Software Designer Turns Kinect into Cheap Motion Capture Rig
It's out with spandex and in with motion controllers as a Dutch developer brings motion capture to the masses.
Jasper Brekelmans, a software designer who works for a company in Amsterdam that specializes in motion-capture and character animation, has converted a Kinect sensor into a cheap, but effective mo-cap rig.
Brekelmans' tool actually comes in multiple parts. The base program takes an image from the sensor and turns it into a 3D point could, which is effectively a three-dimensional map of the area. Using this information, the NITE middleware - created by PrimeSense, who also made the 3D sensor technology in Kinect itself - generates a 3D skeleton, and then streams it via a custom build plug-in to the Motion Builder animation software.
Brekelmans said that his tool is very much in the alpha stage, and is essentially just a proof of concept at the moment, but added that if a lot of people showed interest in it, he'd consider putting it on his blog [http://www.brekel.com/]. If Brekelmans does release it, it could be quite the boon for smaller or independent developers and animators, as motion capture can be prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. Obviously, the results won't be of the same standard as the proper equipment, but it will be still be a big step up for people who previously couldn't use mo-cap at all.
Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5725023/kinect-cant-just-read-your-motions-it-can-capture-them-too?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+kotaku/full+(Kotaku)]
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It's out with spandex and in with motion controllers as a Dutch developer brings motion capture to the masses.
Jasper Brekelmans, a software designer who works for a company in Amsterdam that specializes in motion-capture and character animation, has converted a Kinect sensor into a cheap, but effective mo-cap rig.
Brekelmans' tool actually comes in multiple parts. The base program takes an image from the sensor and turns it into a 3D point could, which is effectively a three-dimensional map of the area. Using this information, the NITE middleware - created by PrimeSense, who also made the 3D sensor technology in Kinect itself - generates a 3D skeleton, and then streams it via a custom build plug-in to the Motion Builder animation software.
Brekelmans said that his tool is very much in the alpha stage, and is essentially just a proof of concept at the moment, but added that if a lot of people showed interest in it, he'd consider putting it on his blog [http://www.brekel.com/]. If Brekelmans does release it, it could be quite the boon for smaller or independent developers and animators, as motion capture can be prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. Obviously, the results won't be of the same standard as the proper equipment, but it will be still be a big step up for people who previously couldn't use mo-cap at all.
Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5725023/kinect-cant-just-read-your-motions-it-can-capture-them-too?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+kotaku/full+(Kotaku)]
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