The Company Says It Has Eliminated Magnetic Distortion, and Releases Raw Data to Prove It
Motion-tracking technology maker Xsens said the latest release of MVN Animate 2018 solves several problems that had limited the fidelity of motion data captured by earlier versions of the motion-capture software.
MVN Animate 2018, which interfaces directly with software including Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, and MotionBuilder as well as Unity and Epic Games’ Unreal game engines, now features a new mocap engine designed to overcome magnetic distortion, the company said. It also compensates for “skin artifacts” — inaccuracies that can be generated when the motion of a performer’s skin is translated to the motion of their skeleton — using new algorithms that, as one example given by the company, eliminate “foot slide” by stabilizing the feet of performers standing still.
The result, the company said, is data that requires much less clean-up than previous generations of inertial motion capture.
MVN Animate 2018 interface
Xsens makes inertial motion-tracking technology that relies on gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers rather than cameras and markers to collect data about a performer’s movement. The system is more flexible than traditional motion-capture techniques because it requires less set-up, allowing performers to work on locations outside of traditional motion-capture stages. That has made it a favorite of indie game developers who prize speed and ease of use, but the technology has generally provided lower positional accuracy and suffered from some positional drift, as well as being susceptible to magnetic distortion from nearby metal objects.
To demonstrate the new technology, the company released two demo videos, along with what it said is unedited mocap data from the shoot, including the MVN Animate software and an unrestricted license good through December 31.
Xsens released this video of an inertial mocap session, with unedited data to match …
… and this video illustrating some of the advantages of the new software.
“Xsens is now the obvious choice for studios that are on the lookout for a solid, dependable mocap solution,” said Xsens Product Manager Hein Beute in a prepared statement. “Now they can not only capture outside of the volume, but do so with total confidence that the data will be reliable.”
