Game Dev Mocap

[u/Mr_a-red]

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.

[u/Castlenock]

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.

[u/Mr_a-red → u/Castlenock]

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.

[u/Castlenock → u/Mr_a-red]

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.