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You are having jitter even after applying JR, may need higher JR on all parts maybe?

I have no issues with JR at low setting, but most of my captures are dances with a lot of motion, but even less motion I don't use alot of JR, it takes away from the naturalness.

If you use Motion Builder, there are animation filters for smoothing, not sure about other softwares.

I guess if they tell you there is an issue with their JR, then it is, but I dont experience it.

Maybe only on Windows 8 and up OS.

JR removes just what it states, the jittering of the bones... TS is smoothing between frames for smoother transition between each frame.

Maybe iPi can help more with you issue.

Good Luck!

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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 with 5 on trajectory smoothing.

I got very good results, if you expect more than this then I am not sure what is being attempted, or what issue you are experiencing.

This is my experience: 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.

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

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As far as I seen from my playing with iPi, this is were the software shows it's limitations, on very subtle moves.

In the end, even with good tracking and calibration, the subtle moves will be undistinguishable from the overall jitter for the JR algorithm (even if the human eye can see the difference) and thus when you run JR even on the lowest settings, you will loose both the jitter AND the subtle move and sometimes you will get the feeling that the character is frozen for a couple of milliseconds. It's the type of detail you notice almost unconsciously. I don't think this can be avoided. Instead, try to correct this from acting. As you seen in Snapz movies, his actors are always in a state of motion, they do not fade in/out slowly to an almost completely stationary position with just subtle moves. The freezing will be mostly noticeable on the torso part, that will "stick" out so to speak. Try avoiding these movements for the actor, they will always produce freezes with iPi's JR no matter what.

The only way that I found to not have those freezes is to export the animation as it is (no JR no TF) to Motion Builder and use Butterworth (mostly) and the normal smoothing (less) on specific body parts and on specific time ranges. Also it helps to speed up the animation clip here and there to compensate for overly smoothed periods. Timing vs poses as it were :). Yes there is more to work like this but the end result will be better then iPi+JR+TF.

Another way would be to act out a bit slower and then speed up the animation clip from MoBu. It would be like increasing the "resolution" of the animation, it's amount of detail. But again, this means more work and also on the actor this time, but this way you can be a bit more aggressive with the filters because you can "live up" the animation by accelerating it. Btw this is just a theory, I haven't tested it yet :)

And even if the animation becomes too smooth, you can always go the extra mile and enhance the key poses with an additive layer and so bring the animation back to life. It's still better than animating it from scratch. Even animators using mocap systems costing hundreds of thousand of $$ don't expect to just use the mocap data as it is.

It would be nice if iPi would add an extra level of uber tracking for those "fidelity" obsessed among us :) , meaning 2x-3x longer tracking time with less jitter overall and higher fidelity on the subtle moves. I don't know if the algorithm can produce better results given more processing time but if it was a case of getting the best result of tracking time vs result fidelity, for what they thought the average user would need, I really wouldn't mind waiting the extra time. And I REAAALLY mean I wouldn't mind :)

I think it comes down the to framerate and resolution of the capture devices, and there's only so much iPi Soft can do about it. I imagine there's always going to be some noise variation from each device, which can cause the jittering that may override very small and subtle motions. In which case, you might be better off to just keyframe these tiny movements. IMO, there's really no reason you need to mocap everything--the work I've done in various productions has usually been a combination of mocap and keyframe, when using either iPi Mocap Studio or much higher end capture systems and data.

I think the broader (but still accurate) motions that iPi Mocap Studio captures should be fine most of the time. Naturally, this depends on the requirements of the production. For me, if I need slow and subtle, I'll just keyframe the animation and be done with it.

G.

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Yes, exactly, I don't really know what "subtle movements" are being referred to as far as the bone animation, I do get some of that from the Moves on the wrist movements, but I just handle that in editing.

I can't say I experience "freezes" in hips or any bones, but the tracking will sometimes jump to correct its self, sometimes can be re-tracked to fix it, sometimes nothing helps, just have to deal with it later, usually just some key reductions eliminates those areas.

The accuracy I get it pretty close to the actual performance and with the JR and TF setting I use, the export to 3ds Max or Motion Builder is very good and transfers well to any characters the actions are performed to be on.

I have used other higher end motion capture systems using more cameras during capturing with far less accuracy and more of a pain after export.

There will ALWAYS be some clean up and manual keyframing needed, I don't care the system, but for the program iPi has come up with is a pretty reasonable alternative for motion capture using an out-dated camera source of the PS Eye with a max. of 60 fps :) Works well for what I capture and I have shown some pretty complex capture actions with very smooth results and yes, there are small issues in the animation, but sometimes you just gotta let some things go that aren't that important to the overall animation.

The program has small issues, but no more than any other choice of system has at a much lower cost, in terms of price and production time.

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This

and I would add it's more then reasonable

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A test video of very slow motions, to try to show what iPi tracks and exports for "subtle" movements.This is full speed.

I have done, nor use any special techniques during recording or processing, I just do what I always do to perform and process the video, use the tools inside iPi Studio

before export, (usually I don't have to mess with too much correcting in iPi Studio), and do the rest in post processing in Max.

It is true it is a bit harder for the iPi program to track slower movements with high fidelity, it does better on regular to faster motions, so I wanted to try to demonstrate

this here, and with little effort make the characters animation much smoother.

Exported with JR run at 1 on all parts, using 1 on TF and final export with 5 on TF, as shown on the Biped skeleton.

The Biped is the actual unedited .bvh file right out of iPi Studio V3.

The character biped was edited with only key reduction and simple time sliding and appropriately placed sliding keys where needed.

This took 1 hr. in Max for this result, (I wasn't rushing though), after the tracking and processing time in iPi Studio that took approx 1 hr. to run and complete before exporting.

I didnt fix all the animation to show how some errors transfered diectly from the file to the character, but most was moderately corrected with good results.

All I used was key reduction and sliding, no adjustment layers, workbench, curve editing, bone adjustments or smoothing filters were added at all.

This is just a basic quick demo, of course it can be better very easily with more effort, but for the most part this should be satisfactory to show how simply this can

be achieved.

Link: https://youtu.be/tKuiHhWlDnA .. View in HD

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Well, don't want to sound picky, but there you are, the freezes I was talking about. There are frames where the torso of the character stops a bit abruptly and feels like he is frozen afterwards. Also there is a moment where he starts moving and he snaps a bit to motion (again, torso wise). As far as I've seen, those slight ease ins/outs are present before applying JR, but kind of have the same intensity as the noise to be honest. It's only normal that JR will remove those, as I said, it's an algorithm, not the human eye/brain :). And it's also normal considering the cameras used. I mean we can't compare a PS eye to some Optitracks or Vicons. Also those need track only markers, not the whole contour of the body and then translate that into bone movement.

And I found that using an export with no JR or TF applied with MoBu and it's workflow produces better results, with more work involved.

But I don't have a problem to extra edit the animations to get what I want out of them. Hell, even pro mocaps are sometimes reduced to basic keyposes and then the animation is rebuild based on those.

But like you said Snapz, for it's price iPi does a very good job.

P.S. : I will show some examples soon hopefully, because right now I'm only talking and not showing :). Need to have the final setup ... set

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A couple areas yes, but that was an example of very,very slow movement to try to make it happen, most normal/faster movements it's less apparent and easier to eliminate if

happens.

That was very limited editing in 3ds Max with only key reduction/time sliding, I could have used eased in and out and other smoothing a bit, I didn't even try and still showed

a reasonable result for a demo. for such slow movement, just wanted to show it's fairly easy to make look better with Max, even when the tracking is a bit glitchy.

A bit less overall control with other editors than MoBu offers for smoothing, many iPi users don't use MoBu, but practically any 3D editor can use key reduction/time sliding.

Really any game engine could freeze in areas longer than that, so even if animations looked flawless in the editor, the playback may drop frames in game and get areas

elsewhere, so a catch 22 either way.

Film use it could be a bit more noticable, but even then viewers probably wouldn't pick it up as much as someone who does animation, and with just a bit more time in editing

you wouldn't really notice those areas at all.

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Agreed but, this is an overall effect.

Yes it's mostly noticeable on very slow movements but it still happens overall, meaning that it dampens a bit the motion that is captured, even if it's very fast and ample.

I'm not trashing iPi over this I just want people to be aware of this and not blaming it on poor calibration or camera setup or whatever else.

It's just that to get the most out of iPi and have a really good result from it, animation work needs to be done. For some people, what iPi produces with it's default JR and TF is enough, for my needs is not. That doesn't mean I fault iPi but than again it doesn't also mean that this behavior is not there. I bet Yan saw this also and that is what's bothering him. I was just trying to clear things up a bit :)

And the best way to really work up the details is in MoBu. I know that most of the iPi users don't have this, but still it's the best way to get the most out of a mocap.

To sum it up I guess the workflow vs result quality would be like this:

iPi+JR+TF+Max (or blender or whatever equivalent)+no animation work --->decent results
iPi+JR+TF+MAX (or equivalent)+curve polishing (an hour or two) --->good results
iPi+no JR and no TF+MoBu(with it's filters and a good no. of hours of work) --->really good results