Anyone uses Jimmy Rig for animation?

[lreyes]

I am a little leary about using Jimmy Rig, as I did use a trail version months ago. I was wondering if it was worthwhile to use it. Does anyone have it? and how to I get a hold of the company that makes it?

[lreyes]

Thanks Megalodon, I am going to use the lite version as I do not know how to use mocap files yet...or even if I have the equipment for it

[Greenlaw]

For me, Jimmy|Rig is just fun a toy until they enable .bvh import (in the Pro version,) but at least one user has found the current version useful for production:

http://www.littlebigtree.com/wingsandflowersadvert.cfm

You can read about it at the J|R forums from this link:

http://www.origamidigital.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=158

I haven't used J|R for several weeks. The last update featured major improvements but it also seemed to have a lot of problems (at least on my system.) I'm hopeful that they will fix things soon, and finally get to working on the beta for the Pro version.

I'm planning to use J|R on some personal projects sometime in the future, and maybe even some previs animation at work, but for now I'm focused on using iPiSoft's Desktop Motion Capture to create motion data for programs like J|R. Once the bugs are worked out, I think the combination of these two programs would be a natural for homebrew and other small productions.

Greenlaw

[cresshead]

http://www.ipisoft.com/gallery.php

pretty amazing stuff..are you on the beta yet?

[Greenlaw]

http://www.ipisoft.com/gallery.php

pretty amazing stuff..are you on the beta yet?

Yes, I've been testing it since last summer, though not very regularly because setting up a DMC session can become a production in itself.

Overall, the software is in its early stages, but it's promising. The nice things about it is that it's fairly inexpensive and because it's a markerless system, you can wear normal clothing. (Actually, there are a few simple rules about the ideal clothing, so I should say 'mostly normal'.) If you're interested, here's how it works:

There are basically two software parts to this mocap system: Recorder for capturing a session, and Studio for tracking the motion to a rig.

With Recorder you capture video using up to four synchronized USB web-cameras. iPiSoft recommends a certain Logitech camera which costs about $60 to $80 per camera. Technically, you can use other cameras, but this is what they test with. In my opinion, go with the Logitechs and don't mix different models--creating mocap data is already complicated enough, so keep the 'unknowns' to a minimum.

You can get decent results with three cameras, but four is more accurate. Recorder can run on most laptops--I can capture with four cameras on an old duo core laptop just fine. You'll also want a few USB repeater cables to extend the distance of the cameras.

There's a lot that can go wrong during a capture session, but if you're careful, it's not too hard to do. I won't go into details, but basically you record a calibration scene by waving around a standard Maglite (in candle mode) and touching at least three points on the ground. This only needs to be done once. When you're done with calibration, you can record your action scenes.

When you're done with the video session, you're ready to do the motion capture. The second program, Studio, requires a fairly powerful computer with a beefy consumer video card, so keep that in mind. (My laptop is inadequate for this next part because its graphics card is too old.)

When I'm done with a Recorder session, I bring the footage into my work station and cut it down to manageable clips. When that's ready, I launch iPi Studio. The first thing you do in Studio is load the calibration clip. During calibration, Studio tracks your Maglite in 3D space and attempts to position the virtual cameras to match the real ones. You can give it hints, like the height of each camera from the ground.

If calibration is successful, you can then bring in your action video for motion capture. This part is fairly straight forward; you position the program's rigged character over your video actor, lining it up in the each viewport. This is a little tricky, but not too hard as the rig does have ik built in. The program then tracks the video and fits the rig to match the actor's position. If the iPi gets a track wrong, you scrub to the point where it starts to drift, manually make the correction, and restart the track from that point on the timeline. When it's done, you can export the data as .bvh, collada, Poser, and other formats.

One of the reasons I haven't been testing consistently is that the calibration process used to take a very long time to complete, and if it fails, your whole session is hosed. This happened to me a couple of times with older version of the software. The latest version however, uses the GPU for calibration and the process is supposed to be considerably faster now. In fact, the software uses the GPU for its motion tracking too, so there should be speed improvements all around. I haven't tested the latest version yet, but I will this week. I'll also make sure to do at least two different calibration scenes.

Some other issues to consider:

Because the software is a beta product, there are some things it doesn't do yet, like it capture motion data for head and hands. Personally, I don't find this to be a big deal because I may want to keyframe these bones to the camera anyway, but iPiSoft does plan on adding these features later. For that matter, they're planning to add face capture too, though probably not in the first release.

The supervised tracking described above is currently very primitive, and you may have to some tracking errors in another program, but iPiSoft says they intend to beef up the manual tracking and editing features for the final release. For now, I believe they're still busy optimizing GPU processing.

Shooting space is something else to think about. I did my first tests at home, and while we have a fairly big living room, my useable acting space turned out to be about four square feet. A month into testing I arranged to shoot a session at work in our big 'cafe' area, but then I found that even with three bright softboxes, it was tricky to light a larger area and keep the lights out of frame for four cameras. (Bright lights in frame can confuse the tracker.) I learn a lot from each session though, and I expect the next one to go much more smoothly. My next test will probably be in my garage (if I can find time to clean it out,) and I hope to turn this space into a permanent DMC capture space.

iPiSoft has a good offer right now: you can buy the beta software for $495, which includes an upgrade to the four-camera 'Pro' version, which will normally sell for $1450 when it's released. You can also try the beta for free for a month to see if you really want to take the plunge. To be honest though, motion capture at any level requires quite a bit of dedication, so be sure you understand what you're getting into.

I'll post some results when I have something I'm not too embarrassed to show off. The few mocap clips I have now are interesting to me on a technical level, but they really wouldn't impress anybody else. :)

Greenlaw