Setting up new system

[scottiedoo]

I would stay on the optical side with the type of system. But each one has advantages and such. I would ask yourself what type of motion you will mostly be capturing and finding a system that fills those requirements the best.

If you plan on capturing face, then you will most likely using optical markers on the face, so you will need cameras to capture that, unless your actor is sitting still, you will need fair amount of cameras to cover and get a decent usable data off the face. With that many cameras, then you might as well use optical markers.

The fingers are hard to capture well with any technology, one thing I think optical markers don't do well with due to how close the markers get to one another and can disappear easily from the camera's view. I haven't seen stellar results from any gloves as of yet though.

Things to ask yourself, how big of a volume do you need? What kind of motion will you be capturing, ie: lots of gymnastic type movements, or more standing and walking? Are you going to capture any props or other objects on the set? How many people are you going to capture?

Using those kind of questions will help you find out what the best software will get you the best results in the end. What is going to allow you to upgrade and expand if needed. What is the company relationship with the clients? Do they train to use their system? Do often update their software? Do they take requests from their clients on making improvements?

I am a fan of Vicon for several reasons and worked with their systems before and also another company which we switched from to Vicon.

Again, I don't think based on what your wrote so far that I can answer your question completely as it depends on the use and the goal of the system.

Good luck,
Scott

[smallone3d]

Scott

Thank you very much, many good questions. Let me give some description as to what we are doing.

Most of our characters are standing, walking. Nothing to fancy, no gymnastics or aggressive "action". Characters talking with each other and the viewer. A lot of hand movements and facial expressions.

Like I mentioned above, I have used Vicon's setup with 12 cameras and we always had a lot of cleanup to do with no facial capture. Of course it was a student lab and not the best constant setup, so it should be different now. I would be in charge of this new system and not to many hands would mess around with it.

We can do one character at a time, so no need for a large area to fit many actors. small props could be a possibility.

The client wants subtle facial expressions. We had been doing all with key frame animations (in max although i prefer maya :) but we did not have time for small subtle changes plus the game engine sort of makes animations a little dif. We will be updating to the latest Crytek engine and it does support some sort of facial animation system, but not sure how to integrate that into the pipeline or a stand alone system(I am vouching for this last option, it seems more customizable )

It helps just to talk with someone from the industry, By the way nice work over at Imagemovers and I like some of your maya scripts (the eye one will be helpful in my personal work :) thanks

cesar

[scottiedoo]

Yeah I can't speak on experience with non marker type systems, but I still see excellent results with a properly setup marker based system and has the years of proven development and testing.

I won't discuss the difficulties of getting good hand and face captures, that's another topic but I hope you are aware of the struggle and trials needed to get a somewhat useful capture that your client wants. I am not expert on facial capture, but there are a few lessons I learned in my brief time with it.

Again, I think you will have the most freedom to experiment and tune your capture studio with a Vicon type system. I worked with a Motion Analysis system too and it wasn't bad, but the software tools were many years behind compared to what Vicon had in their blade software. Just my opinion.

There are other ways to capture the face as well such as concepts of head mounted cameras that track dots on the face to other markerless systems, but usually are not fit for games.

The best people to know how many and what kind of cameras you need is the capture system company itself and follow their advice if you can afford what kind of setup they recommend.

There are other options as well if you are still not sure what kind of system to get. First, you could always pay another studio to use their system and capture it at their place rather than buying one for yourself. This is usually pricey, but it may give you an idea of what to expect and what you need if you decide to buy one. House of Moves is the Vicon affiliated studio that you can go there and capture on an insane volume and number of cameras. There are a few other independent studios out there as well that rent out their capture studio.

Another idea is most motion capture companies will allow you to try out their system in your own studio for a short amount of time. They want your business so they will most likely come over and set it up and show you how it works. Then you can eval it and if you don't like it, send it back to them. I'm not sure if there is a cost with this, but it may be worth it before you commit to one. If you have the time to do this, I would recommend it.

My opinion is that if you are going to spend a good sum of money, take your time and find a way to see it in action and if possible run the data through your pipeline before you sign the check and are stuck with an expensive sun lamp.

Thanks for your comments. That tutorial is pretty old, but its good for basic things. Wish us luck on our first feature coming out in a few months.

Good luck,
Scott

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