Cinema Mo Cap [Released]

We are excited to share our first app with the Unity community:
Cinema Mo Cap
Humanoid Motion Capture inside of Unity

Buy It! | Website | Tutorial Video | Docs

Simply grab your Microsoft Kinect® and start capturing humanoid animations inside of Unity! Captured animations are fully compatible with Unity 4.x’s Mecanim engine, which means captured animations can be applied to any humanoid character.

Cinema Mo Cap is the perfect tool for indie developers who want to add a touch of realistic human motion in their game project. It is also ideal for quickly prototyping games by combining your existing generic animation library with Cinema Mo Cap for unique and specialized actions.

Features

• Record a motion capture session without leaving your Unity Project.
• Recorded animations are compatible with Unity’s Mecanim animation system.
• Apply captured animations to any other humanoid model.
• Automatically builds an Animation library within your project.
• Preview yourself as a live model right inside your current Unity scene.
• Works with Free and Pro versions of Unity.

 

This looks really cool!

Could this be used for making motion capture films in Unity? I have seen examples of this with Lucasfilm testing Motion Capture Movies in their Cancelled 1313 engine.

Example:

If this does work, would you be able to motion capture the camera, for realistic cinema camera movies, like recently used in the new Hobbit film and James Camerons Avatar?

It looks very well done so far

Best of luck!
-Sean

 

Looks great. Does it work for capturing finger movement? I'm not certain if Kinect even had the fidelity for it though.

 

Wow very nice

Norby

 

This really does look wonderful, however .... is there a remote chance that this could run on Mac at some stage without the virtual environment?

 

Last month i sent you an email with a few questions, but i guess it got filtered by your spam filter. It's from outburners.

 

Awesome! Must buy!

 

Hi Sean,

Very cool video. With Cinema Mo Cap you could load a movie pre-viz scene in Unity, and preview animations with the avatar we provide. If more users make requests similar to above, we'd definitely consider allowing the ability to drag another avatar into the scene for the live preview, so the user could see their actual avatar in action...similar to above. More and more folks are using Unity for movie projects. We will be releasing Cinema Director in the near future, which will allow sequencing of camera cuts, events, objects in Unity, in combination with Cinema Mo Cap.

 

Thanks for the kind words! No finger movement. We are already exploring finger movement with Kinect 2 becomes available. We are also already working on facial capture. Good news is, Cinema Mo Cap actually generates a full FBX compatible Collada model inside your current Unity project with the animation baked in. Therefore, you can take the model, open it in Maya or other animation package, and edit the fingers as you wish. Next version will include all finger joints inside our generic model, ready to edit when needed.

 

Hi there Nuke. I believe we have answered all questions through support that came our way. Please send me a PM here in the forum, or email me directly - dan@cinema-suite.com

We will do our best to answer whatever questions you may have!

 

Jeff. We are definitely exploring on the Mac. The main problem right now, is that OpenNI only supports 15 capture points, while the Kinect SDK supports 20. This makes a pretty big difference on quality of capture. We are considering releasing a "Cinema Mo Cap for Mac" with the expectation that capture would be slightly less quality. We have had many requests for Mac support, so it's definitely something we continue to work on and explore.

 

You've made my day. On my bying list. Thanks.

 

Great to hear! We love making people's days. Especially when it's TGIF

 

What about just hand open/fist closed? That'd be enough for my purposes. Also, does it require two kinects or just one?

EDIT: just saw the "upcoming features" part of the docs, and saw the fist open/close thing. Sounds awesome; git on it!

 

This is on my buy list too, will be getting it before new year most likely, have a few questions.
I read multiple kinect support is on the works, but how about multiple ps eye, or are you guys only focused on depth sensors?
Also +1 for being able to choose the avatar for in scene preview,
Blender support only through collada file?

 

Add my name to that list - would love to see that.

 

Any chance of supporting multiple PS3eye's for capture as well as Kinect.

 

Mario, thanks for your interest. It means a lot!

Currently, you can load the Collada file into Maya and we are preparing a video tutorial on that process. We are working on supporting Blender.
Multiple Kinect support and custom avatars are at the top of my to-do list.
I will try experimenting with the PS3 eye, but I can't promise anything on that one.

May I ask why there is interest in the PS3 eye?

 

The guys behind Satellite Reign recently wrote an article for Gamasutra in which they switched from dual Kinects to multiple PS3 eyes because the Kinects were being finicky in iPiSoft.

Personally, my preference is for dual Kinect support over PS3 eye if you have to prioritize. I'm looking forward to crossing my arms and turning around.

 

Kinect gets 30 fps and multiple psEye 60 ( if I'm not wrong ), it allows for faster movements, I remember reading that on ipiSoft's forum... but the gamasutra link @TonyLi shared states it too.
If supported I would totally buy both sets ( dual kinect / multiple psEye ) eventually, since they could serve different situations, stability vs speed.

 

PS3eye's can be set up all around the actor giving better capture perspective, as well as faster 60fps capture speeds.

Check this video out of ipsoft with 6 PS3eye's. Notice the tracking especially on the feet (Feet and hands usually give the most problems).

 

Is it tracking his fingers? That's pretty impressive

 

hands only, no fingers.

 

As we already have 4 PS3 eye cameras, I'll vote for PS3 eye support too.

 

Hi

Does this work with the new kinnect that comes with xbox One?

 

We plan on having support for the Kinect 2 when we are able to. We are still waiting for our unit to arrive, then will begin programming asap!

 

Quick question. If I'm still using the legacy animation system, can I use cinema-mocap? Or is the animation always exported as an FBX using a generic avatar?

 

The animation is exported with the generic avatar. Unfortunately, the tool is not ideal for the legacy animation system.

 

Any difference between Kinect for Windows and Kinect for 360?
I mean, can i use Kinect for 360?

 

I think I've already spoke to you guys, definite buyer here

I'll be stoked when you have the facial animation in.

 

Works with both versions of Kinect for Windows and Xbox 360 Kinect. If you purchased an Xbox 360 that came with a Kinect, you may have to purchase a USB adapter so you can hook it up to your PC. You should be able to find a "Kinect USB adapter" on Amazon for under $10.

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

How do i connect my kinect to the computer? most kinesb port so it can slide into the computer easily but my kinect came with a bundle and the thing to at the end of my kinect looks like a usb but it has a slanted corner making it impossible for me to connect my kinect to the computer. can anybody help me with that?

 

You need this:
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Supply-...TF8&qid=1387764507&sr=8-1&keywords=kinect+usb

 

OMG Thankyou so much OutSpoken_Gaming finally i can start making easy animations.

 

Any ETA on when the Mac version might be released?
Also, if I purchase this asset now will the Mac version be included for free later in the same Asset?

 

Cinema Mo Cap is on a 24-hour sale for 65% off. If you're on the fence, get it. It's a really great product.

 

Thanks for your support Tony! Much appreciated as always.

 

We are currently working on getting this to work for Mac. It will be included as part of this asset for free.

A note about the Mac version: It will only support 15 joints (limitation of OpenNI). This means you cannot track wrists and ankles.

 

Any ETA on dual Kinects?

 

Would PS3eyes be on the support list it the future. Would be interested in getting this now while on sale, if there would be support for multiple eyes down the road.

 

There are so many things on our road map that we want to get done before the PS3 eye. I would feel bad if you bought this thinking we will support that soon.

 

No ETA, but I am working very hard to get this working

 

Would there be any way to use this in s stand alone build instead of editor? MY thought is to have end user that has kinect to be able to control avatar real time in stand alone and save that as video. Is this possible?

 

Hi MrBodean,

Unfortunately no - Cinema Mo Cap is not designed in that way. Our purpose was to be a motion capture tool for recording data that can be applied to existing characters that developers want to add motion to in their games.

Check out our partner Zigfu.com - they supply API's for Unity where you could use the Kinect in run-time.

Thanks,

Dan

 

I tried this thing out, and it does work! It's a little wonky, I'm sure due to my lighting conditions and the limitations of the hardware, but still, pretty impressive. I'm using the $8 USB adapter from Amazon with a 360 Kinect and it works fine.

The documentation is great, and I especially appreciate the step-by-step instructions for setting up a captured animation to play in Unity. I had never used Mecanim before, but I was up and running fast. I did have one suggestion though. Under the "Using the animation with other characters" section in the PDF, I would at a minimum swap steps 6 and 7. Reading step 6 first was quite baffling until I read ahead. Also, in step 6, are you really selecting a model at that point? I thought that'd be an "animator"?

In any case, really looking forward to the multiple Kinect support. Ideally, it'd be nice to be able to mix and match Kinect 1 and Kinect 2's together. I have no idea how realistic that is.

 

Thanks for the suggestions Steve. We will definitely review the documentation and take a look. We do have a tutorial video available that you can check out the Mecanim process:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-aoCBCBK-Q

As for a marriage of Kinect 1 with Kinect 2 at once....that could be a very tall order. We won't know until we can get our hands on the PC Kinect 2.

Cheers,

Dan

 

Funny tutorial.

 

I've used multiple other Kinect-driven mocap products, and for single-Kinect captures Cinema Mo Cap works at least as well as products at 10x the price, if not better. Add in the built-in Unity support, and it's a no-brainer if you can get by with single-Kinect captures. Once it supports multiple cameras so you can cross your arms or turn around, I think it's going to be unbeatable.

 

ZJP - Thanks. We had fun acting like goofballs and editing it! For those of you that are looking for it, our tutorial is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-aoCBCBK-Q

We believe that humour is a very important part of any business

Dan