I dont know if this was requested but it would be great to be able to give the solver keyframe helpers for when the tracking gets lots. Also, I know you can track forward or backwards but can you use them both? Like solve tracking forward and then backwards to refine the motion.

Thanks for listening,

Stuckon3d

Well as for the forward/backward tracking, yes. There's no official technique but I tend to track forward and, when something goes wrong, I move a few frames later, refit the pose and then track backwards. Most of the time it works, sometimes the transition between the two tracks isn't perfect but after a few iterations of tracking it helps a lot.

So that's more or less like keyframes... But having a way to place a few keyframes (and seeing them in the timeline ?) would be nice.

So do I. Thus you can treat it as "official technique" :)

Thank you Earlack and Andrew for the response.
So let me get this straight, if you track forward and then track backwards, does the tracking backwards erase the tracking i did forward, or does it enhance/refine it? Also, are you saying that if the tracking gets lost and you can pause it , reposition the skeleton and refit it, and then you can resume the tracking forward and backward? Thanks, this was very helpful.

Well maybe a definitive answer from iPi guys would be better, especially on how the soft does, but here are my observations :

Tracking backwards replace the tracked frames (it doesn't erase everything then track, but "paste" over it as tracking goes on. Don't know if what I say is making sense...). Now I don't know if iPi Desktop uses previous tracked data to help, but I had the feeling it did so in some cases. Or that may be just an impression caused by similar results on both tracking methods... ?



That's exactly what I do if I can monitor the tracking.

ok so I've tried pausing, repositioning, and going forward and backwards, and it works pretty good when all the cameras are able to see you, but im having one particular sword motion where only one camera can see one of my arms, the rest of them cant. This is where it would be handy to have those keyframe helpers, so that you can specify joints to tween between keyframes without trying to extrapolate from all cameras. Also , the keyframe helpers, would help the solver know where to end the motion is so if the tracking looks opposite to the keyframe helper, the software would try to get closer values from the keyframes.

Cheers,

Stuckon3d

PS: IPI guys, please let me know if im not being clear enough, I can try to give more details. :)

Thanks for your suggestions. We probably will be adding some kind of keyframe helpers in future versions. It is a complex problem because it can back-fire on less experienced users. When motion is captured incorrectly, this is usually due to occlusion or some other fundamental problem like incorrect calibration or lack of contrast between actor and background. In case of occlusion or incorrect calibration, it is recommended to re-shoot the video to correct the problem. Trying to fix such a problem by keyframe helpers can be very frustrating for novice users. From the other side, I agree that keyframe helpers integrated with iPi Studio can be useful for experienced users. Perhaps better approach would be to separate motion capture and motion editing (that is, have editing as separate application).

For now, we recommend re-shooting problematic motion or editing it in external app like Animeeple.

Oh! Does this mean something is in the works? That would be very nice. :)

G.

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