EF EVE > Blog > Tech > DIY Volumetric capture with Azure Kinect or Intel Realsense

DIY Volumetric capture with Azure Kinect or Intel Realsense

April 20, 2020 Tech
DIY Volumetric capture with Azure Kinect

DIY Volumetric Capture using off the shelf sensors

Making volumetric capture can be an easy job if you have the right tools.The time when you have to pay $100K for volumetric capture has passed. At least for those who are looking. You can get a good quality volumetric video just by using the right tools. Here we will explain how you can build your own studio without splashing out. First off you should ask your self if you need 360 volumetric capture or is 180 degrees capture enough. In other words would you like the person who will be experiencing your volumetric video to be able to walk around your volumetric recording or just the front of it is enough. Also, how many sensors you are planing to get and how many PCs you have.

180 degrees volumetric video with 2 sensors

If you decide that 180 degrees capture is what you will go for than you should get your hands on 2 x Azure Kinect or 2 x Kinect Xbox One.  Now the part you were waiting for – your PC requirements: if you don’t have a powerful PC than we have developed a computer network where you can use two simple Windows 10 machines, one per camera and you will get the result you wanted. However, if you want to put 2 Azure Kinect on one PC than our recommend PC would be:  WINDOWS 10 operating system, CPU is Intel® Core™ i9 – 3.0 GHz or higher, 16GB RAM, SSD, NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1080 series or better. As well a monitor per PC and keyboard with mouse. We have introduced automatic sensors calibration so you can easily merge the 2 volumetric capture.How to make DIY volumetric capture?

Volumetric capture studio set up

Connect 1 or 4 sensors to the PCs using 5 metre extension cables. Place the sensors on a light stands and calibrate them using EF EVE ™ software. The more sensors you have connected the better volumetric video quality you will get.Full list of hardware:

  • 2 x USB cables(for camera) –  link 
  • 2 x extension cables(power) –  regular US power extensions at least 5meters long.
  • 2 x Stand(for camera) – link
  • 2 x Screw ball-head mount – link
  • 2 x Lights – 4x units of these (in total you will have 8 lights): link
  • 1 x Audio cable(for sync) – 3.5mm audio cable (at leasty 5m length) link
  • 2 x Clamp ball-head mount –  link
  • 1 x Cardboard box(for multi-marker calibration) –  link

360 degrees volumetric capture set up with 4 sensors

Volumetric video with 4 sensors

If you decide to go for a solution which gives full volumetric capture of an object and the highest quality that you will need  4 X Azure Kinect. Those who have tried volumetric video before know that calibrating and synchronising all of the hardware not to mention point cloud noise you get when trying this type of set is a huge issue. No more worries EF EVE ™ has developed automatic calibration for the sensors of your choice so the only thing you would need is the hardware and our software can do the rest. You can learn more about the functionality and what you will get here.1 x Internal USB card (for PC) –  High Point 4-Port USB 3.0 PCI-Express 2.0 x 4 HBA RocketU 1144D or similar. Link4 x USB cables(for camera) –  link4 x extension cables(power) –  regular US power extensions at least 5meters long.4 x Stand(for camera) – link4 x Screw ball-head mount – link 4 x Lights – (in total you will have 8 lights): link1 x Audio cable(for sync) – 3.5mm audio cable (at leasty 5m length) link 4  xClamp ball-head mount –  link1 x Cardboard box(for multi-marker calibration) –  link

Conclusion

You can go for an expensive volumetric capture studio like Intel reality capture and Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Studios  or you can buy the hardware you need from the links above and use EF EVE™ software to clean the point cloud, calibrate the sensors, apply VFX, export .OBJ and .PLY sequence for your own project and have a high quality volumetric video.  Think about this: at the end of the day even if you spend that $100K on your very high quality volumetric video you will have to compromise somewhere because most of the devices can not support such a huge amounts of data what these studios produce. Therefore, your  high quality video will be reduced to something which can be played on the Web, Mobile AR on your newest stand alone Oculus Quest.You can learn more about EF EVE™ here
Tags:
Recent Comments
    Categories


      Contact Support

      Complete the form and we will get back to you.



        Or get in touch with us via other channels:

        Live Chat 20min Call Email

        You may also like