Points of interest (according to their website - I don't have the software)
* Facial mocap
* 360 degrees body rotation!
* According to Brekel.com "rewritten to fully utilize all the data of the Kinect v2 sensor"
* Compatibility: "supports BVH format in Generic / Autodesk HumanIK, 3DMax Biped, Poser / Daz flavors"
* A bit Expensive at $239 for both body and facial mocap bundle ($139 each)

My thoughts: Oh my, certain expensive and cumbersome motion capture solutions might be rendered OBSOLETE even before they are released!




Discuss.

Actually, I've been corresponding with him (Brekel).

It won't do full body rotation -- that may be possible in the future but will require more than one Kinect AND more than one PC (so, not at all :>.

The facial stuff won't translate well into iClone.  At least not with any iClone characters (with your own non-standard human ones, like Daz Genesis, you could do it).

I have some of the test files as well as the demo and will be testing.  It does *some* finger stuff (limited but obviously better than iClone's plugin) and seems very responsive.

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Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

I was reading their forum yesterday, and it noted that hand rotation is reliant on seeing the thumb orientation. So, if you get floopy hands, make sure your thumbs are visible. You can also put your Kinect at head level so it's looking slightly down at your hands.

It can support multiple skeletons at the same time AFAIK, but they must all be facing the camera, of course.

It will be interesting to see how it matches up (although with only 4 seconds to test they will be *very* short tests :>.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

That's interesting. This guy claims he managed to do it with Brekel Free (and no editing!). He says its about finding optimum position/distance (and possibly wearing the right clothes as well - based on my own googling). Can you please share with Brekel and let us know his thoughts about this? Thanks!

I had actually seen that video before I even got iClone's mocap for KV2 and was disappointed when iClone wouldn't do that.

On closer examination, though, I see a lot of artifacts as he turns -- and he turns fast.  Brekel said that once you are in a turn the Kinect can't tell the back from the front and I could see why this would be an issue.  When that guy turns one of the arms goes through the body, because the Kinect gets confused about things.  Obviously this could be edited, but it would be a PITA.

The other thing I'm finding (and admittedly it's hard because the test software only allows 4 seconds of capture) is the legs aren't captured as well as the iClone plugin does.  I need to do some more tests and see what's up, but so far it appears that Brekel has better upper body and RL has better lower body.  It's just too bad we can't combine them <g>.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Thanks for the feedback Kelleytoons. Very much appreciated. I found something else that could be better than Brekel. Thought it deserves its own thread to keep things neat & tidy. Please see my new post if you may, about ipiSoft for Kinect. Would be happy to read your thoughts about it.

Yeah, I've looked at that other and it doesn't interest me due to several issues.

There are some "fixes" apparently for the foot issues that I need to try.  I'm also looking very seriously at his superb hand capture software, which would do all I'd ever need for full finger stuff (and if I can nail down the body stuff that essentially means I do not need to worry about any mocap suit, which is basically a PITA anyway).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

I see this is a very old thread.

But I have a Kinect V2 and was hoping to get facial, finger and body animation. Are there any updates for the Kinect V2?

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Best regards
Albin
(AlbinosGambit)

Short answer is "no".

Kinect was more or less abandoned by Microsoft at some point and, frankly, RL wasn't very successful with developing their own Mocap solution. So they have wisely chosen to build an interface to Mocap solutions from companies that specialize in those things.

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