Hello community! I found an extremely interesting project the other day on kickstarter, backed it and just wanted to spread the word in case you are interested. It is a full body motion capturing suit which looks perfectly affordable and usable for developers in need for specialized animations. I’m sure you are aware that currently Mixamo is giving out their really high quality character animations for free, and there are LOTS of them. But there is still animations missing, like for example animations for a slingshot.
With the salto suit I believe making these would be not only possible, but rather easy and even fun. I just wanted to add that I am NOT affiliated with the project in any way, just a backer that thought the Unity Community is a good place to tell about it. It is already fully funded, so coming on board now would probably be a good idea :).
Thanks for sharing this does look neat. I’m a bit skeptical that I didn’t see a camera anywhere and they are doing this solely with MPU’s (even though they look like they are the newest MPU’s from invensense the 9xxx series that have sensor fusion right on the chip). I’ve played with this chip in the TI sensortag and while it seems to be much better than what any of the current phones have, it is still prone to drift. Now with 19 of them and known places in the suit they can probably do some IK stuff to even calibrate between them, but it certainly would still need to get the animations tweaked after. At that point wouldn’t a multiple camera motion capture setup be preferable, especially for indies? Maybe I’m missing something…
Thanks for your kind words about the system! As you highlighted already, we have been using the 9xxx-series from InvenSense. The sensors are pretty robust, but unfortunately not entirely perfect. This is one of the challenges we are dealing with right now, trying to obtain higher accuracy and minimize drift, especially the accumulated one that occurs when positioning. But we have a good solution for the Salto which we will be testing in the upcoming weeks before we finalize the hardware architecture. We do not have cameras, but it would be a good addition to the system if you are looking for absolute position. Many studios have contacted us and see potential in previs and even recording of movements for production as there is almost no cleaning compared to a optical system.
So motion capture is usually like $100,000+ and these guys came out with a suit for $700?
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And it works with VR?
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Well, I guess my sixense system will be used primarily for things that make sense for being operated with a handle in vr, like mechs, tanks and guns. Also, damn! They got funded and the price is going to be $700!? AHHHH
I can’t react to this now, I’ll be back in ~13 hours to try again. Thanks.
It is hard not to be sceptical especially after the issues PrioVR and Sixense have been having. I probably won’t back the project but I do wish it luck.
We understand that people are super concerned due to previous experience with Kickstarter campaigns. Although we believe we differ from these companies in many aspects, which is easy for me to say when people are sitting back with lost funds. I have backed dozens of campaigns and at least 3 of them has failed, but it does not really stop me from backing others, as i truly believe we can’t determine peoples failure on others failure.
I just checked the site for Perception Neuron to see if the were also experiencing delays. The site says that due to manufacturing delays, pre-orders will begin shipping in October. I’m not sure if the site just hasn’t been updated and the orders are shipping or there is another delay.
Salto is half as expensive than PN seemingly, although it doesn’t seem to come in a one size fits all exoskeleton kinda thing like PN, but instead actually clothing that needs to be properly sized. So it could end up being either more expensive or more time consuming if you want more than one person to be able to use it. Though I’m sure @mzamani can address that since he is in the thread.
As a VR controller these suits might work okay. But I think as far as replacing an animator for other types of game animations they might at best save a little money. I haven’t really been able to find out how much cleanup of the animations is required for PN, but from my understanding even the big expensive and more accurate rigs require a bit of cleanup. Many of the free but unrefined MoCap sets out there illustrate how crucial that step is. I would still love to have such a suit for prototyping purposes, since the cleanup can come later.
We are actually making the textile in various sizes, as “One size fits all” does not seem ideal with what we have planned in terms of comfort and flexibility. We have close contact with animation studios which are already planning the system in their workflow, especially as a replacement for manual animation and pre-visualization. The clean up is really minimal, but of course the technology is not perfect due to the nature of IMU’s, but we are doing what we can on a software level to minimize the accuracy error, and we feel that we reaching a point where we can say that the quality is acceptable.
The entire suit is powered by one battery source via USB on the what we call the Salto Hub, which basically is the gathering point for all the sensor strings. We do not have batteries in each individual sensor!
Usb you say? Can the suit be operated while plugged in for motions that don’t require the whole body to turn? There are a lot of VR applications where I only need the use of my hands/arms.
I meant will it consume battery while plugged in? y’know, cuz I hate batteries
Also that’s great that it can do selective data streaming. Any chance a future model will be sold piece by piece so you don’t need the entire suit on? I don’t mind the wires all over me still to connect to the central hub, but if I’m capturing hand gestures it seems silly to still wear the entire suit.
Great product either way, will probably buy after release so you guys make $700 instead of $550
You can either choose to power it with a battery pack or which ever USB power you have! We have been discussing a more modular system, where you do not need to buy the entire system. More on this will come in the near future.
Now I’m interested and setting some money aside. I have a $2500 bonus coming in november. If the modules can be hooked together to work like the full suit, I’m sold! (when said system is available, of course)
So, any big companies threaten you since you’re undercutting them 99.4166666667%?
I realize for professional motion capture studios the cost is high, but are you aware of the other options for indies, even available right now? Basically, the cost is about equal to iPi Soft Basic edition and 6 motion cameras for a 20 x 20 capture area. To me the cost seems about right and certainly not drastically different than other indie type solutions (which only require a little animation cleaning as well, I don’t think any solution will get away from requiring some cleaning).
I certainly wish the project the best of luck and hope you guys do great things. I’m a little concerned about MPU only but maybe you guys can crack the code that so many others have failed at. If you guys do I’m sure this will be a hit but I by no means look at this as a sure thing.
Not sure if this has been answered already, but what format does the system export to? The reason I ask is because I am using Maya LT and it doesn’t support plugins or BVH files, as far as I can tell, so I’m wondering if this would be an issue. Any way to support Maya LT for indie devs?
