Hi gang :) I'm having some trouble making a decision and I'm hoping you can help me. I have the room for a 6 camera set up, but am attracted to the easy set up of the Kinect. The animation I do is full length feature, therefore 6 cameras I know would be ideal. However, are there any real limitations to the kinect? I like the idea of not having to set up cameras, tripods, etc. I will if I have to to, but will the kinect not give great results?

Thank you.

Patrick

Castleberry Lane Animation Studio

Hi PAt.

To get an idea of what the kinect can do...

Go to http://www.animstreet.com
Most of the motions I have made there are created with the Kinect and iPisoft.

I have also documented my experience on youtube using the kinect now for a few months.
http://www.youtube.com/user/truebones#g ... B8F3087AF8

It takes practice and a little it of skill. However once employed you can quickly make some very nice motions.

I hope this helps.

Let me know if you have any problems or questions.

Thanks and Cheers

Joe from Truebones Motions

P.S. I think the iPiSoft Express Studio for Kinect will give you more satisfaction in the near term because the setup is literally plug and play.

Whereas the multicam setup requires more preparation and calibration.

And I think its limitations( if any ) will help you become a better motion artist. Make sure your processing speed for the iPiKinect combo is at least 2.7 to 3.9 seconds per frame. Otherwise it may become cumbersome and time consuming which will cause more frustration.

DOnt expect everything to go perfect at first, but gradually you will learn the skill and techniques required to get the kinds of motions you are looking for.
You will also find your self getting better at making the motions once you gain a little experience with it.

thanks for the links you posted mrbones...very useful to me since im thinking of choosing kinect...

_________________
Avid internet surfer during spare time

Thanks a bunch :) I have a quad core - 6 mb - 1 gig hdd - with a 2 gig Nvidia card. Right now I'm rendering 1 frame in just under a second. At first was sold on the 6 cam setup until I saw what the Kinect could do. Frankly, I like the plug and play idea. I'll combine those motions with my facial mocap and then toss them into Vue backgrounds.

Thanks for your help!

Pat

Something I neglected to comment further on. Since I am creating full length features using mocap, the motions will be complex. I've been reading that Kinect can't capture complex motions as well as the eyecam system. How complex can I make the motions and, I'm assuming that with Kinect, the performer can't perform body turns?

Thanks again.

It's exciting going from the limited film format to the 3D arena where anything is possible!

Pat

Since Kinect is not based on x-rays, hands and feet tend to get lost when turning. For us though, the major obstacle was the limited FPS (30) and small space for moving (it is very hard to perform even a natural walk in such a short distance). With four PS3 cameras, arms get often lost, too, but I guess we'll just correct the positions later on in Blender.

The calibration (not used with Kinect) is the phase that I'm a little bit uncertain whether I've got it right. I hope it would be more scientific process, now it seems to me that the camera positions are being guessed correctly by the software (however there's no way to know for sure) but there's still some problem with the scaling. What I'm trying to say, that even four camera setup takes some time to do at first, I dare not even think how hard it would have been with six cameras. So, if you don't have time to learn everything by trial and error, and you can live with its limitations, I'd suggest Kinect.

A pleasant surprise was, that you can run 7 iPiStudios in parallel with a graphics card that has 2GB of memory. What was most surprising was that the speed was actually faster even with fewer simultaneous instances of iPiStudio tracking. For example, with one tracking process the pace was about 0.7 seconds/frame and with three simultaneous tracking 2.0 seconds/frame (= less than 0.7 per instance).

I love the idea of the Kinect, and the images look super steady. However, a 6 camera set up would be more practical to what I need to do. I'm not a patient person so the 6 camera set up may give me a headache, however I worry that the Kinect may be too limiting. I need to do stuff like what was in Dans Kabyle for a full length feature. Basically a smaller version of Beowulf.

I was under the impression that with the Sony PS3 Cams you didn't have to calibrate. Am I wrong in this thinking?

Pat

With multiple cameras you definitely need to calibrate. The process is relatively simple though. Here's an example of the process:

iPi Studio Calibration Video

That said, scene calibration is obviously more involved than Kinect, which is literally plug-and-play.

I use both systems, btw, and I'm finding that at the moment I use the Kinect more often but I still need to use the PS3 Eye system for more complex shots. Because the PS3 Eye system is more involved, I try to carefully plan all my PS3 Eye shoots to be done in a scheduled session like any live action shoot, where with Kinect I feel can shoot mocap anytime, 'on-the-fly' so to speak. The Kinect system is far more convenient to use, so if you're an impatient person I would recommend looking there first.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

I'm familiar with that video, but you helped by letting me know that only one camera height is needed. As a photographer and filmmaker I have the lightstands and background stands that I can use to hold the eyecams. In addition, I have a 20x20 space in my front room that I can use, so the only money spent would be the additional eye cams and cables ($16 per cam on Amazon). I like the simplicity of the Kinect, but my stuff will be complex so i may have to suck it up and get additional cams.

Thanks!

Pat