First steps with Kinect and Motionbuilder

I got a Kinect for my Birthday, yesterday I set it and made some research stuff in Openframeworks, Cinder and Processing. Since it was a bit of trouble finding out which drivers and libraries to use on Windows I had to fresh up my brain and tried the Kinect with Motionbuilder.

I used Jasper Brekelmans fantastic Brekel Kinect as device in Motionbuilder. Of course I had other drivers installed (Freenect) that I had to get rid off first, after that everything went very straightforward. Here a quick'n dirty video I made after a half hour of dancing and playing around:

First you calibrate the Kinect in Brekel Kinect so that it recognizes your skeleton, then you open Motionbuilder, add the Brekel Device, add a character, connect them and push record in Live mode, done.

You can filter the motion in Motionbuilder and take care of the FCurves to minimize jittering.

You won't get professional quality out of it but I think it has got its applications. For example you can make "quickpose" records that you can use as base in your animations.

I am planing a second part of the Ameisia short and will use some Kinect mocap for some spaceship scenes where the character sits. Maybe also for more...anyway it is fun to play around.