Wii Nunchuck Used For Mocap On 3D Studio Max


If you’ve been looking for a cheap way to do motion capture on 3D Studio Max, [melka] has devised an ingenious way to do mocap using a Wii nunchuck. As shown in his Vimeo video, the nunchuck is connected to an Arduino that feeds MIDI data to a computer running the MIDI app Ableton Live. Ableton Live feeds that data to 3D Studio Max via MIDI Yoke.

The video below the break shows that the motion of the nunchuck can be seen in real time in the 3D Studio Max Window. We’re really hoping [melka] will post a writeup of this project soon, as we are hungry for more details.

6 thoughts on “Wii Nunchuck Used For Mocap On 3D Studio Max

  1. Wow the description here makes it sound like it’s capturing the movement, but if you read the vimeo video description (all of one sentence) he’s just controlling what’s in the viewport with the wiimote. Still cool, but not motion capture at all.

    So if you’re looking for a cheap way to do motion capture in 3ds max, look elsewhere. Or learn to rotoscope :D

  2. well, it wouldn’t be hard to record the movements from there
    i’m not sure, but i think there’s a record button for this
    if not, maxscripting is still a valid option, and very easy as we already have it moving
    just a matter of laying down the keyframes
    but all in all it is a pretty useless gimmick
    call me when you have it in realtime toribash
    ( http://www.toribash.com/ )
    or equivalent

  3. Hi there
    I posted some more details on my blog.
    http://play-collective.net/blog/archives/61

    @john park : I wanted to emulate a joystick (or mouse) bu using processing as an HID device, but it seemed to be impossible. I’m not really into C code or assembly, so unless I can have AVRUSB running on the arduino, I’ll stick with MIDI controls and all the problems that comes with. HID would be the best option, of course.

    @jon : as by s said, there’s a record button that I did not press for this video. I just used the test functionnality, but if you really really really want, I can make another video with the record feature ^^

    @by s : in fact, it’s useless ^^ but it was an early experiment. I wanted to see if I could get datas from the arduino to a 3D software to test the inverse kinematics equations I’m trying to implement for a robotic “arm” with 5DOF. Now that I did it (still needs a lot of improvement), I know that it’s feasible and I have a lot of other ideas for it ^^

    @bryan riabs : that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m thinking of ^^

    Thanks for posting this here, guys :)

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