Kinect Mayhem (Kinect and Blender Marriage)

So I recently acquired an Kinect for the sole porpoise of messing around with it (Mainly 3D scanning and live tracking + recording of human movement for animations).

For those of you who don't know what a Kinect is...wow. For the past 3+ years in the console world it has been Xbox's response to the Wii motion Controller (like PS3's glow sticks/Move).
Image Ref:

Any how getting this thing to talk to my PC was a tad harder to do than I would've expected. But in short

But, after some trail and error I was able to at least get the Kinect and Human tracking up and running (3D scanning is still proving to be an formidable foe).

Essentailly what I tried to achive was a crude Mocap 

Here is a good example of mocap is in the recent game Beyond: Tow Souls

Essentially I had to install 

1. OpenNi SDK
2. Delicode NiMate
3. Blender Plugin
4. Blender

Once I got the basic up and running I made a quick mock up and ended up with this (I'll walk you through)

1) Download and install OpenNi SDK (preferably the 32bit, this is to prevent eorrors for a future 3D scan project[TBA]) and Delicode

2) Launch Delicode. (of course make sure kinect is connected and powered).

3) Go to Full Skeleton Tab (enable it). Change format from basic to basic + orientation. leave rest as is (the blender plugin handels the rest)

4) Go to OSC Controller Tab (enable it). Remember the port number (It shouldn't have to be changed...but just incase).

Example of it tracking a person

This concludes the Delicode segment, leave it running as we move on to blender.

5) Open Blender.

6) Next we will be installing the plugin. First go File->User Preferences

   Then go to Addon tab and select Install from File

   Go to where you saved the plugin, select and hit install

Note: When ever you the need to use this addon, go to User Preferences->Addons->Animation. Select and hit Enable

6) Now the fun starts. Clear the scene. Remember that port I told you to remember? Well in the left tab (at Ni mate reciver) the port numbers must correlate. Also tick the Add R check box and select empty from the button list. With this we are good to move on.

...but first hit start and stand in front of Kinect. Kablam!!!^^ You are now tracking body movement

7) Though a tad glitchy you can record basic movement and just tweak the tracking jump out. With this you can then add a skeleton to the scene that track to these points in space giving you a, well, skeleton to work of.

A brilliant tutorial on skeleton rigging in blender: Link

8)From here on it's up to you what you want to do with this. I'm planning on using this for basic human motion for games and short animations, but even just messing around with it is still quite fun.

Still todo:

1. Fix ALL the driver clashes (there are still a few)
2. get 3D scanning up and running

Thanks for your time.

Stay tuned for future projects and mishaps.
C&C's are always welcome.

Any requests on future projects or details of just drop the question, I'll do my best to respond/consider them ^^.

Month Long Game Dev Comp Entry

Whoot!!! My first entry to which I hope will be a long and successful blog attempt.

I know there are probably more blogs than there are people on earth, so mine won't be that SPECIAL one that will revolutionize the blogging world, but this here is my small contribution to all the junk on the internet.

This here is my entry for my local Game Making community (Make Games SA) monthly competition.

The game 'restriction' this time was "5 min warning". That means everything, from the start of the game to the finish, should not take the player more than 5 minutes to complete. This competition happened mid way through my varsity exam...so I couldn't spend as much time as I would have hoped on it.

I called it...pause for effect...Critical Space

Here's a web build to those of you wanting to play it.

Critical Space

The game was made with unity, blender and some magical pixi dust to help along some of the wizardry I pulled ^^.

For those of you who don't want to spend 5 min of your life playing my hard work, here are a few screen grabs.

Main Menu

What even is

Ship select

In game

Cheerz