Motion capture on a budget

I don't think you'll be able to get far with a pair of digital cameras. It takes a special kind of camera that emits a high intensity infared beam. The mocap studio we have here at work has over 18 cameras at a value of around 15K a pop.

I'm no expert on the technical side of things but it seems you need to invest alot more time into research about motion capture if you want to pursue it. If I were you i'd just spend my time researching and learning animation...it's cheaper on a budget! :)

If I were you i'd just spend my time researching and learning animation...it's cheaper on a budget! :)

I agree.

but...here are some resources for homebrew mo-cap, if you're interested:

http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/

$40 (somewhat labor intensive) "mocap" software

White Paper - Mocap for the Rest of Us

Depending on the kind of work you're willing to put into it, the quality you expect out of it, and your technical skill, it should be fairly straightforward to set up a simple, custom homebrew mocap system. Some friends of mine in grad school built a simple 2d motion tracker out of a cheap camera (what would now be the equivalent of a $40 web cam), Pentium 3 Linux box, some neon dot stickers, and copious amounts of pizza and beer.

A 3D tracker would need a minimum of 3 camera's (actually 2 if you're creative) and maybe one or two more poor, starving, bored grad students. I'm actually surprised there's not something out there already.

Quality will be poor, work will be intensive, and an in depth knowledge of computer vision and mocap file formats will be necessary. But, you can certainly do it. If you really want to.