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Cute, I saw that a while back.

I found Kinects V1 weren't capable of tracking the motions I was needing or at enough fps for many motions, but some choose them for ease of setup.

The foot slide is really incurable with Kinect V1 once exported, (even with AMT checked), without a lot of extra work, PS Eyes using the AMT box solves a lot of it.

I haven't even tried Kinect V2, the way it has to be setup and used with multiple computers isn't for me, but I don't think I have seen any videos posted yet with tracking outcomes from V2.

They are probably more feasible for short takes with less action, but V2 looks to have been a bit more refined, I did try V1 and got OK results, but decided to just get the PS Eyes setup nicely and they seem to be working good for me, especially since I am only using 5 cameras in a relatively small area.

I would like to see the revised re-tracked version of that recording in iPi 3 :)

Dances run upto a lot of frames sometimes, even though I can cut and blend different shorter takes, I like to get a 45 sec to 2 min recording while doing it.

I just dump the trash in the beginning and end of recordings with the editor before I track them.

I will post more yes, I just wanted people to see what iPi is capable of with very little effort using (5) PS Eyes.

Thanks for the reply!

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Male Jump Style dance, recorded with Move controllers, some hand gestures added, (notice in recording below, performer was recorded with just T-shirt and black gloves for this).

All posted videos are done with Screencast-O-Matic, so small blips seen are from recorder frame drops, not present in tracking quality.

There is so much fast foot movement, looks like foot slide, but is really close to how the feet were moving.

Link: https://youtu.be/dVcKdX-Ivls

Character overlay on performer to show accuracy: http://youtu.be/KoWBZ3StWN4

Arms on characters may be shorter on some models, (this being a generic test character showing this), this is where post processing in an external editor of choice plays the main role.

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This is the Raw BVH File Export for Biped from iPi of the above dance, View in HD.

Only edit done was an adjustment layer for the head, it always comes in Max looking up too much, no matter how it appears in iPi, no big deal.

Basic loop to show how the BVH data transfers to Max.

From this point there is very little clean-up needed when applied to a character file with a Biped skeleton, or send to Motion Builder and plot to any character.

Link: http://youtu.be/_IroFa6I6FE

It is smoother, remember Screencast-O-Matic Free drops frames during recording, but it shows well enough.

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question to op:when moving slowly is there shaking/trembling? however your fast movements are captured perfectly!

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I ran a quick test to see if less motion gave more jitter on my Windows 7 machine running (1) MSI GTX 750 Ti OC, using 2 Move controllers in hands.

This is tracked with all boxes checked, shoulders by video and very flex dancer spine.

I ran JR on just 1 across all parts and 0 on the trajectory filter.

Played back with 5 on trajectory smoothing.

I got very good results, I am not sure what is being attempted, or what issue you are experiencing.

This is my experience on just a quick test: View in HD

Link: http://youtu.be/aVpDs1QHvVA

Same file directly exported to 3DS Max, no edit in iPi or 3DS Max, except to bring the head down a bit, as stated before it always comes in looking up a bit too much.

This was a quick test, forward tracked 1 time, Move data applied and JR ran, exported with 5 on trajectory filter, I can get better with very little effort though.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2ySbanoAJg

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^^yes it's acceptable,I think if the movement is too subtle to accurately captuered by ipi,we better make the character keep still .

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It just depends on the movements, as what you mean as subtle, the hands do glitch a little in still or minimal movement, moving the ROI to just that area and running more JR for the arms may help, this can be done on any area of the ROI that you experience more jitter on subtle action for any body part and not affect other areas.

Motion capture from any program is just a base from which to use the animation, there is clean up and adjustments needed to work with different character meshes, even after final export from any program, especially if the charater is armored or is of a smaller/larger size. Unless you can get the performer to consistently remember the character he is acting for to be applied on, (this is almost impossible for even a short 30 second capture), but it is an option.

I can't go any lower than 1 on the JR at 0 Trajectory Filter for lesser movement actions, unless I went to motion builder and used its animation filters, but for most actions, the iPi filters work fine for me.

I choose to export my animations with 5 on TF, as my main 3d editor is 3ds max and it has limited smoothing capabilities for mocap and 5 works well for me.

If you don't use Move controllers for the hands, you may get more uncontrollable jitter from the algorythm, but in my experience even without them the results are pretty good.

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I know what you mean...the characters in our 'Brudders' films have short limbs and big heads that are a third of their entire body size--acting to those proportions is tricky without a lot of body penetrations.

But I also think acting to weird body proportions is kind of fun. Challenging yes, but fun. :p

G.

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Wow, Great work here Snapz, thanks for sharing your knowledge, Do you use jitter removal first then refine?

Also do you ever refine backwards as well?

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That was done with PS Eye setup, so a bit more stable tracking.

I do it like this, just because, no reason really:

Track Forward, Add Moves Data, Sometimes Refine Backward (not always, but I always run Refine Backwards yes), JR on 0 for torso when motions allow it (less motion requires set to 1), 1 on all other parts, TF on 0 for JR, export usually at 3-5 TF. Clean up whatever on export. (I also use different JR settings if really needed in specific areas of the ROI, not often, but in some areas it's needed).

When using the Kinects, I do it same way, but always use Refine Backward, it's just better with the Kinects, even KV2, and the processing time is much faster.

The way you choose to order applying probably doesn't matter all that much, I just do it that way for one reason I had an issue with the Move controllers not applying the data well and Refining helped and also helps if you make any manual corrections in iPi first, many may choose to let corrections go and use an alternative editor, depends on the severity of the correction at the time to me. I don't always need to use RF, it's another processing period, if I can do without, I do.

I found that the BT adapter I was using (IOGear BT400 on Win 7 OS) was the root of all my Move controller issues, since I upgraded to Win 10 and had to get an ASUS BT211, (luckily I found one fast), they are working great.

I just exported the KV2 dance I posted as a BVH and running/recording a video in Webanimate, with my filter settings, with no filtering raw data, and using ACP on both to show what I see when I use Webanimate on my files.

All I usually use Webanimate for is to make corrections to whatever character I load the animation on, as all characters are different, but the iPi export is usually very clean, so ACP isn't even needed, unless I need a major correction where the solver would come in, or I just want to a make more extreme motion look to some areas, other than that, the imported look of the animation usually looks really good, I don't even need to use the foot and toe penetration feature, it really doesn't do anything, the feet are usually very good with the PS Eyes.

With the 1 KV2, I can get 360 degree rotations pretty good, with a little resetting and back tracking and fill in if needed, but I always could also with 1 KV1, was just a bit more finagling to get it good.

I just stopped using the KV1's all together once I got my Eyes set up well, I can do it all with them at a faster frame rate, although the processing time is greater, but I would rather let iPi studio perform it after a good tracking and go do something else, rather than sit and correct them manually in an editor, just my thinking, as iPi does a good job on base filtering out flaws for the most part.

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