msulmanali wrote:
For IPI i am still confuse. Should i buy 8 ps3 camera? or 2 Microsoft Kinect?
It depends on your needs and your available shooting environment. The PS3 Eye config requires a lot more space and equipment than Kinect. You need to shoot in a area with flat/even lighting (mostly ambient.) When I shoot with PS3 Eyes, I shoot in a two car garage with three large softboxes. The garage is just big enough for wider half circle coverage but not nearly enough for a full 360. To make better use of this system, I really need a bigger space. Some users shoot outdoors when it's overcast or early in the morning before the sun rises, which is what I'll do the next time I need the PS3 Eye system. The trick is, you want to avoid harsh shadows as much as possible because they can confuse the tracker. PS3 Eyes also require specific clothing requirements. You will also need a small Maglite that can convert to candle mode for indoor shooting, or a white or mirror ball on a stick for outdoor shooting for calibration. (An over-sized plastic tree ornament works fine.)
In general, I avoid using this configuration because it's a lot of work to set up compared to the dual kinect set up. When I use dual Kinect, I simply run cables from my computer room to the living room, plug in the Kinects and I start shooting. Calibration only takes a few minutes using only a sheet of foam core board. No special clothing or lighting is needed for Kinect since the system is based on depth and volume rather than color video. The system requires less space than PS3 Eye, making it idea for shooting in a small room (like our living room,) but the downside is that the performance area is much smaller then PS3 Eye. (7 x 7 vs. 20 x 20 sq ft.)
The quality between the two is about the same if you're only using four PS3 Eyes. When you use six or more, PS3 Eyes can be more accurate. This is mainly because PS3 Eyes have a faster frame rate, but it's also a lot more data to move around and store.
Eight PS3 Eyes should provide the best quality but obviously it requires a very powerful computer system with enough controllers to handle all that data; you should also expect to need more diskspace to store all that data. I have a fairly powerful computer but, to be frank, it can just handle six PS3 Eyes, and I'm not sure it can also handle the three PS Move controllers at the same time--using eight PS3 Eye cameras on our system is out of the question.
The system I
prefer to use is two Kinect for Windows devices with three PS Move controllers (one for each hand and one for the head.) This is the easiest and most hassle free configuration that also produces reasonably high quality data. It would be nice to replace our Kinects with two Carmine 1.08 sensors but that's out of our budget. For our first film shot a couple of years ago, and our second movie currently in production, we've stuck to using dual Kinect. It's just easier and much faster to work with and the quality has been acceptable for our needs.
As for other hardware, you need enough active USB or USB repeater cables (not to be confused with USB extension cables, which are unsuitable for these cameras) for each camera. You can daisy chain multiple repeaters if you need longer lengths. You may need to add additional controllers depending on how many cameras you want to add. See the wiki for guidelines.
Any tripod will do if it has a quarter inch screw. I don't use a typical tripod--instead I use these very inexpensive lightstands from Cowboy Studios (about 2 for $25), which are heavy duty (they're meant to support lighting gear,) and they're MUCH cheaper than tripods. The only thing about these stands is that they do not have a panning head, but that's not needed for PS3 Eye camera or Kinect because the devices can rotate on their base.
You can buy Kinect-to-tripod adapters very cheaply if you shop around. I think I paid about $8 for each of mine.
For PS3 Eye, I like to drill through the metal plate on the bottom--if you peel off the label, you'll see there is already a hole in the plate. I drill it out a little bigger using a hard drill bit and then I tap it out and mod it using a Helicoil kit. A Helicoil kit is typically used to repair worn threads in a camera mounting hole and it works very well for converting PS3 Eye cameras for tripod use. Helicoil kit costs about $15.
G.
