Hello everyone, sorry if this has already been discussed, I did a search and nothing came up.

Anyway, just as the title says, our only area that is big enough to record our motions is outdoor. When we try to record the calibration with the "Calibration" turned on everything is A LOT brighter and it did not turn dark like it is when recording in an indoor area. So my question is, what can we use for calibration and for the ipisoft software to track. I have seen the "Danse Kabyle - Making of Part 1" video where it shows what they used for calibration but I'm not entirely sure what it is and what they did after to track it. If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated and many thanks in advance.

I believe he used a 'mirror ball' in place of a Maglite, which can be larger and brighter and more suitable for shooting a larger area outdoors. After recording the video, he gained down the footage to make sure only the brightest element (the mirror ball) was visible. I think he did this in After Effects but any compositing or editing package can do that.

Hope this helps.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Great! thank you for the info and help Greenlaw. We'll go ahead and try that method and see if we can get that to work. Thanks again!

Would it also help a lot if we placed a black background while recording the calibration video just to make sure that the mirror ball will stand out more?

I've never actually shot outdoors, so I'm just guessing. I would think that so long as you have recorded a proper clean video, setting up a backdrop isn't necessary. Besides, I imagine that would have to be one crazy huge backdrop to set up just for calibration and probably impractical.

What I would avoid is shooting where there are bright white elements in the background, which might make the mirror ball appear 'invisible' to the tracker.

You also want to avoid dark cast shadows on the performer. I think most people who shoot outdoors will try to shoot when it's overcast or very early in the morning before you see any hard shadows and overly bright lighting.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Thanks for all the help Greenlaw. It's probably best to record the calibration video early morning like you said with the mirror ball. Will return and let you all know how it went.

Okay, so we found this to use for the calibration video and I'm hoping that It will stand out enough when recording outdoors. Now my question is to make sure that I can make it even stand out even more, what can I do, lets say in After Effects like darkening up the video while keeping the calibration object bright, any suggestions?

That's basically what I use as a mirror ball (silver one) for personal projects, and it's similar to what we used in the past at work to get lighting reference on set. (We now use a special camera to shoot HDRI, so it's no longer needed there.)

FWIW, I got mine at Big Lots a few years ago for about $5. We mounted it on a 1/2 inch dowel and it works great. When my wife was teaching lighting at Gnomon, she used it there for demonstrations.

Even though I never used mine for mocap calibration, I imagine it will work fine.

G.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!