StretchSense’s Hand Engine will soon feature Hybrid Mode, which the StretchSense CTO Todd Gisby calls, “the best of both worlds”.
Hybrid Mode combines the two existing modes in Hand Engine — Pose Detection and Blend — in a predetermined way to get smooth transitions between precise hand poses.
Both modes use the same underlying data but in very different ways.
Pose Detection Mode enables you to output a perfect keyframe based on your hand shape. Poses can be ambiguous, which means the hand shape doesn’t need to match the calibration pose.
With Pose Detection Mode it detects the pose from your library that is the closest in proximity to the pose you make with your hand, avoiding shapes between poses.
Blend Mode uses your calibration poses as landmarks in a continuous motion space and interpolates/blends between poses to give you continuous, natural hand animations.
Additionally, Blend Mode requires unambiguous hand poses, which tend to be at the extremes of range of motion of fingers, e.g. a flat paddle hand or a clenched fist or maximum finger spread. While these are excellent for defining the boundaries of your range of motion, rarely do you want to output one of the specific calibration poses exactly.
How it Works
What if you have a character that has a set of key poses you want to really nail regardless of the physical activity you are engaged in (Pose Detection), but also want smooth, natural movement for everything in between (Blend)?
This is what Hybrid Mode allows you to achieve. You can now choose whether a pose you have calibrated is for Pose Detection Mode, Blend Mode or both.
In essence, this means Hand Engine will output perfect key frames if you are within (user controllable) range of a Pose Detection Mode pose, or output smooth high fidelity finger animation for everything else.
Decoupling Pose Detection Mode and Blend Mode poses in this way means they can work together to produce seamless, high quality hand motion capture.
Access to Hybrid Mode will be released shortly as part of our next experimental release and available on our website for existing Hand Engine users. For release notifications keep an eye on our social media (links in footer) or sign up to our newsletter.
Current Hand Engine user and want to try Hybrid Mode? Get in touch with us.
