Hey, thanks again my friend!

I found some place where there’s 17 meters by 5.5 meters...
What is the limit of the capture area? Is is possible to capture motion
from such a long distance or the video quality will be lowered because of that?
If it’s possible then it would be great really great, as I won’t have any restrictions
on what actions to perform... I could maybe even capture a sprint or something...

P.S. In previous space I also had 5.5 meters distance from side views and in order
to fit myself fully I had to place the cameras on chairs from left and right views.
What do u recommend? Is it Ok to extend the camera height in order to fully capture
The actor from both sideviews, or it’s better to avoid this and capture the half of the actor?
If the second, then which part would be more reasonable to capture, upper body or maybe
from hips to feet (to capture the ground as well)?

I need to know that because I have to decide whether I want to rent this place or not in a couple of days and inform the owner. I have a day or two to make some tests. If I decide to take this space, I will
need to tidy up some things there, like whitening the walls and the floor..,

Thank u very much, u’re making my life lot easier!

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The max length will most likely be 10 m, after that the actor will get too small for the tracker to lock on well, but you can try as far apart as you can get of course.

Side cams in that width will need to be as high as possible, and don't have to be dead center, can be offset to the rear a bit (4-5 ft) to get more actor view, but don't worry if forearms and hands are out of view in arms raised actions in those, the other 4 should track them fine, just set the grid to cross the hips.

Still use the grid tool when aligning all rest, cross hairs should still remain at around hip level of the performer (you) in all cams.

It is required to always capture the floor area, to get proper calibration, so if side cams capture less actor, it has to be from shoulders down only.

If you want, you can attach the side cams to the wall, sitting on some type of L bracket, and a screw anchor, or some other way that will hold them to the wall, they can also be hung upside-down for a bit more height, just set each on upside-down in cam properties.

Use some masking tape in sections to show your feet capture limits on the floor and mark a clear center mark of the entire room area, not just inside the cams, that will be your "true" room center, then adjust that mark once you know how far apart the front to rear cam will be, that is if the entire floor is clear of course, but you get what I mean I hope, because I haven't seen the area.

You will need at least 2.5 m from front and rear cams to the capture volume feet limit on the floor, you may have much more than that in that length of room, your issue will be the side cams to keep the light marker always visible while calibrating, so you can still only use approx, 3 m x 3 m area to run the light.

Depending on how you set your cams, you can walk/run/whatever outside the feet floor markings, that is just so you have a visual of the feet limits when you need to stay inside that to maintain feet tracking.

Again, you only are using 6 cams, so all six cams have to keep the light marker in view while calibrating them, so setting the front/rear cams far apart may affect how you have to move the light.

With narrow rooms, the side cams of course will show less floor area, this may also limit long sprinting, but you can try it with starting out of view of the side cams also and see the result in tracking first to know and adjust if not an optimal outcome.

I can start outside the view of my side cams and walk into them, but not sure how far you can go, I aim my side cams forward, but you can aim them rearward also, this may help in long view running capturing.

Also, if using 3 front cams like I described, be sure to keep the slight arch, setting the outside 2 a bit in front of the center one, 12 - 18 in should work.

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One other thing I think is good to mention, when using lighting, you should have enough around the area to not have to increase the exposure setting of the cameras above 120 with gain of 20 which is default, you can go down with the gain as needed per camera to try to make all look the same in the view ports, but I don't recommend increasing past default, add more light if needed.

It is also better to set your exposure and gain values you want with the auto gain off, then turn on the auto gain switch, let it adjust fully bright, then turn it right back off, no real need to use auto gain for iPi recording IMO.

Only adjust those 2 properties, leave all rest as default, or use default reset if got off and start from there.

I personally have a different room I use than most, where I have 3 sides of windows, with special shades and record mostly during the daytime, so my cam properties are set for that, I use 60 exposure, (you should only ever divide exposure by 2, (120, or 60), but gain can be for each camera whatever it is at 20 or below, I use 4 at 16 and a couple at 20, due to I have a cabinet that blocks some light in one corner, I rarely use mechanical lighting, unless I record on very cloudy days, or at night.

This was mentioned by Maslov, but once you get to the tracking stage, it is important to set the iPi Actor skeleton correctly to your body, use the Pose Tab structure to position the bone lengths, and using tighter fit clothes, you can adjust the overall body mass (top slider) fairly low, then use the single sliders for the individual body areas to adjust them, you may need to increase the height of the Actor when it loads to get the colors detected the first time, then with that Actor profile with all bones set correctly, adjust your height slider back down to very close to you actual height before you hit Refit, then save that Actor profile in the Actor Tab to somewhere you can always easily retrieve it on any other New Project, but if you ever change it in Studio, or change clothing colors you need to Re-save it again, you can save several files, or overwrite the last, just name each appropriately to remember which is which.

Using light material, breathable, darker colored gloves will improve arm tracking, especially until you can get Move controllers, but even after you get them, use them with gloves for better results, you will really want 3, one for head, but PS Eyes head tracking does work ok, I recorded without a head Move for years, just not always great, now I use one always and you can use the Move tool with the head Move also, to adjust the head position after tracking, which is another plus.

I am just putting all this out for you, so you can refer back to it once you get to these particular steps, but after you record and track many motions it will become normal to use the same measures always, time after time and get your own procedure down.

If you have any issues, or don't understand something, just post it and it will get worked out for you, if possible.

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I recorded and basic tracked a longer walk, starting outside my side cams and up against my rear cam, that only could view my shoulders and head, then walked until feet were out of view of my front cams, as far as I could go forward.

Distance between my front and rear cam is 7 m (22 ft) and that will most likely be as far from the front cam as you can get and still have the feet lock on in refit.

The cams can be positioned farther apart to 10 m (30 ft), that will allow more actor in view of rear cam, but for the trackers to lock to the color, you may still only be able to be 7 m from front cam, or the iPi Actor just gets too small, or the feet do, it will lock onto the upper body and arms ok.

Just wanted to demonstrate with my set up I can walk in and out of cams full view and still get tracking once walk back into view of all cams and back out.

If you put your side cams facing rearward, it may help locking on at a bit further distance, but not much more most likely, would be a trial and error set up to see what worked best, or may if the front and rear cams were offset a bit opposite each others views, you could have enough space to sprint past them, which I can not test in my area, but a suggestion.

Video: https://youtu.be/rPiRwxWhhdE

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Hello my friend,

It’s been a while. I was hoping that I would be able to just thank you again and send some samples of successfully captured motion, but unfortunately I couldn’t get further than calibration. That’s where I’m stuck at this moment. Really desperate... I rented some space (I was talking about it in earlier posts). It’s 12 meters by 5,5. I’ve got 6 cams, 4 in each corner and 2 in the middle of the space as side view cams. In a word then, what I can’t find out is how to record the calibration video so, that light sources weren’t visible and the brightest point was tge MagLite I’m using... I tried both with darkening cameras from ipirecorder and turning the main lights off (8 LED horizontal lightings around the space, can’t separate them, all of them are turning on and off together, so they’re useless for a calibration), replacing them by a bit dimmer warm lighting, but I cannot hide the lighting source... If I cover the light source with some barrier then there’s not enough light in the room and I can’t make the background evaluation before the calibration recording, because all screens are just showing the black color. And in the second case there’s a loght source visible on at least 3-4 cams and it’s stronger than then the maglite point...
Maybe there’s some device I can use or something else I’m not aware of... I’ve got a feeling that there’s an easy solution, but I can’t get it... Will really appreciate any kind of help!
Thanks in advamce

P.S. Here are photos of the area shot from different angles

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Hi, That's looks like an great set up to me, use extra darkening always for calibration, leaving lights on shouldn't be the issue.

Try using the mag light with some sort of extended tip, (a white ping pong ball with fitted hole cut in it, or a small semi transparent white spray cap affixed to the end of the mag light, simple masking tape will hold it in place and will work to keep the light visible from all angles to the cameras), also attach your light to a 3 ft (1 m) dow, or 1/2 pvc pipe works well and stay as stationary to one spot when looping the light around, you can reach out with body too, as long as the light glow is always visible to all cameras, or it will want to jump to the larger lights and stay there.

Try also using a much lower path with the light, it isn't necessary to make high sweeping cage motions for a good calibration, stay off the floor only 2 to 3 ft. (1 m max.) when doing only a 3 m x 3 m circle for perimeter, one more time around same track, but touch the floor at 4 spots, front, side, rear, side, once more around 1m off the floor in 3 m x 3 m circle, and stop path at touching the floor in the middle.

Don't move the light too fast, and let it remain on floor touch for a few seconds, visible to all cameras in each touched spot, very important. Takes approx. 2000 frames +/-

Remember to set cam #1 to its measured real world height, let others fall where they will should be fine, don't muck with other individual camera preciseness to real world, it will get it very close on its own, 1 to 2 cm difference is nothing per camera. Your height should fall with 2 cm of actual once in Studio for tracking, you may though have to increase the Actor height to get the colors auto detected, but then return it to your actual height before hitting refit.

Awesome set up, should work fine, maybe side cams could be a bit higher, but if it's working that way, up to you on that.

Object of the light path is to keep it visible the whole track to every camera, if it jumps to the brighter light, it won't jump back off it, so basically don't let it jump off your mag light glow, by keeping the path lower to the floor the tracker shouldn't even want to jump to the higher lights, unless of course you mess up and occlude the mag light for even a second, it will jump off it.

My lighting is similar, when I record at night, and I have no issues with calibration with all lights on, extra dark setting, low light path and don't occlude the mag light ever.

It can be a bit finicky until you get the process worked out, but then after that it only takes a few minutes to calibrate and know what to expect without many issues.

Hope this helps and next time you can show some cool animation video :)

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