Depth Kit – Kinect Experiments
Depth Kit Experimentation –
We have been experimenting with the Kinect and camera combination today using a software on Fiona’s computer (Depth Kit Capture & Visualise) to see what sort of outcomes we can get from it using a motion capture like system called a Depth Kit.
This looked very familiar to me as in Inlifesize I had worked on motion capture using a series of PlayStation moves controllers and Kinect’s that would be used to capture a real persons movements that could then be used as animation clips within Unity.
During our experience of experimenting with the Kinect we realised it was the same pain as the motion capture I had worked on and that calibration of the Kinect was the hardest thing to initially set up and then the remaining stages were a little easier.
Unfortunately we could not get past calibration stage at this time due to a high margin of error on the calibration software and the incorrect lens on the camera. The software was unable to calibrate a sheet with a check board on it with a series of 13 images, 9 from each section of the image in thirds and a remaining 4 taken from the corners of the checkerboard.
Further Testing –
We will have to experiment further with the depth kit in order to figure out what factors are increasing this margin of error for the calibration. There are a few things that we are wanting to try and test to see what is effecting the calibration most
- Lighting
- Distance from the checkerboard
- Shininess of the ink on the checkerboard sheet
- Lens on the camera
- Camera settings
- Software settings
- Type of Kinect
