VizWorld.com

It’s been a while coming, but NaturalPoint is now shipping the new OptiTrack V120:Duo and V120:Trio tracking bars.  IF you havne’t seen these bars, they’re a great IR-based motion tracking solution that combines an extra camera for capturing real field vision, making it a great tool for augmented reality uses where you can track objects in 3D and then overlay them onto live video, all captured from the same piece of equipment.

“We utilize motion tracking as a tool for interacting with complex 3D objects in our immersive visualization systems,” said Julien Berta, vice president of Technology and Innovation at Mechdyne Corporation®, and an early adopter of OptiTrack’s tracking bar technology. “The OptiTrack tracking bars are ideal for our needs as we integrate head, joystick and glove tracking into our systems, all of which require precise, low-latency data to ensure a natural experience.”

The new system is one of the most exciting motion tracking systems available, and you can get it noe for $1,899 or $2,499 complete with tracking software and compatibility with OptiTrack’s other systems like the Insight VCS.

Get all the details after the break.

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Hardware motion tracking, naturalpoint, optitrack

Green Lantern featured hundreds of aliens, several of which had important speaking roles in the movie.  Animating each of these individually and realistically would have taken months of time, but thanks to some new facial capture technology from Mova, they were able to accurately track real actor’s faces.

“We create more facial data than people are used to getting,” said Pearce. “In markers you can get maybe 100 or 150 data points tops, and we are giving people hundreds of thousands of points of data,” requiring the FX house to come up with a process that can use the exceptional amount of information and Mova to decide what data needs to be sent.

The article gets surprisingly in-depth into the workflow and technology, and makes a great read.

via CGSociety – GREEN LANTERN.

Graphics motion tracking, mova, movie, vfx

The Pixel Farm has just announced the newest version of their industry-leading camera tracking & matchmoving app, PFTrack 2011.  Already setting the standard for motion tracking, the newest version adds support for their new node-based flowgraph and tracking of deformable objects, among other features.

The acclaimed Geometry Tracking functionality of PFTrack has been enhanced to support tracking of deformable objects, such as an actor’s face while speaking, in addition to solving camera and rigid object motions. Since the track is accomplished using the tracking geometry’s vertices as opposed to point or pattern trackers, Geometry Tracking in PFTrack 2011 conquers many of the typical pitfalls that plague conventional tracking operations such as glints and highlights. Image Modelling and Texture Extraction nodes generate detailed geometry for scene fitting, shadow boxing, and set reconstruction. A set of modelling primitives can be positioned in 3D space and edited to match the image data, or new models can be constructed. Per-pixel Z-Depth extraction now supports masks, used to specify the relative depth ordering of objects in the scene, producing a grey-scale depth map image and triangular mesh geometry. Reengineered Optical Flow tools calculate dense optical flow fields describing the apparent motion of objects relative to the camera plane, and features retiming of clip and motion data to increase or decrease the apparent frame-rate of the camera. Retiming after a camera solve will also retime the camera solution, meaning shots do not require a re-tracking do to editorial decisions later in post production.

It’s available today for $3,300 USD.  Read the release after the break for all the details.

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Graphics motion tracking, pftrack, pixelfarm

OptiTrack will be demonstrating a pair of new motion capture systems at GDC2011 this year, both offering full 120hz tracking with 6 degrees of freedom, all for under $2000.

Designed for desktop-friendly motion capture, the Duo and Trio offer the power of multi-camera, six degrees of freedom (DOF) object tracking in a single, plug-and-play package. Each tracking system is self-contained and factory calibrated for out-of-the-box tracking that is simple to use, but still offers the leading accuracy and flexibility of optical tracking technology.

What I really love about this new offering is the new V120:Trio (shown above).  This bar combines two “sensor” cameras for 3d tracking (on the ends) with a traditional color camera in the middle.  This makes it perfect for augmented reality type applications that want to track objects accurately in 3D space and combine it with live video of the space.

These sensor bars are used widely in image guided surgery applications (Where I used to work), currently dominated by NDI (Northern Digital). Offering similar technology at a vastly lower price point could really revolutionize a space (biomedical) where budget constraints are becoming a bigger issue every year.  The biggest question is the accuracy.

Get the full release after the break.

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Hardware "motion capture", motion tracking, optitrack

The folks at The Pixel Farm have released the latest version of PFhoe, version 2.2.  PFhoe is a match moving package used for converting live video into backgrounds suitable for inclusion in CG animation.

PFhoe provides a great place to start when tracking shots and learning the ropes and PFhoe’s Tools like the unique Import Wizard guides you through importing and setting up your footage by explaining the parameters that are needed to successfully track a shot. The simple one click tool set provides an environment even the most inexperienced user will get great results from.

Available for as little as $99 via their online store, it’s a must-have for anyone doing Video/CG Compositing work.

PFhoe.com.

Graphics motion tracking, pfhoe, pixelfarm, software

Over at TheWrap they have an interview with Joe Letteri about the processes and technology involved in Avatar, and they get into the details of how they tracked the actor’s faces for animation with the Na’vi models, and how they merged the actual actors with the Na’vi models to create unique and recognizable faces.

But “Avatar” didn’t use dots glued on the actors’ faces.

No. For “Avatar,” we needed something that was quicker than all the markers on the face, so Jim came up with the idea of having a helmet-mounted video camera. But we needed a lot of software, then, to figure out what the face is doing, and how you translate that back to what the muscles are doing. And we applied that not just to one character, but to seven main characters with speaking parts, and other 14 secondary characters that also had some dialogue, and then another couple hundred for the tribe. They’re all singing and chanting, and we never knew where Jim was going to move the camera.

via ‘Avatar’s’ Effects Whiz Talks Shop | The Wrap.

Graphics avatar, face, interview, motion tracking, movie, vfx

Take one engineer with a penchant for motion tracking systems, one race-car driver with some spare time, a cherry picker, and a PR firm looking for a viral video hit, and what do you get?  Toyota’s latest idea the “iQFont”.  Pierre&Damien and Stef van Campenhoudt put colored markers on the roof of a Toyota car, and tracked it via a camera mounted far overhead.  This data was fed into some custom software by Zachary Lieberman, and (After alot of postprocessing) the iqFont was born.

You can see pictures of the process on Flickr, and I’ve embedded the making-of video after the break. Download the font at Toyota’s site.

iQ Font.

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Hardware, Science font, motion tracking, toyota