Finger Tracking Best Practice

To achieve good finger tracking it’s important that you follow the correct practice which enables the system to define your fingers with the most accuracy. Gaining this understanding will drastically improve the quality of your animations.

Camera Settings and Setup

When preparing for a shoot it’s receommended that the capture devices are set up in the appropriate orientation depending on how many iPhones are being used.

The most effective way to improve the finger tracking is by walking closer to 2 cameras while staying in shot head to toe in at least 2 other cameras. Getting closer to the cameras means that the fingers have a larger pixel count in the frame which will make it easier for the system to follow your fingers with increased precision.

The camera setup recommended when using 1 actor is 4 cameras. This will give the system a greater understanding of the position of the fingers in the capture volume. When using 4 cameras the optimal setup is positioning the cameras in a square shape around the one actor. By setting the cameras up in this layout, the system can utilise the multiple angles to reinforce its prediction of where the hands and fingers move within the volume. From this point you are now ready to calibrate the cameras.

Calibration

The calibration quality is essential when it comes to good finger tracking. This stage in the workflow holds such importance because without a successful calibration the system is unable to create animation data. The calibration is mapping the camera positions to then be able to track anyone inside the capture volume.

Click here to learn how to calibrate.

How to achieve the optimal finger tracking:

Appropriate Clothing

- When using our system we recommend wearing lighter clothes so that the system can visualise your joints with greater accuracy. Not to mention that wearing baggy clothes can alter the performance of the system.

- Wearing a long sleeve top which covers your wrist will affect the system’s ability to track your hands which will also negatively impact the finger tracking on your video.

Filming Environment

- We need to have optimal lighting conditions. This means the lighting can’t be too bright and overpowering as well as too dark.

- The contrast between the actor and the background should be high in terms of colour. For example it would be better if the actor stood out in the capture volume instead of mixing in with the background. This also links into what clothes the actor wears. For example you don’t want the actor wearing a top that has the same colour as their hand.  

Hand positioning

- The fingers and wrist need to be clearly visible to as many cameras as possible when creating your takes.  Moving closer to two of the cameras will achieve a better result as this will increase the pixel count on your hands. 

Bad finger tracking

These are a number of different reasons why users may get bad finger tracking on their animation data.

• Hands in pockets
• Hands clenched together
• Poor Calibration
• Hands hidden by object being held
• Hands heavily occluded by objects in the scene
• Fingers out of sight of cameras
• Fingers to far away from cameras