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Blender Open Source Motion Capture Suit

13

NRK writes:

Have you ever wanted to make your own motion capture suit for $500 or less? Here's a tutorial on how to build it with all off the shelf components as well as all the code you need to use it. This suit is production tested and works well. Also included is a free blender AddOn that maps the captured motions of the suit in Blender to a character. This is a tutorial of the theory behind the suit so even if you don't want to build it, it's useful to know how the suits work and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

The code can be found at Github.

This suit was used in production by Project Spark Studio to make their most recent animated films.

About the Author

Nick Keeline

I am a 3D generalist and make my career in mechanical, electrical and software engineering. I play in the evenings at blender, 3d printing and programming. A few years back I developed the cloud generator in blender and like to 3d model and make.

13 Comments

  1. The topic is very interesting.
    Unfortunatly, the 3D Character Design was the badest design, i have seen so far (Uncanny Valley).
    But also the mocap data seems to be very inaccurate, with foot hovering etc...

    • Not trying to make the character look good, just using a LOW poly to speed up feedback on how the motions go... hence the duck face, meant to be REALLY UNREAL to avoid the valley, sorry it took you there:)
      Yes, foot and body location is an issue for ALL mocap solutions, not trying to sell you this suit, but show you how they work and expose their weaknesses so you know what you're getting into when you buy a commercial suit.

      • I understand your point, but from my point of view it doesn‘t represent all the potential, your mocap has.
        But also, I didn’t pointed out enough, that it is a great technical achievement! Congratulations for that!

        My criticism comes from my experiences, working in a production studio. Blender is a grafic suite (and the jobs are animation/grafic work), so things have to look good for production and have to convince the boss and at least the costumer.
        Changing to another characterdesign would improve the presentation of your hard work a lot.
        Maybe something similar like in „radical motion“? Or if you want Low Poly - more Minecraft style? Personally, i think a robot design would show the motion very good.
        For foot hovering etc., maybe there could be a program solution in the future - like with the rockoko Suites?

      • Hola es un tema principal para la animacion pero no entendí cómo se hace ya que solo esta en ingles.
        ¿ Cree que podría poner el procedimiento de creación al español ?

    • It is great technical work and big success.
      But from my point of view, it deserves a better representation and a more suited motion example.

      From my experience, (in my) studio and also freelancer wouldnt give it a chance, because it „dont look nice“.
      This is what my criticism intended.
      (PS: Try to avoid that strong language)

    • I know, right? NRK *clearly* explained his motivation, which was not to put XSens out of business, but rather to spread information.

      NRK, thank you so much for this. If nothing else, it will help people better understand their own commercial systems.

  2. For DIY is a great result. Probably with more sensors and averaging vector data values out of them the result will be more stable and accurate. Anyway... thanks for share the approach at least we have some proof of concept ready :)

    • Thanks, we've been using it for a while and I'm quite pleased, but hopefully now that I've opened it up someone can improve it, possibly by upgrading to a newer/better IMU or writing better algorithms and filters to improve the software.

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