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Motion4U technology brief:

The Xaelander software suite brings the power of interactive high end motion capture to the desktops of content creators in a ever growing suite of packages which currently include Maya, 3DS Max and AfterEffects.

By leveraging our years of expertise in consumer-priced motion hardware and being licensed Autodesk developers we are poised as the premier source of motion productivity tools designed for a world that now works, thinks and plays in 3D.

Xaelander software suite

Streaming position and rotation data from a range of different 6D motion tracking technologies have been integrated into the Xaelander suit of channel applications. Within each application, animators directly record animation tracks in real or variable time. For traditional key framing joint poses can be acquired in a fraction of a second allowing animators to pose, capture and advance keys several times per second with complete control.

Motion from 3D or 6D devices are expressed as three separate Cartesian x, y, z channels and if rotation is supported three additional x, y, z rotation channels. Each channel can be independently mapped to any real valued attribute within a scene. Once mapped the scene attribute will change dynamically as the device sensor is moved and can be directly recorded at a user specified capture rate.

Additional scripts or interface have been added whenever possible to support mapping and unmapping the x,y,z,rotx,roty,rotz channels of a device sensor as a group to scene elements like handles and nodes.

The interface is influenced by the design of the application we are enhancing but the results are effectively the same. In Maya we integrate into an existing channel architecture and have improved the work flow with a custom shelf and mel scripts. When there is no native channel support we have written custom plugins as with 3DS Max and AfterEffects. Houdini required a custom “chop”. In all cases we have attempted to make the user experience similar across applications while respecting the interface style of each application.

Optiburst plugins

Optiburst is a unique specialization on Xaelander that allows animators to use a single sensor and the buttons of their mouse to rapidly grab, move, record, and release scene handles and nodes using automatic “through the window” motion scaling and mapping. It is currently integrated as plugins into Maya and 3DS Max.

Elements are moved by simply grabbing them through the window. While not as flexible and configurable as the channel mapping methodology of Xaelander it gives animators a much simpler and intuitive way to organize, pose and view their scenes.

In addition to recording motion it is highly suited to the rapid posing and key-framing of figures and organization of scenes. With the included camera grabbing and flying modes it is also excellent for visualizing models and scenes.

Motion capture input devices

Xaelander supports our own X-Camera series of hardware which are able to track clouds of 3D points and multiple 6D rigid body patterns using both stereo and mono IR smart camera configurations. We currently support two simultaneous 6D or 3D channels in a bi-manual hand held configuration.

We are also under NDA with Sixense with access to a beta unit of their 2 channel wireless magnetic Razer gaming system with plans to release support in conjunction with their product launch announced later this year.

Support for a range of AR/VR magnetic and ultrasonic technologies can be added on request.

X1, X2 X-Pro camera systems:

Room sized motion capture systems saturate the space with coverage from dozens of cameras. They are individually lens calibrated and also calibrated together as a system that can report the Cartesian position of either active or passive spherical markers worn by an actor or embedded into props.

The technology of the Motion4u X2 and X-Pro camera systems follows essentially the same process except that it has been adapted to work within the volume available to a seated animator. By limiting the required tracking volume to a desktop and tackling a more difficult stereo camera correspondence problem we have been able to reduce the total number of cameras in the system effectively reducing the manufacturing and end user cost.

The X2 and X-Pro camera system have been designed to require only 2 cameras in order to further reduce manufacturing cost and make it easier to install within a typical desktop environment. The correspondence ambiguity problem has been resolved through a collection of temporal and spatial techniques that work well in sparse rigid body marker patterns such as the 5 marker sensors shipped with each unit. As a general vision solution of the 2 camera problem it can be applied to any sufficiently fast camera capable of reporting imaged 2D marker locations. Each camera pair reports all 3D points visible to both cameras. Point clouds can be captured and declared as a rigid body patterns. Multiple rigid body patterns can found and tracked within the point cloud. Each rigid body is reported as a 6D position and orientation. Tracking begins once all points are visible in a single frame and continues as long as 3 or more points remain visible. Both 3D point clouds and 6D sensors are reported at 100fps.

In our X-Pro solution we currently use cameras with 640x480 resolution, operating at 100fps, with synchronized shutters and up to a 6 meter range for 7/16” markers. This solution is typically sold into the simulator developer market where serious games have required head and/or prop tracking outside the desktop range.

Our X2 solution uses much smaller cameras with 640x480 resolution, operating at 100fps, un-synchronized shutters and a 1 meter range for 7/16” markers extendable to nearly twice that range with larger markers. This solution performs nearly as well as the X-Pro except for the smaller range and imperceptibly more temporal motion error due to un-synchronized shutters and represents our best desktop range product.

Our X1 solution uses a single 320x240 resolution camera, operating at 120fps, and a 1 meter range for two flat circular markers with different sizes. This solution uses 2D marker imaging location and size to provide 2 workable 3D points using an ideal camera lens equation and scaling information from a 3 marker calibration sheet. This solution has limited remaining stock and will be upgraded to a 640x480 cameras during 2010. The X1 represents our current entry level product.

Webcam tracking

While webcams are not generally fast enough to provide high quality motion capture they will be able to provide a single low quality channel of position and orientation which we will be releasing along with time limited trials of the Xaelander suite and Optiburst.

Tracking of a paper printed pattern will be similar in nature to what is found with AR Toolkit and AR Tag but much simpler because we do not require the pattern recognition features of these toolkits.

We also have demonstrated the use of webcam face tracking as a 3D input device for games and will be adding this as a future supported position only device to support unlimited trial mode in the future.