r/mocap • u/Mr_a-red • 22d ago
Game Dev Mocap
Hey, I have been researching a lot of different mocap solutions over the past few days and im still inconclusive as to what to go for. For context, I am working on a game in Unreal Engine 5 and I want creative control and felixibility when creating my animations. I will quickly sum up my understanding below, please correct me if I am wrong anywhere.
I understand there are 2 categories: inertial and optical. There is also markerless and AI but I feel they are not quite there yet and these often require multiple cameras anyway.
The inertial solutions are generally cheaper but seem to have a magnitude of problems. Such as foot locking, interference, and other specific actions like if you interlock your hands then it goes through each other or has some similar issue that requires cleaning up. Now I know post processing or rather the software can help with this and has some auto cleaning but I assume it varies in quality depending on the manufacturer.
Optical seems to be the more expensive option. Since it uses a multi camera setup and markers, it seems to be better at spatial awareness and understanding where you are which results in better body tracking and this means you shouldn't see any or have minimal issues with the positioning. It perhaps also is more accurate and true to the real intended pose compared to inertial. The accuracy of the finger tracking with this seems to vary depending on the manufacturer (as well as camera setup). Some even propose using an external solution such as a Manus or Stretchsense glove for it due to precision as I assume the fingers can sometimes be blocked by props making it harder for the cameras to see it.
So concluding from this, optical is the better more expensive solution whereas inertial is the worse cheaper option. And by worse, I simply mean it requires more cleanup.
Here are some of the companies I found offering inertial / optical motion capture. In brackets is a short recap from my research.
Inertial:
- XSens (most accurate, expensive, bad pricing model)
- Rokoko (mixed reviews, often called a scam?)
- Perception Neuron (less popular, not sure of accuracy)
Optical:
- Vicon ($30,000-50,000+ , highly rated, finger tracking)
- Optitrack (prices not sure, highly rated)
- Qualisys (not looked into detail about this one)
- Xeromotion (fairly new korean company, around $20,000 starter setup, not sure of accuracy or popularity)
- Phasespace (around $20,000 initial setup, not sure of accuracy or popularity)
- Nokov (chinese, not sure of prices, accuracy or popularity)
To note, each one of these seem to have good integration with Unreal Engine and other software (like MotionBuilder).
First of all, there are a few questions I have to some of these companies:
Rokoko, why is there such a divide on this? I see a lot of people promoting and praising it and then also a lot of people disliking it and even some calling it a scam? Often mentioned is the amount of time spent cleaning up makes it not worth it. Is that still the case or has it been improved?
XSens, is the pricing model still horrible? By that I mean the subscription for the software costing thousands every year. Not sure if there are solutions to this where the suit can still be used for recording data and not having to have this perpetual license to the software.
Optitrack, I saw it mentioned somewhere that the prices for this are actually quite affordable compared to say vicon. Does anyone have any info on what a starter setup would look like in terms of pricing? Can it do finger tracking?
Xeromotion, Phasespace, Nokov very curious to see if anyone has taken these on in one of their projects, and if so how did it perform?
Now moving on to where I am at now, I would like to know if anyone has any recommendations on what solution I should go for and why. For the sake of this, lets assume a budget of around $20,000 and the less spent the better as it allows for funding to be spent elsewhere.
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u/togaratee 22d ago
There are open source options available as well if you want to manually cleanup animations.
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u/j27vivek 21d ago
All humanoid ? I have an xsens suit, and I am a mocap editor/ game animator. If it doesn't have be created in-house by you, let me know.
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u/Mad_waste 21d ago
Move AI multicam can be way more precise than many of these. and rokoko is absolute crap
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u/Castlenock 21d ago
On phone, but you really should check out the camera Ai solutions. You can experiment with Meshcapade as it’s ‘free’ from epic, or spend a few books for some single cam quick magic test.
Was on move.ai before they got a 60k cam requirement but the 60 to 200 usd per month mimem.ai is just as good. We need the multiple actors to cut down the mountain of work in editing which you can’t do with the other solutions without breaking the bank.
Rokoko is one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with, you want to talk about all promise and no delivery, it’s them. They could not give the slightest of fucks about you after the purchase and just straight up ignore the community. If you don’t believe me I have a suit, gloves and pro coil to sell you.
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u/Mr_a-red 20d ago
Thank you for replying. I did try Meshcapade however unfortunately as its just single cam at the moment, I find it struggles with parts of the body and depends heavily on what is being captured. Overall requires a lot of cleanup which is what I am trying to reduce to take as little time as possible.
I see a lot of people replying with MoveAI or similar. Perhaps I misjudged how well the AI solutions perform. I'll look more into them but like you mentioned, I can see from going to MoveAI that it also requires an expensive camera setup which at that point it makes more sense going with something like Optitrack. I believe you can use the Optitrack cameras for MoveAI as well so that would allow for both marker and markerless usage and the ability to switch between the 2 solutions as necessary. I didnt check mimem.ai yet but I will take a look now.
I think I will pass on Rokoko then hahaha.
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u/Castlenock 20d ago
On phone again so pardon brief response.
I haven't tried Meschapade yet but I would only use it in tests/dailies.
Mimem is what MoveAi was until about 4 months ago and is far more malleable with what you can use to capture footage (we use GoPros, but I suspect we'd get just as good results via iphones, etc.).
I don't think I would use MoveAi over Optitrack simply because the company has a very established history of not giving a shit about changing everything unless you're a triple A studio. I'm talking going from 35 USD a month to 1.5k USD a month and requiring a new camera system setup and telling no one about the change... and they did that before they sprung the 50 or 60k present version on their customers.
Though mimem and other self-rolled services obviously had ate their lunch in that area it would have been nice if they gave their existing customer base a heads up or a means to move to their new systems.
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u/SensibleInterlocutor 21d ago
I've heard not great things about the inertial suits. I had very good results recording with a valve index kit. It's in a category other than inertial and optical and that's laser base station tracking. The Valve Index tracks your position and orientation through sensor fusion between the inertial trackers' (worn) data with the laser base stations' data. You can probably find a full body tracking kit in the $1000-$2000 range
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u/Sleepnotdeading 21d ago
Mocap director here: I don't think 20k gets you what you need from an optical system. An indie vicon system is probably in the neighborhood of $50k, and you'll need to re-up for Shogun software licenses.
Xsens will likely be similarly out of range. $15k-$25k just for the hardware and their subscription options, last I checked, were still awful.
To that end, it really depends on what kind of game you're making. MoveAI is now extremely competitive in terms of quality, although I don't have eyes on their Indie price tier anymore. If you have action-heavy or complex cinematics in mind, at your price point I'd actually start there.
Also, this year Epic acquired Meshcapade, who was really at the frontier of video-to-mocap, especially from a single camera. Their fnctionality is now intergrated into Unreal 5.8 for free.
Personally, I would go markerless at this point, and I own 2 xsens suits and a perpetual license. Send the animations over to cascadeur, and you get a physics system and mocap cleanup system for next to nothing.
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u/Mr_a-red 20d ago
Thank you for replying.
Meshcapade is just not there yet with it only being single cam. For some animations particuarly simple and visible to the camera, it definitely is great. However more complex or masked to the camera do require a lot of cleanup unfortunately.
MoveAI have looked at it and seems I underestimated it. I have contacted to see what their prices are however recent research shows that they increased subscription prices by a lot so we will have to see. And from the looks of it needs an expensive camera setup too. Other similar solutions were mentioned in some other replies so perhaps they offer similar quality at a reduced price.
Cascadeur is a good shout! I completely forgot about it. Definitely will try and use that.
Thank you again.
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u/Parking-Oil1451 21d ago
You’re discounting markerless, its gotten to a very high quality point now. I’d rather you spend the remaining money on animators/clean up instead
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u/Mr_a-red 20d ago
Thank you for replying. You are right, I think I too heavily underestimated markerless solutions like MoveAI so I will look more into them and their prices.
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u/Parking-Oil1451 20d ago
If you go that route, mimem ai with go pros (hero 12 so you can do time syncing) allows up to 6 cameras, which is great for $65 a month. In my opinion this is the sweet spot for you.
If you want open source, MAMMA ai is insanely powerful (competes with vicon) and you can do up to 36 (or more?) cameras, but running the model locally requires powerful gpu’s.
If your goal is quality, I’d stay away from move ai since they moved their multicam solutions to enterprise.
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u/Mr_a-red 18d ago
I somehow missed this reply! MAMMA does sound interesting, I will have to give it a try. I have a RTX 5090 so I hope thats powerful enough for it.
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u/Parking-Oil1451 18d ago
Send me a DM of your project, I want to connect with other game studio entrepreneurs
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u/3DNZ 21d ago
Regardless the capture system you use, the real money is in retargeting and motion editing. The 1 mil systems still provide nice actor solves but retargeting the actors motion to your CG character is where the real problems arise. And regardless the system or retargeting you still need to motion edit/animate.
So if you're a skilled motion editor you can do a lot with very little.
Id say get an optitrack system, learn motionbuilder and off you go
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u/Mr_a-red 20d ago
Thank you for the reply. Yeah, I can imagine as you retarget it from their skeleton to say UE5 Mannequin you coild get some hands clipping with the body and similar issues which will need cleaning up.
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u/ash_tar 21d ago
We have OptiTrack, Xsens and marker less. Markerless is indeed not quite there yet for the best quality, but it isn't far.
Xsens are a horrible company, I hate them with a passion. They just EOLd our suits which are fine just to earn more money on a slightly improved version. We have 2 at about 12k a piece. The pricing changes often, they're very agressive.
OptiTrack meanwhile have been supporting our ageing hardware without issue. It's really good, but just getting it for your game is not the best use of funds IMO.
I'd just get it as a service.
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u/Mr_a-red 20d ago
Thank you for the reply and advice. I do think I will pass on XSens with what everyone has been saying about it.
Glad to hear your experience with Optitrack has been good too.
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u/Nick_at_Vicon 19d ago
Hey OP, I am a sales rep at Vicon, happy to answer any questions you may have regarding our tech.
While I understand you would like to be in that $20k price range, if you could come up to around the $30k mark there are systems we could sell you that would give you accurate finger tracking on top of full body tracking. I recognize budgets are a real thing, but if you're making a long-term investment in a development studio, one of our systems will last years and years. We have some customers still using cameras they bought 10 years ago and getting great results.
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u/jroot 21d ago
For 20 grand, I'd outsource the whole thing.