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Anybody tried Rokoko smartsuit on C4D?


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On 7/14/2021 at 3:41 PM, Igor said:

And whats the experience, is it worth it? What about the price?

 

The Noitom one is not a suit but straps with attached sensors, so they fit me better than the Rokoko suit (okay, I need to lose weight...). However, the cables between the straps can be cumbersome and entangle with props. The newest Noitom version has wifi on all sensors, no cables, and seems to be more advanced; I thought about switching but then I missed the preorder window. (Also, this version cannot be combined in one recording session with the older model.)

 

A basic issue with all sensor based systems is that you wear the expensive tech. So, if you do a scene where you smash into things, fall to the ground, or fight some adversary, you have to think about the impact force on any affected sensor. I don't dare going into heavy action. The full-optical systems have an advantage there; a glowy ball is cheaper to replace 😉

 

The wifi works fine when not encumbered by the environment. In the garden, I can record at 20 meters from the (dedicated) router with no signal issues. When trying to demo the thing on a hotel stage though, I got repeated errors in a leg. I blame the steel frame construction of the place, as this never happened at home. You can ruin your session though by ripping out the connecting cables, or twist the sensor attachment, or move the velcro strip out of place. So, it is recommended to: (1) check your tech on-body before a take, (2) calibrate often, (3) look at the take in the editor directly after to find any issues that may have ruined it.

 

The old glove system that I have is not that good; perhaps the finger movements don't generate enough gyro force for those sensors (all sensors are the same, and the finger sensors work fine in the legs, so it's not a defect in the tech). No idea at all whether the Rokoko glove version is better, as I don't have these.

 

If you do recordings outside, take care that the ground is level. The garden I'm working in is not ideal, since the ground has dips.

 

The resulting recordings are noisy in a strange way. There are sometimes glitches up or down in the curve in a stretch of mostly smooth running, which need to be recognized and removed because just smoothing the curve will still keep their influence. I programmed my own suite of functions to check the deviations within the curve and its first three derivations, and which allow smoothing in various ways. This ultimately works fairly well to create good motion.

 

Nevertheless, the goal precision may not be as good as desired. If you have a suit available, try clapping your hands, touching your knees, tipping your opposite shoulder - these motions are easily off and need to be corrected afterwards. That's something Cinema 4D is not good in, as you cannot layer animations (unless you use that motion system). The Noitom software can recognize foot/ground touch points and others, which is nice - but it leads to a non-obvious issue: When the system has fixed your feet to the ground, and you start smoothing the curves (it's a forward kinematic system in the end!!!), then the end point of the limb moves away from the virtual goal. Your feet will slide.

 

Anyway. There are a number of issues with Mocap and a number of solutions (I have never worked with Mixamo, maybe I should delve into that) so whatever you think, it is not an out-of-the-box just-feed-into-character-skeleton system. It's good enough for live usage if you don't mind small glitches, but for movie production you will need some loving after-recording care.

 

(Then again, my system is rather old now, maybe the newest incarnations are so much better.)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi; got the Rokoko suit a year ago and then gloves earlier this year. Created an animated comedy pilot with it and C4D. Learned a LOT; initially had to use maya to retarget mocap properly onto custom models but this isn’t Rokoko’s issue. Currently have a solution all within C4D that’s pretty solid! Hit me up if you need any pointers. Great suit, support is also top notch from Rokoko. 

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