kinecthacks

Before connecting the kinect, it's important to install the correct drivers and software.

If you have any previously installed kinect drivers (OpenKinect/libfreenect or Code Laboratories CL NUI), uninstall them before starting this guide

This is where the fun really starts

Run MikuMikuDance

It should look like this

The following video will show you how to prepare MMD for luma-keying

Load a model (start off with Miku_Hatsune.pmd) then deselect the bones, turn off the grid & shadow in the display & set the background to black.

Change the colour of the edge of the cartoon shader to a dark grey and increase the edge thickness to make this edge stand out.

To start motion capture turn on the physics engine then turn on the kinect driver and assume the calibration pose.

One last thing on MMD....

VH Screen Capture

The Hymelyoff Labs VH Screen Capture toolkit has been around for several years. It is a free, robust and speedy screen capture driver that does some amazing and very useful things. In this case, it outputs to a web-cam style driver that can be seen by other software as an input.

It's downside is that it's not particularly easy to use for beginners, and it's about to be replaced by it's commercial derivative, XSplit.

To keep things consistent, download and install the same version as we use from this link here:

Kinect + MikuMikuDance = Awesome

This g33kshow guide aims to get you up and running with Kinect and MikuMikuDance (MMD) as quickly and easily as possible. Our background here at the g33k show is in computer graphics, and we have a lot of experience doing live VJ shows at dance parties. We're sharing some of this knowledge to show you how to take the output of MMD and use it in other ways so that you can make things like this

This is the workflow covered in this guide

Kinect Hardware

If you got your kinect as part of an xbox 360 bundle, you won't have been given a USB/Power cable which is required to connect it to a PC.

They can be purchased direct from microsoft from this link, but only if you live in the US.

The first thing you need is one of these

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/en_US/buy/pageType.product/externalRefID.9A4CFC08

free!

Kinect Drivers

One more driver you may need...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=0cf368e5-5ce1-4032-a207-c693d210f616

We didn't notice this until we tested on a virginal Windows 7 installation, but Windows 7 doesn't ship with DirectX9 installed. We nearly missed this as we're keen gamers here at the g33k show and many games install this for you by default.

We found out that the version required is the release from march 2009, and can be downloaded here:

it's in this text file, to save you some typing

http://mohawkmedia.co.nz/NITE_keycode.txt

Use this key during installation: 0KOIk2JeIBYClPWVnMoRKn5cdY4=

http://www.openni.org/downloadfiles/openni-compliant-middleware-binaries/34-stable

Download the appropriate driver from this page:

Download & Install NITE

download and install the file SensorKinect-Win32-5.0.0.exe (found in the /bin directory)

https://github.com/avin2/SensorKinect/tree/master/Bin

Get it from this page

Direct Download link

or

Download and Install the kinect drivers

http://groups.google.com/group/openni-dev

If you have any problems with OpenNI installation you can get help from their google group user forum.

http://www.openni.org/downloadfiles/openni-binaries/21-stable

Get it from this page

Download and install OpenNI

http://mohawkmedia.co.nz/mikupack32.rar

You can download all of these drivers (32 bit versions), and MikuMikuDance in this archive:

One last thing before we get stuck in. This has all been successfully tested on a windows 7 (64-bit) PC with a GTX-275 graphics card. We've managed to get it to work on an intel dual-core laptop winning win7 (32), but the poor onboard graphics card meant we couldn't run the physics engine in MMD, which sucked.

We also tried to run this on an apple laptop running windows XP, but various drivers failed and bailed.

We've done our best to make this all painless, but with so much of this software being hacked, free or simply requiring too much from tired old hardware there's always a possibility something will fail. We will try and supply links to sources of help wherever possible.

free!

Direct Download link

http://mohawkmedia.co.nz/MikuMikuDanceE_v730.zip

This version has the mogg project drivers pre-installed, which adds neck, waist, wrist and ankle articulation to the motion capture.

We've acheived our best results with the ankles turned off.

We have also added green and blue background screens to help with chroma-keying and this awesome extra model. More about her later.

We get our best results by turning the ankle joints off.

or

Download MikuMikuDance

To install, extract the contents of the archive to c:\program files\

and make a shortcut to c:\program files MikuMikuDanceE_v730\MikuMikuDance.exe

MikuMikuDance

http://www.geocities.jp/higuchuu4/index_e.htm

Get it from this page

You will need to download and install the directX version of MMD and if you want better joint articulation, go to the mogg project site and download the replacement openNI driver.

This is the main vocaloid promotion video project page, which is where MikuMikuDance started. Vocaloid is a piece of music software for the creation of artificial vocals, and Miku Hatsune is a virtual pop star that uses vocaloid as her voice. MMD was written so that fans could program dance moves for her.

Within the /data folder of the MMD installation is a program called MoggDxOpenNIConfig.exe that configures the Mogg project drivers.

(you may have to change the youtube clip settings to 720 HD)

Recap:

http://bit.ly/dQKGqF

Click here to see this in HD

free!

http://mohawkmedia.co.nz/VHCapture_inst.exe

Run VH Multicam Studio

Grand VJ

This prezi contains text, pictures, links and video. You can navigate through the linear timeline using the left and right arrow keys. Most videos will auto-play, but all have controls to pause/mute.

It looks much better fullscreen.

a free demo is available, and we will also show you how to achieve a similar result using only the VH Screen Capture drivers and any video or real-time eyecandy software.

Unless, of course, all this zooming is making you feel nauseous.

Don't worry, we promise to be restrained and not over-use this effect.

Because we have to record a full HD desktop at the same time as running all this software, our webcam won't work in grand VJ.

The g33kshow guide to Kinect & MikuMikuDance