NEW! Version 3 of iPi Motion Capture is available. iPi Motion Capture 3 delivers new features for improved workflow including support of Kinect 2, improved arms tracking, simplified calibration and others. Read more >>
This documentation corresponds to version 2 of iPi Motion Capture. The latest documentation for version 3 can be found at https://docs.ipisoft.com/
Getting started with hand keyframing
Contents |
Why
Mocap capabilities of iPi Mocap Studio lack tracking finger poses. Mainly because the resolution of input data is not sufficient for that. When it comes to hands, there is a need for employing the traditional keyframing technique in 3d party animation software.
However, when doing keyframing over mocap data, it is very convenient to have a video reference. Why not to do this right in the mocap software, which natively deals with video? Now you can. Meet the hand keyframing feature of iPi Mocap Studio.
Basics
In iPi Mocap Studio, each key frame is actually represented by a segment of time, much like takes. Usually it occupies more than a single frame of the animation. The last frame of this segment contains a pose essential to this key frame, the key pose. Within the duration of the key frame's time segment, the pose is interpolated from the previous pose to the key pose. After the last frame of the key frame, the key pose continues till the start of the next key frame.
Timeline has got 2 new tracks — Right hand and Left hand. You use them to manage key frames for finger poses of the two hands of the model, accordingly. To insert a key frame in the current frame, you can do one of the following:
- Manually edit one of the finger bones with the Rotate tool
- Click Insert Key Frame for Right Hand or Insert Key Frame for Left Hand menu item from the context menu of the timeline
- Paste a pose data containing the finger bones rotations from the clipboard
Key frames are shown as triangles, with an apex at the beginning. You can easily move a key frame by dragging it with the left mouse button. When moving, the key frame retains its key pose in its last frame. Also, dragging the left edge of a key frame will change its duration (the starting . Double-click on a key frame to quickly go to the last frame of a key frame, which contains the key pose.
Right click on a key frame brings up its context menu, containing items for:
- Going to the last frame (same as double click)
- Setting one of the predefined poses like fist, relaxed etc.
- Deleting this key frame
Advanced
Sometimes, after you have carefully edited a pose for the hand, you realize that this pose needs to be copied or transferred to another hand. Oh, no! That's too much effort to repeat this manually, especially when you need exactly the same pose (are you creating a pose library?). We thought about this while authoring predefined poses for both hands, and included two menu items in the Edit menu. One to copy the pose in the current frame from the right hand to the left, and other — in the opposite direction.
Notes
- When using the Paste Pose within ROI command, the finger bones are not touched. Use direct manipulation with hand key frames to massively edit finger poses.
- When editing the fingers pose in the middle of an existing key frame, it is automatically split in two parts. When editing the pose in the last frame of a key frame, its key pose is changed, and no new key frame is created.
- When manipulating with key frames, finger poses in all the frames involved in edit are automatically recomputed. However, as the keyframing feature is not mature yet, the software may fail to do it properly in some cases. As a workaround for such situations, there is the Recompute Finger Poses command in the context menu of the timeline. It forces the computation of finger poses in the whole animation from scratch based on existing key frames.
