Note: this will mess up your mocap...



This time it was Toullie. "Meow!"

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Okay, I have several tracked dKS motions now and I just finished applying iPi Studio's Configurable Jitter Removal to a few clips. I have to say, this mocap looks incredibly solid! The results are far superior to the data I was getting using a single Kinect.

This is fantastic guys! I can't believe this is still beta software. :)

More tomorrow. Right now I need to get some sleep.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

=)

Hi Greenlaw.. really good stuff.

Would you say the animations are more fluid using 2 Kinects over PS3 cameras?

It looks like the space is pretty limited still. Are walking animations and turns still out of the question with 2 Kinects?

Hi Avant,

Yes I think the 2 kinects are also tracking superior...

I can do spins turns walks and even breakdancing on the floor..

I am preparing a presentaion..

Cheers

Thanks!

I'd say the smoothness is comparable to what I got with four PS3 Eye cameras.

As for turns, you can probably do it if the Kinects are set wide enough apart to get good coverage. For comparison, with the PS3 Eyes, I used a semicircle configuration and was able to capture full circular walks with reasonable accuracy, so complete 360 coverage is not absolutely necessary for many complex motions.

I would expect some some occlusion issues with my current dKS configuration because the Kinects are not set as wide apart as they could be (because of room size limitation,) but so far I'm not seeing any occlusion errors. Admittedly, my motions for Happy Box are conservative and not designed to push the Kinect's limit. That said, by comparison I got a lot of occlusion errors using the single Kinect setup. I still see a little of that 'wobble' effect I mentioned earlier but it seems greatly reduced compared to single Kinect results. I'll know for sure once the new data is applied to the character and dropped into the shot.

I'm sure the capture space can be a little bigger than what's shown in my example but don't expect to do a lot of walking around. You might be able to capture a few steps and loop them in a 3D program like Motion Builder, Animeeple, or Jimmy|Rig Pro. For large capture spaces, PS3 Eye configuration is still the way to go.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Howdy Folks,

Heres what youve been waiting for...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdo2WT3mlhQ

Here I am getting great results and enjoying it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-7kU9bHGX4

Thanks and Cheers

Thanks.

Today I tracked a segment that required a lot of spinning in place while waving arms in the air. This was a shot that I felt would be a real challenge for the single Kinect setup, and probably for the dKS setup as well.

I had previously recorded this motion using a single Kinect, standing in place and faking the motions of turning around. The idea was that if I framed the shot so you didn't see the character's feet, I could cheat the body rotation in 3D. In practice, this trick worked well for the purpose of the film but I still wanted to see if the new dKS feature would allow me to capture this motion properly.

Even though the shot in the film is only a couple of seconds long, I 'rough tracked' a sequence that ran about 2600 frames, counting on the expectation that I could find in there at least two seconds of good motion to cut around. When the track was done, I was surprised to see that iPi Studio was able to track most of the footage with fairly good accuracy. There were brief moments were occlusion caused a tracking error (the 'hidden' leg or arm spazzing out,) but I felt some of errors could be easily corrected. A few times, iPi Studio was able to track a full turn perfectly.

There were a few moments where a pose 'broke' the rig's rotation limits. In these situations correcting the pose within iPi Studio is impossible. You may be able to correct the motion in a program like Motion Builder but most of the time it's easier to simply recapture the motion differently to avoid stressing the rig. For my purpose, I have plenty of good motion in this sequence to select two seconds from without bothering with any of the errors.

I can't show any of the footage until after my project is finished but I thought this info would encourage artists who were asking if this kind of motion was possible using iPi DMC and dKS. Short answer, sort of; the key is in camera placement. My cameras are not anywhere near 90 degrees, but if you have the space to be able to increase coverage, perfect tracking of full turns of many motions should be quite possible.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Just for kicks I took a shot at correcting all the errors. Surprisingly, I was able to clean nearly all the errors in the entire 2600 frames in just a few minutes by making rough adjustments, hitting Pose Refit, and then tracking backwards through the trouble spots. In fact, there was really just one spot where occlusion made it impossible to correct the motion but this error lasted less than a second. Not bad at for almost a minute and a half of constant motion . Rig stress in the hips and legs was still a problem in a couple of spots where the body was twisting, but I was more surprised that this error didn't occur more frequently. Overall, the results are looking pretty good.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!