OpenMoCap: An Open Source Software for Optical Motion Capture

Nowadays motion capture is a valuable technique for virtual character animation in digital movies and games due to the high degree of realism that can be achieved. Unfortunately, most of the systems currently available to perform that task are expensive and proprietary. In this work, an open source application for optical motion capture is developed based on digital image analysis techniques. The steps of initialization, tracking, reconstruction and output are all accomplished by the built OpenMoCap software. The defined architecture is designed for real time motion recording and it is flexible, allowing the addition of new optimized modules for specific parts of the capture pipeline, taking advantage of the existing ones. Experiments with two cameras with infrared LEDs and reflexive markers were carried out and the created methodology was assessed. Although not having the same robustness and precision of the compared commercial solution, this work can do simple animations and it serves as an incentive for research in the area.