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Yes, looking much better, of course you will always have some area that need clean up in post, that's completely expected.

Yeah, no need to mess with the other camera settings other than the Gain and Exposure, 120 is default exposure, but I use 60 due to the setup of the lighting I use, you may not be able to do that unless you increase the Gain level, but not excessive, just until it lightens up the performer a bit and I turn off auto gain, just my preference.

You can smooth out those little glitches by turning the Trajectory Smoothing filter all the up before export, I haven't been in Maya for a while, but it has smoothing filters also, and you can play with the curves to smooth it out.

Much more natural action that you weren't worried with watching a monitor also.

Most of the time I have to track a video, add the Move data, Refine it, then I go back an run through the animation in slow motion holding the frame forward icon down, or using the > key, then when I see a glitch, I can isolate that area better and clean just that area up, usually just running Refine again, but sometime I have to set the timeline heads to just before and just after the section, and re- run tracking and the whole process just for that area, but on the JR and Moves data I add a few more frames to each end, 3-4, then run the JR and Moves again, it will mess up if you re-run them without adding those couple frames first.

Covering things in the background is a good step, I do that too, keeping uniformity makes everything work better with PS Eyes, not an issue with Kinects, but the tracked animation will be much better.

It is almost easier once you learn how to add your hand gestures and control the in and out inside iPi studio, it's best to put a symmetrical key, even if the opposite hand has no finger animation on it, but yes, you can do the same thing in other editors as well, but the in and out can be harder.

Looking much better though, glad it is making more sense to you now and working better.

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I meant to state in the prior post, the faster you try to track a PS Eye video by using Low Res setting, the more chance it will loose connection, even if everything is recorded optimally, and with you hitting near or above 6 fps, that's moving fast, so if you only have to stop a few times to correct things to continue tracking, that would be completely reasonable to me for those motions.

When you start to get into faster, more erratic and extreme motions, you may get more errors and may have to revert back to High Res setting in certain areas and take the drop in frame rate to get less errors, but you will learn how catch and correct things very quickly and continue on, that is if you are monitoring the tracking, which I recommend, but if you are going to try batch processing many short animations, (if on a Pro version license), expect more errors that probably will have to be fixed later.

You can also switch camera view during the tracking to let the system get a better view of a trouble area, but you may also have to reanalyze the actor colors, (this may or may not be needed, depending on how it tracks without), but try to always go back to the front view camera 1 after you get by the area, re analyze the colors again, and use that as your main tracking camera.

Yes, the hands are the hardest thing for iPi to maintain a lock on, so the darker gloves helped immensely.

That being said, I can see where iPi would have trouble to achieve the Kinect style fast tracking from just a video, Kinect has a point cloud that gathers data in the recorder in advance I would think, not sure though how it works, where a PS Eye recording can't do that, but even though at 6 fps, that is faster than where Kinect sensors tracked only a little over 1 year ago with my set up, so hopefully I can get an upgraded graphics card here shortly and boost my fps to that and see for myself.

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I've been busy with things and didn't get to experiment with ipi for a while. Today I bought 4 LED lights (long ones used for lighting a small room) and placed them evenly pointing towards the center of the capture area.

Oh boy did this help with the tracking accuracy! Even while tracking at Low resolution, there was NO errors on arms, legsn or feet. Before with regular ceiling lights only I was getting weird errors on feet and legs while tracking..feet twisting and legs not tracking well. and arms bending weirdly.. even at high rez.. but with the new lighting it tracked all the way through without a hickup. I'm going to do some more extensive test tomorrow, but so far these cheap LED lights do help in getting accurate tracking.

Here's ipi mocap applied to a model in maya playblast. No refining or hand error fixing. Just ONE forward tracking then standard JR applied then the movers on the head/wrists. Towards the end of the video when I'm approaching the computer desk to stop recording, even then it tracked my feet very well... (before the LED lights, when I approached the desk, legs/feet went all over the place twisted because cam1 and cam2 coudln't see my legs/feet.. but with lighting, other cameras caught it cleanly and tracked it perfectly)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQlmCMZ ... e=youtu.be

experimented with finger keyframing a bit but need more finger poses. How/where do you save the finger poses?

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There you go, looking much better overall now.

Are you still trying to track with head tracking off? I see that weird spine bend caused by this in the one area where you bend forward.

That is about as good as you will get the program to run with 6 cams, but it looks good to me, rest can be cleaned up later.

Hand poses are just set by bending the fingers to whatever position you want and under the Edit tab I believe, select hand, then copy selected bone with children, re-open Edit tab again and select Save Copied pose to file from clipboard, you save them to any file location in a separate folder for hand poses, then can recall them anytime later from there and add them, by selecting to add it from the Edit tab.

You can adjust the in and out position and speed from the ROI, black arrow slides position frame and dbl white arrow slides speed in and out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV8bjB4tsrU .. This video looks like character pops off the ground at some points, not sure why though.

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Yes I am tracking with head tracking off.. shaves off the time quite a bit so leave it off..
Since Im using movers for the head I left it off but If turning it on helps with better natural movement of the spine or in any other way I will leave it on. Also is shoulders from video option better than from the arms option? For me I when I track it with from video I get weird pops in the shoulder at times.. havent tried with the LED light.. Im going to do some more capture sessions with various complex movements today.

Yes the pop or lifting off floor on the other one was when I had no extra lighting and had to fix leg/feet tracking by hand..also was playing with height of the actor after it was tracked and it messed it up some how.

I wish I had a bigger place for capturing. Maybe I will try living room. Btw whats the most distance the actor can be away from the camera before tracking becomes unstable from your experience? I want to try capturing in the living room with 3 ps3 eye cams with camera sands for some motions that require actor facing only forward and walking towards the camera.. my wife wont like it if I make the cameras permanent (like I have done with my work room..wires all over the room). So Im going to buy some extra cameras and stands for temporary captring of actor movents that require physical shifting of position of the actor. It will be a pain in the neck to set up everytime.. but hey 3 wont be so bad.. heh heh

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I recommend leaving head tracking on, it does slow the tracking a bit, but it doesn't lock the neck or spine as it does with it off.

Shoulders by arm position is probably fine for simple actions, but movement seems to be more limited in all axis a bit more to me when I use it that way, just depends on preference I guess.

I have recorded with 4 cams, never 3, as I always now have one at 90 degrees to the performer for better depth of video, hip and feet tracking, but you can try 3, I expect issues with feet and hips though, try it out and see though.

Forward facing the cam I can get approx 20 ft away from front cam, but stay at least 2m away from it moving toward it and still track ok, depending on motion, walks and slighter action should track fine, but better to stay within like 4m x 4m area, or less for better results with less cams only pointing from front.

Just have to set them up with 3 and see how it goes really.

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I ran the theory of tracking with shoulders by arm position, head tracking on with Low Res speed on the latest update.

I just wanted to see the effects myself, as I haven't tried that way in a long time.

I saw a limit to the shoulder movement of course, no real major issues in the tracking process though, although it does seem to lock the clavicles to the upper chest more to twist as a single unit more.

After I tracked the take, I ran Refine without changing shoulder option and to me saw a bit of ticking in the upper chest and head, but not awful, just noticeable, to me anyway.

Then I re-ran Refine again, but I switched it to shoulders by video and saw if helped the upper chest/head ticks, and it allowed a bit more shoulder movement, and actually seemed to help on the arms penetrating through the chest on forward reaches with both arms as much, at least to where the breasts didn't penetrate through the arms.

I also did see less arm flips on over-extended reaches during the tracking, which was a good sign.

I will need to run it this way on a few more videos and see if it is a consistent process.

The Refine always runs a bit faster for me when using Low Res speed setting, and I did gain just a few tenths in fps during tracking, that's not as big of a deal as it helping limit the arm flips.

Your tracking being even faster anyway than mine, it really wouldn't affect the speed much anyway, but I did find it to be a feasible to track with shoulders by arm position and then Refining using shoulders by video, even on some pretty extreme motions, but did lack in some areas, but I will try to switch and track just those areas with shoulders by video when needed, then switch back and see how it goes.

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Ran a few more files as above, found it really isn't feasible for me to track with shoulders by arm position in the long run, the few tenths in fps gain isn't worth it.

I can deal with the few arm flip corrections needed with tracking arms by video for the motions I mostly track, but it was good to find out that for more simple motions it worked ok, as long as I ran Refining set to shoulders by video.

I personally was having an issue with the previous version update from Geforce drivers: 384.76

Caused severe fps tracking degradation, update to latest drivers if experiencing this also.

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