custom advance face rig working!!

Alessia8086
Posts: 46
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2011 7:06 am

custom advance face rig working!!

Post by Alessia8086 »

Thanks for the great technicall support and especially to Michael Board, we finally found a reliable solution for our performance capture.
51 markers solution its very usable and work pretty stable, the post work its reduce almost to zero too.
We will post shortly some new stuff, videos and some behinde the scene.
Thanks again for the help

p.s.
now we only need the new build to be built to a more stable custom template rig and this system will rock da house :)

Alessia
NaturalPoint - Mike
Posts: 1896
Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2011 8:41 am
Location: Corvallis, OR

Re: custom advance face rig working!!

Post by NaturalPoint - Mike »

Alessia -

I'm glad we were able to get everything sorted out for you. I saw a bit of what you'll be driving with the rig during the troubleshooting process, and I can't wait to see the finished product. Let us know when it's done!
farstar
Posts: 140
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:26 am

Re: custom advance face rig working!!

Post by farstar »

Alessia,
That is great news to hear you got your issues resolved. What was causing your issues and what was the reliable solution?
Jack
NaturalPoint - Mike
Posts: 1896
Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2011 8:41 am
Location: Corvallis, OR

Re: custom advance face rig working!!

Post by NaturalPoint - Mike »

The eventual solution required a heavy mix of calibration technique camera placement, and camera settings to get a solid point cloud. Once that was done, it was a matter of experimenting with the template and manually assigning it to the pointcloud. We also found that if you manually assign the template on the second frame, then back up one, you have a much better chance of trajectorization not breaking the template.
Alessia8086
Posts: 46
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2011 7:06 am

Re: custom advance face rig working!!

Post by Alessia8086 »

yes exactly, seems that even with a heavy pointcloud if the template its poused and moved back in place manually ( something we where not even considering ) the resulting template its much more stable and allow a very fast and usage :) now moving too the body..
farstar
Posts: 140
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:26 am

Re: custom advance face rig working!!

Post by farstar »

Sorry to say but that is pretty shy on explaining what you actually did to get things working.
1. calibration technique. Thats great what did you do differently than before?
2. Camera placement. what was the change in placement?
3.Camera settings to get a solid point cloud. Ok great what settings did you have before and what are the new ones?
4. Manually assigning the templet ot the pointcloud? how is this done? is there a video explaining this so I can get up to speed on what you guys are talking about?
Thank you
Jack
NaturalPoint - Mike
Posts: 1896
Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2011 8:41 am
Location: Corvallis, OR

Re: custom advance face rig working!!

Post by NaturalPoint - Mike »

Camera coverage was improved by moving from 6 to 10 cameras, then bringing the cameras closer, into a tighter circle. This was key, as it increased overlap in camera coverage across the face rig so multiple cameras could see every marker at all times during the capture.

Camera settings were optimized for close-up, facial capture (lower intensity and exposure and higher threshold to reduce unwanted IR reflections off of the face). I can't remember the exact settings, but it was somewhere in the range of Continuous IR, 3 Intensity, 15 Exposure, 230 Threshold. In large volume applications, you want to edit Exposure first, then Threshold, then IR Intensity. But in close up face volumes, editing Intensity at the beginning is recommended, because the default illumination of the V100:R2 camera is more than is needed for face capture.

During wanding, we made sure that the all cameras had sufficient samples, that the samples covered as much of the 2D camera view as possible, and that the complete capture volume was wanded. We ran the calibration on Medium until all results were exceptional, switched to High until all results were exceptional, then switched to Very High and continued until we had all exceptionals. This calibration yielded residuals on markers well under 1mm. (This technique of stepping the calibration quality up from Medium-->High-->Very High can help it converge if it struggles when starting with Very High. It can be done in real-time, during the calculation phase.)

When doing the facial motion capture, we had to experiment around a bit with marker placement and template construction. Additionally, we had to manually set the template for playback and trajectorization to prevent breakage. You can see a quick video showing how to do this here.

If you go to the first frame, reset the template, move it into position, then advance forward to the second frame, it should solve. You can then backtrack it to the first frame and trajectorize without breakage.
farstar
Posts: 140
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:26 am

Re: custom advance face rig working!!

Post by farstar »

Mike,
Now that was great information. Thank you very much this is going to really help me out.
kitesflyer
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Jun 16, 2011 12:45 am

Re: custom advance face rig working!!

Post by kitesflyer »

Hello
Mike,thanks for your support,the thing is that I am very new to this mocap thing and I am using Arena recently,can you please explain this part "We ran the calibration on Medium until all results were exceptional, switched to High until all results were exceptional, then switched to Very High and continued until we had all exceptionals" in this part are you talking about the calculation part or increasing the data point thing?.I am not being able to understand the term 'exceptional' all I know in arena is Excellent.Can you please explain in a bit detail.

Thank you
Siddhartha Dutta
NaturalPoint - Mike
Posts: 1896
Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2011 8:41 am
Location: Corvallis, OR

Re: custom advance face rig working!!

Post by NaturalPoint - Mike »

Not a problem.

When you start the calculation process (after wanding), the system will display a table in the bottom right corner of the screen that shows each camera, and the information associated with it. As the mean error for each camera drops, a value is associated with it. In ascending order:
Poor > Fair > Good > Great > Excellent > Exceptional

Exceptional is the rating given to a camera when it's mean error is at or below .150.

At the same time, at the top of the screen is a drop down with an option for calibration quality. Default is medium. When you start running, just leave it as is until all cameras read exceptional. If your wanding was good enough, this should not take too long (a few minutes). Once they are all exceptional, don't apply the results! Instead, you can go to the quality drop down, and change it from medium to high. Repeat for very high.
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