If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide to using my KinectToPin mocap app for After Effects, watch this series of video tutorials by Victoria Nece:

Monocular
1. Motion parallax: distant things move slower; close things move faster.
2. Depth in motion: something coming closer to you gets bigger.
3. Perspective: parallel lines converge as they move away from you.
4. Familiar size: evaluating the position of an object whose size is known.
5. Relative size: comparing the position of an unknown object to one whose size is known.
6. Color and contrast: all else being equal, reds appear closer than blues, and high-contrast colors appear closer than low-contrast colors.
7. Accommodation: whether the eye is focused on a near or far object, as reported by our eye muscles.
8. Occlusion: an object blocking something else is assumed to be in front of it.
9. Depth of field: blurrier objects are assumed to be further away.

Binocular
10. Stereopsis: the difference between the views of the left and right eye.
11. Convergence: the angle from our eyes to the object viewed, as reported by our eye muscles (for objects closer than ~10m).

Export a sequence of frames from Maya as individual OBJ files:

OE Blaster (script plus button)

OBJ Sequence Exporter (script only)

This is a great way to do replacement animation with 3D printouts (although the standard ABS plastic feedstock isn’t easily paintable):

master

• picture:  1920×1080 @ 12fps, 23.976fps, or 24fps.
• sound:   48KHz 24-bit, stereo or discrete 5.1
• codecs:  PNG Quicktime or PNG image sequence; uncompressed AIFF or WAV files.

submaster

• picture:  1920×1080 @ 23.976fps or 24fps.
• sound:   48KHz 16-bit, stereo or discrete 5.1
• codecs:  Apple ProRes, Avid DNxHD, or PhotoJPEG Quicktime video; PCM audio.

distribution

• picture:  1280×720 or 1920×1080@ 23.976fps or 24fps.
• sound:   48KHz 16-bit, stereo or discrete 5.1.
• codecs:  H.264 MP4 video, AAC or PCM audio.

Up through the mid-’00s, we used to capture footage in realtime from tape. If you think about it, “capture” is an exciting and dangerous sort of word which implies you’re getting a hunting party together and it might come back empty-handed. Now we “ingest” footage by copying it in non-realtime (that is, faster than) from memory cards and hard drives…which to me suggests a much more relaxing process, one that happens after a nice meal. However, it’s a bit of an arcane process in Final Cut:

Step 1. Choose File / Log and Transfer.

Step 2. Click this obscure icon to import files.

Step 3. Click this other obscure icon to view your Preferences.

Step 4. Check to see if your camera shoots “24pa” or “24psf” video. If so, you’ll need these extra steps. (Traditional camcorders are more likely than DSLRs to have this issue.) ProRes is a good default choice for your video codec.

Step 5. Select the clips you want to transfer, or else choose Edit / Select all.

Step 6. When you’ve made your selections, choose Add Selection to Queue to begin transferring.

Step 7. Once you’ve transferred your clips, click on your Sequence.

Step 8. Go to Sequence / Settings.

Step 9. The default settings probably won’t be what you want, so click Load Sequence Preset.

Step 10. Most modern cameras in North America will work nicely with Apple ProRes 422 1920×1080 24p 48KHz as your preset.

Step 11. After loading the preset, your settings should look like this.

…and you should be ready to edit. Be sure to back up your original video files!

Guessing which of your applications is broken following a major OS upgrade is a familiar ritual for Mac owners. Use these tools to learn what will need to be replaced:

• If you’re upgrading to 10.6 Snow Leopard, download and run the SnowChecker utility to check whether you have any incompatible software.
• For 10.7 Lion, use the RoaringApps wiki.

In 2012, interlaced video will be 90 years old, so little wonder it’s a hard standard to completely get rid of. Many great cameras capable of shooting true 24p video still have to save the images in interlaced formats (confusingly called “24pa” or “24psf”—essentially the same thing). But this is only a temporary inconvenience; with a bit of extra effort it’s possible to perfectly reconstruct the 24p original:

Step 1. Choose File / Log and Transfer.

Step 2. Click this obscure icon to import files.

Step 3. Click this other obscure icon to view your Preferences.

Step 4. Make sure Remove Advanced Pulldown and Duplicate Frames is checked. Use ProRes as your video codec.

Step 5. Select the clips you want to transfer, or else choose Edit / Select all.

Step 6. When you’ve made your selections, choose Add Selection to Queue to begin transferring.

Step 7. Once you’ve transferred your clips, click on your Sequence.

Step 8. Go to Sequence / Settings.

Step 9. The default settings probably won’t be what you want, so click Load Sequence Preset.

Step 10. Choose Apple ProRes 422 1920×1080 24p 48KHz as your preset.

Step 11. After loading the preset, your settings should look like this.

Step 12. When you add clips to your sequence, you’ll be presented with this warning. Be sure to click no.

Step 13. The thin green bar indicates that a realtime reverse telecine effect has been applied. You should now be able to view and export clean deinterlaced frames.

(Check out the rest of the Kinect section for more tutorials.)

For general Kinect setup help, look here.

To record joint data or OSC output by the OSCeleton Kinect mocap utility to an XML file, to play back the XML, or to convert it for use in After Effects, get this KinectToPin Processing sketch from GitHub.

…the practical upshot of this? You can send all your motion capture information to your XML file in realtime, without worrying about capturing your video image. Then, you can read the file back later and do all the complex rendering you want in full HD. By the way, the sketches will work with anything that uses OSC, not just a Kinect–all you have to do is modify the XML tags to suit your needs.

1. Computers:

• How many computers does this run on?
• What are their specs (RAM, CPU, storage, graphics card, etc.)?
• Do they need to communicate?
• What types of network connections do they have (WiFi, gigabit ethernet, etc.)?
• Do they need any peripherals (mouse, keyboard, Wiimote, Kinect, etc.)?
• What types of peripheral connections do they have (USB, Firewire, Bluetooth, etc.)?

2. Media

• What’s your storage medium (hard drive, SSD, optical disc, etc.)?
• What’s your backup strategy (RAID, Time Machine, disk image, spare drive or optical disc, etc.)?
• Will there be an attendant present in case the computers crash?

3. Video

• How is the video being presented (projector, LCD, CRT, LED wall, etc.)?
• Is there live video input?
• Does it need to be recorded?
• What kind of cameras are you using (webcam, industrial, DV, DSLR, etc.)?
• Do they have a usable “live view” mode?
• How are they connected to the computer (Firewire, USB, analog, etc.)?
• Do they have manual focus/iris/white balance?

4. Audio

• How is the sound being presented (built-in speakers, external amplifier, stereo, 5.1, etc.)?
• Is there live sound input?
• Does it need to be recorded?
• What kind of microphones are you using (shotgun, contact, cardioid, lavalier, etc.)?
• How are they connected to the computer (Firewire, USB, analog)?
• Do they have manual gain control?

5. Sensors

• What other types of live input do you need (light, temperature, vibration, tilt, acceleration, etc.)?
• How is the data being presented?
• Does it need to be recorded?
• Can you find commercial products that fit your budget, or will you need to make your own sensors?
• How are they connected to the computer (Arduino, MakingThings, serial port, etc.)?
• What external hardware controls do you need (on/off switch, gain, threshold, status lights, etc.)?

1. Time-lapse: Photographing a scene only at selected intervals, creating an illusion of spontaneous change when played back. The earliest form of animation, predating live-action cinema; various playback methods for time-lapse photos had been invented by the 1830s.

2. Stop-motion: Photographing a single object and moving it while the camera is stopped. Can be done with paper cut-outs, characters with poseable armatures, or even cooperative human actors (“pixilation,” which with this spelling has nothing to do with computers, meaning “possession by evil spirits”). Quickly adopted in the 1900s for visual effects in early silent films.

3. Replacement: Replacing the object being photographed with a different object while the camera is stopped. “Classical animation” is replacement animation using pencil drawings on paper or ink on plastic cels; this technique dominated animated feature production until the late 1980s. Less common variations use photo collage or sculpture. First came into wide use with “lightning artist” vaudeville acts in the 1910s, where audiences would watch an animated film being made.

4. Rotoscoping: Using live action as a frame-by-frame reference for animation. Traditionally done by projecting film footage and tracing it, an established technique by the 1940s. “Motion capture” is a modern variant of rotoscoping, in which the analysis of movement is done with a computer instead of by hand.

5. Computer graphics: Breaking an image down into mathematical elements and manipulating the values of those elements. Usually done by representing an image as a grid of colored dots (“pixels”). Widely adopted by the 1990s; the most common form of animation in use today.