Hi all,
I’m new to this forum and I have a problem with creating a working markerset for my actor. Let me start from the beginning.
I want to use live mocap data to animate an avatar in Vizard. We have a network of three computers: one computer with Dtrack installed, one with MotionBuilder installed and one with Vizard installed. We have an optical tracking system which delivers coordinates to Dtrack. Using Dtrack listener (the plugin for MotionBuilder), MotionBuilder receives the coordinates from Dtrack. However, the standard settings of Dtrack listener’s setup is that it uses the Dtrack ID of the bodies and the number of bodies is set on 12, whereas we have 20 bodies. Therefore, I always change the 12 into 20. When I turn Dtrack listener online, all the 20 bodies are automatically named like this:
Hips
Head
LeftShoulder
RightShoulder
LeftArm
RightArm
LeftPalm
RightPalm
LeftLeg
RightLeg
LeftFoot
RightFoot
LeftHand
RightHand
‘blank’
‘blank’
Body_16
Body_17
Body_18
Body_19
and the coordinates of each body are displayed. However, the names of the trackers don’t correspond to the bones they will be animating. For example the tracker with the name Hips is the tracker for the headbone of the avatar in Vizard, not for the hips.
After I created a model binding, I add an actor to the scene and align it with the data from the trackers. After that, I create a Markerset for the actor and put all the tracker on the right place of the body of the actor (so I drag Hips to the head of the actor). All the trackers are oriented and after that I activate the actor. Here’s when the problem arises. I can’t just link any tracker to a specific part of the actor’s body. For example the tracker with the name RightShoulder is the tracker for a participant’s left hand. However, if I link RightShoulder to the left hand of the actor, the hand of the actor won’t move with the tracker. Is this because tracker RightShoulder should be used to animate a right shoulder? Or does the problem lie in something else?
The movements of the actor are linked to an avatar and the Live Characters plugin is activated. When I run the Vizard script, the animations of the avatar in Vizard are the same as they are in MotionBuilder. So the last step to animate the avatar in Vizard is not the problem, it is linking the trackers to the correct bodyparts of the actor.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! If the problem is not clear enough, I could try to make it clearer, but for now I tried to make it as clear as possible. Hope to hear some advice!
Thanks!