Optimal optitrack studio setup

[jmoodie]

We have an 8 camera system. What have other users found to be optimal capture studio setups? Is an all black or blue screen area with a specific lighting and floor required? And has anyone had any luck with any of the recommended truss systems? We've had several issues with our system, and I am looking for ideas on how to make our studio environment better.

Thanks for any feedback and what you've had success with!

[bsteagal]

Moodie:

I have an 8 camera system, and I'm running it with no issues whatsoever. What types of problems are you having?

Let me tell you my setup:

System is setup in my garage that has a lot of clutter (including things on the walls that have reflectors, like bicycles, etc). Walls are white, concrete floor (I pull out a mat every time I capture) One thing I don't have in this space are windows that let in sunlight (which causes a LOT of issues)

Cameras are installed about 10ft high on plastic security camera mounts that are fixed on the walls.(cost about 10bucks each) Cabling is suspended on the walls using cable mountings. Cameras alternate between horizontal and vertical setting. (normally, the 4 cameras on the corners are vertical, the others horizontal. My total capture space is about 9ft x 7ft. I've used this setup now for over a year without any issues.

I'm running Arena on a dell lattitude d630 2.19ghz, dual core, 2gb ram on windows xp, 256mb intel integrated video card.

I've also setup systems in locations such as tradeshows, and the biggest issue I've had is the type of lighting in the space. If you have a lot of sunlight coming in, or really bright lighting, sometimes this can cause a lot of noise.

If you can elaborate on the issues you are having?

thanks!

Bryan

[jmoodie]

Our testing environment is set up as follows:

We are currently using 8 cameras in a 12'x12' square. Cameras are mounted on the soundstage tripods sold by natural point. High cameras are at 8' and are in landscape orientation. Low cameras are at 6' and are in portrait orientation.

The setup is in a basement with no windows. The light (which we think may be a problem) is a single naked bulb on the ceiling in the center of the room which is apporimately just over the center of the capture volume. It is a 40w energy saver bulb.

We were worried that some of the clutter in the basement might be causing issues, but from your description and your success, it sounds highly unlikely. we put up some white plastic sheeting in the area behind the cameras to try to minimize this.

We are currently running the Point Cloud Calibration tool and the Rigid Body tracking toolkit on a Macbook 2 ghz intel core 2 duo, running windows xp in bootcamp with the .net framework updated and 2 GB of ram, and a 256mb NVIDIA GeForce integrated card. It is the standard MacBook currently being sold by Apple. I was worried that the windows xp on this machine could be causing the problem, but all our other windows software runs like butter on this machine, including visual studio 6.

Currently, our calibration is rarely, almost never, anything above fair on any camera. And our capturing is always bad with lots of ghost markers and flicker.

Question: Do you personally think an upgrade to Arena would solve any issues?

Thank you!

[bsteagal]

Moodie:

12x12 is only going to give you a 6x6 capture volume (you lose roughly half your space) The sheeting could be causing problems, especially if it is reflective in any way... Normally you would use the feature to block existing markers in your space before capturing, so that it blocks out any reflections or lights. If you want to cover things that might be causing problems, use something that is matte (like a bedsheet, towel, etc)

In that small of a space, I would use all your cameras in landscape and put the higher cameras further up if possible. Alternatively, if you can put the upper cameras at let say, 10ft, put them in portrait, pointing down, while the lower ones are in landscape... sometimes it takes a little work to get the right setup for you. I myself don't use the upper/lower configuration, I have all of mine set high up, pointing downwards

Your lighting is fine... i'm using 2 bulbs (that come with the garage door opener) and that does not cause problems.

If you are trying to capture a person, I would go ahead and upgrade to Arena, which is specifically built for that.

I don't think the mac is the issue, although I would recommend making sure that nothing else is running in the background, no virus software or additional software, nothing. If the machine is being taxed by anything else, you can get strange issues...

[jmoodie]

We were considering doing the ring with all cameras high. It just seems like you would get better coverage that way. But at the moment, we are limited to our tripods.

Unfortunately, for our quick testing, our cameras can't go higher. We're pretty much as high as they can really go in this environment.

Regarding how you have your cameras pointed: If using the ground plane and wand to center you cameras, how do you have your portrait cameras aligned and how do you have your landscape cameras aligned? Sorry to ask so many questions, I'm just really trying to eliminate possible problems one by one.

[bsteagal]

Moodie:

Not a problem! ask away!

Ok... since I have all the cameras roughly at the same height (as high as I can get them in my space) All the cameras are essentially pointing to the center of the space.

The ideal thing is to have your ground plane, the wand set to about waist high and then have an actor or something else to have a marker at the highest point that you need to capture (in my case, I'm rather tall, at 6' 2") and try to have all 3 visible in the cameras, whether they are set horizontally or vertically.

Now having them the way you have...4 high, 4 low. Try to have the 4 high see more from the waist up. The feet are important, but concentrate more on the waist up. (for example, you might have the ground plane almost going out of the area visible to the camera) The 4 low cameras need to capture more of the floor space, by setting them horizontally.. they will do this anyway. You might have to play around a little bit.. do you have more than 4 tripods?

If you have 8.. you might want to try setting them up high/low, but not on the same tripod.. so that you have cameras all around you, not just in the corners of your space (which is how I assume you have them?)



Does this help?