corrected. Naturally, you do not want to change the orientation of the controller. I really should not respond to forum questions before having my morning coffee. Or did I not say that? I don't know--need more coffee. :)

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

2wailingmonkey

I'll continue my explanation. Difference in a ways controllers are attached to actor's body parts is not an error, and does not make their data unusable. There is no one specific grip or attachment that is required. The only requirement for data to be usable is getting the correct orientation of controller in the scene via matching with camera. No matter how the controller is rotated around lengthwise axis when it points to a camera - the matching will be correct.

The only situation where a grip matters is when you use a prop visualization for controller in Mocap Studio. For the prop to be oriented meaningfully, a "standard" grip is assumed. There is a tip about this in wiki. But this is only about visualization, not usefullness of the data.

If you wish, you can share one of your projects for us to look at your problems.