Does anybody know how to get Icarus camera tracking data into Poser?

Poser doesn't do tracking data. But if someone wrote a Python script, presumably it could.

Pete Janak

Do you know where I can request a python script like that?

Start right here.  Some of the best Poser Python scripters frequent this forum: Ockham, PhilC, kamilche, and many others.

Personallly I think it would be fanatastic if Python could be used to import tracking/camera dta from other apps. And Hey even the the reverse/ Export Poser camera positions ,zoom, focal length etc..

Python is supposed to be a sort of easy scripting language but not a chance that it is.

Thanks, I'll have a look through. 

That would be awesome if you could export Poser camera tracking into other apps.  Poser sucks at creating enviornments, so it would be nice if  people could synchronize the camera movement with another app and put the poser characters in a nice CG environment.  There is always Mover 5 for Vue, though.

kuroyume0161
I sent messages to Ockham, PhilC,  and kamilche.  Hopefully they can give me an answer and perhaps provide me with the python.

pjanak
I thought of a way to at least export Poser camera movemtn into another app.  You could attatch an object to it, like a sphere prop or something, and export that object's animation as a BVH and then in the second app you could attatch the camera to whatever object you choose to animate with your Poser BVH.

I to also recently discovered Icarus. There was a script for importing camera data into blender, but I have never really used that program.

I think you had to export the data as a text file (human readable file?). Unfortunately I don't know if this format can be converted to a poser camera file or not. After giving us better lighting etc to match objects up with their backgrounds, I would hope that the next edition of Poser would include more support for matching movement with background footage, even if it was an extra that you had to pay for.

THats a good idea dvdcdr. I've got Discreet Motion Builder myself.  Currently I'm trying to change victoria3 by getting rif of her buttock bones because hey present a problem in Motion builder. They behave like a sperate appendage from the rest of the legs in MB so when you animate a leg it splits at the seem between the two leg parts With  Sd3 boujouyou can export camera data for MAX, Combustion an few others and just a plain text file. Its the plain text file that Python would probably be able to use.  Over all Poser is very weak in the animation department DarrenUIK so don't hold you breath.

Yeah, there is a python for importing txt files from icarus into blender.  and now i think there's hope for one for poser.  I contacted PhilC and he thinks it might be possible.  He said he needs more details about the programs internals.   Can anyone help me out with finding these details?  Im good with general CG stuff, but when it comes to numbers and programming and everything, i know nothing.

lol

PFtrack probably has a free SDK that PhilC could use to garner information for creating a Python Script

The makers of Poser really went in out in left field with how they chose to create cameras and the various lights. I mean there is a common way across most 3D apps. Cheap and expensive. Except Poser. There are a number of things that are unique to Poser and THAT is the reason why there are so few plugins for Poser in general. That and the fact that the Pro community pretty much considers Poser a toy. And relative to programs like Maya it basicly is.

Pete Janak

I don't think that Poser is a toy, but the initial design was very unique for the time.  Things like 'conforming clothes', joint parameters, tri-axial weights, body-centric cameras, sphere-based lights were uncommon but the approach that stuck for doing human figure work in this regard.

The biggest problem I find is that the original design was basically ad-hoc.  Very few references and papers from the time period (say from v1 to v4) mention any of these type of features or they do them in a completely different way.  This is what makes Poser figures, lights, cameras so hard to bring into other 3D applications.  Other 3D applications, although using different solutions, at least used the ones that had been developed and researched in the background of the field (and can be used by developers).  Poser broke all molds by doing almost everything internally and with little recognition of standard 3D practices - in order to have actual information on how Poser works, you either need to be employed by the company (with an NDA most likely) or get your hands on the SDK (from what I've seen, except for the Curious Labs plugins, it doesn't give developers the type of indepth knowledge to make Poser content work identically in other 3D apps).

The worst of this is that Poser has not moved forward (on its own anyway - mainly by incorporation rather than evolution).  These same now-archaic systems are still in place.  This is where Poser has its own problem - the system is so nonstandard that not even the developers can find a way to evolve it with developments that have moved the industry forward by leaps and bounds in the past ten years.  And thus the reason that it still can't handle multi-figure scenes, multiple undos, and so on.

As I said many times, a NURBS base geometry (or base polygon geometry with a NURBS cage) would help solve some of this.  But it would require reworking morphs and other facets of their internal figure algorithms.   And yet they would not need to sacrifice all of the existing content in the process - maintain support for the previous content while introducing the new.

We'll see.

I tried looking on pixel farm's website and then i googled it.  i can't seem to find an sdk for pftrack.  Does anyone know where tofind it??????????????????????    pftrack's the legit version of icarus, right?

I don't really know if there even is an SDK avaialble. I just assumed there might be, I don't know what Icarus is. But PFtrack has been around I think since at least '02 or '03. I read someone refering to Icarus as "reconstruction software" whatever that is.

Pete Janak

What I heard was that Icarus was a free motion tracking program that was then bought by Pixel Farm, updated and then became PFtrack etc.

While what I found didn't associate Icarus with Pixel Farm or call it a motion tracking software, the discussion I found said Icarus is off the shelf and can no longer be distributed.

Pete Janak

Yeah, Icarus isn't available anymore unless you get it from somebody and the people that made Icarus did give it to Pixel Farm who made it into a bunch of programs including PF-track.

It turns out that PhilC just wanted a few links including the Icarus website.  I'm hoping he  will find a way for a script to be written.