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As to room size of 20' x 21' that is a good size, mine is 12' x 21' and I can only get a capture volume of 9' x 12' due to how I wish to potion my cameras for better results.
A minumum distance to cameras should be 2.5m from the edge of your marked capture volume, tape out where cameras can view on the floor, but can be a square or slight rectangle so you know your movement limitations of feet, arms can pertrude this are a bit without issue, but feet need to remain inside those markings or should.
Positioning of cameras, I suppose you are trying 8 cameras? should be in a circle config. with none at exact same height, best to have 4 crossing the actor at an angle and 4 higher around 8' looking down on the actor in a straight on cross config, (meaning 4 lower 1.2m - 1.8m in an X crossing the actor)(4 high in a + directly crossing actor at 90 degrees), those can all be 8' or a bit lower/higher, can be a bit closer in to actor also pointing more downward, this helps in keeping feet planted squarely on the floor for the most part and gives the depth of hip movement needed for good tracking.(forward and back and rotations).
I use only 5 cams and position them how I need them, positioning is upto your preferrence, with my setup, unless the performer actually sits on their feet I can capture almost every movement fairly well.
I also use different camera settings, much lower exposure (60) and much lower gain (12 -16 depending) a trick to camera setting is turn on and off the auto-gain, (after setting how you want), then move the gain slider up until brightens, then back down to where you like it. (Never go back to Home tab or click reset after done for each session of recording, or you will have to re-adjust everything again and run background evaluation again!) Of course, this depends on your particular room factors, yours may vary greatly, but all cameras should have same settings!
Just because you have a larger room, doesn't mean you need to use it all on every session, but if cameras are fixed positions like mine, yes, just leave them larger,
They claim you can have a 20' x 20' capture volume, but I can't try that large, but I do think it will make the performer much smaller and harder to track at that distance.
The cameras make the animation look like its in a larger area anyway once its tracked, if you look at the dancer I captured, she is only in an 8' x 8' area and looks like she is dancing on a stage much larger.
I don't know what you plan to use your animations in, but running for long distances isn't needed for most games, if in a film that may be different, but looping animation in a longer timeline can do wonders, with manual adjustments through it :)
The floor should be a lighter color, gray concrete isnt the best, I use different lighting than recommended, but have it set to work well for me, but just consistent lighting, doesn't need to be bright or directed right on the performer.
Once you figure out getting the calibration very close in all cameras, using better colored clothing, lighting and camera positioning, the program will do the rest pretty well with very little effort and it will fall into place for you.
I can only speak to my experiences, some may not agree with them, but I can show what I achieve, with limited cameras in limited space and I get what I want without a lot of frustration now.
The Move controllers are my biggest issue, as the dancers can sometimes out move the latency of them, but I adjust as needed, smoother moves, even if fast they follow pretty well, it's just the spinning and twisting the dancers do with their hands where it has trouble on accuracy.
Depending on your calibraton cam height used, this will affect your actors actual size in-scene, so your actor may need to be a bit taller or shorter depending or hips will push forward (not good) or feet will be off ground plane to far (to much on toes). With the adjustable bones now, adjusting actor to performer is much better now though, but this doesn't affect ground plane height to calibration to actor height, if you understand that.
Another thing to check first after refitting the actor, is to bring in the export rig you are going to use (i.e. 3ds Max, Blender, Motion Builder, even custom rig/ re-characterized), and overlay it on the actor and make sure it falls correctly on actors bones, it should fall very close to actual iPi rigs bones, if not there is an issue and your exported animation will be badly off.
JR can affect the appearance of your final animation yes, try to keep body parts as low as can get for the motions, less motion, more JR needed sometimes. To much and the animation becomes stiff looking, better to use less JR if possible and more trajectory smoothing. I use 3-5 on TS on export, depending on action and appearance in 3ds Max, my editor of choice, but I have Motion Builder also.
Good Luck with your indeavours, post if you have any other issues and I will try to help, you may not follow all this right now, but as you work more with the program, you will understand more :)
P.S.
On exporting the file to whatever extension, you will have adjustments and clean up, but try to limit that in iPi before exporting if you want, it is easy to bring in the character you want and run the animation and you can see where issues are going to be in advance, as not all characters will match the performers body and motions, pretty much guaranteed, even with advanced planning, but that may help.
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Last edited by Snapz on Fri May 22, 2015 6:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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