Handheld camera motion capture using virtual reality!

One thing I’ve been chasing with this project is an quick and affordable way to capture a naturalistic handheld camera.

Ideally I’d like to set up a virtual camera, but since I haven’t found something affordable (aka dirt cheap), I had to think outside the box a bit and try something new.

First of all, I taped my oculus rift controller to a heavy tripod, so I could emulate the weight and feel of a real camera.

I used a VR program called Glycon, which is still in early beta testing, to capture the data off that controller I taped to the end of a tripod.

I exported that data, cleaned it up in maya, and tossed er’ into unity! worked great!

Alternatively, I could film something, track the footage in PfTrack and then import that into maya, but I felt like this would be a bit faster. Fun way to experiment anyways.

Let me know what you think!