New additions have been made to one of the most popular (if not the most popular) markerless motion-capture software, iPi Soft. The design tool is a remarkable piece of software that allows for motion-capturing without requiring any markers whatsoever. The tool kit has been updated to include additional support for up to eight PlayStation Eye devices and multi-person markerless capturing.
First up, let's talk a little bit about this multi-person 3D markerless capturing. This is a huge, huge, huge thing. To explain it in simple terms, most motion capture studios that capture multiple actors or persons at a time, do so using expensive tracking suits and a huge studio filled with dozens of tracking cameras. It's as expensive as it sounds and usually these studios work as middleware contractors, such as Animation Vertigo, which is a Philippines-based studio that handles a ton of motion-capture work for many AAA studios and just about any major game brand that you can think of.
The highlight of something like iPi Soft is that it completely does away with the requirement of camera sensors or mocap suits. Instead, the toolset works seamlessly with just two Xbox 360 Kinects or with a couple of PlayStation EyeToys. The software is able to read data from an actor as the dual Kinect sensors pick up the space, depth, height and projective movements from the actor in a complete 3D space. It's a brilliant tool kit that is available to anyone for a very low price.
The update to iPi Soft that enables multi-person 3D motion-capturing means that multiple persons can be filmed in a scene at a single time and it can add a lot to cinematic scenes for games and cut down on a lot of time for anyone using iPi Soft as a motion-capture solution for their project. This would be absolutely ideal for any low-budget game studio or indie developer who wants to add high-quality animations and cinematics to their game without having to break the bank to rent a motion-capture studio or hire a third-party to do the filming for them.
In addition to multi-person motion-capture, iPi Soft has also added the ability to read from additional PlayStation Eye devices, with up to eight devices working simultaneously to capture in-depth actor movements and actions.
Michael Nikonov, iPi Soft’s Founder/Chief Technology Architect commented on the new multi-person feature, additional EyeToy support and the new Batch Processing mechanics in iPi Soft, saying...
“Almost since the day we introduced iPi Motion Capture, our customers have been asking us to add multi-person functionality to capture even more sophisticated motion,” ... “The new multi-person tracking feature will initially support up to two actors, requiring five to eight Sony PS Eye cameras or two depth cameras (such as Kinect or Xtion). We’re proud to offer this improved capability to industry professionals, students and enthusiasts to help them realize their creative potential without limitation.”
The middleware toolset has also been optimized for multi-GPUs, with an increase in tracking speed by up to 40%.
You can get the latest version of iPi Soft right now from Steam or learn more about the middleware toolset by visiting the official iPi Soft website.
