Brekel PointCloud v1 – FAQ

  • What is Brekel Kinect Pro Pointcloud?
Brekel Kinect Pro Pointcloud is a Windows application that enables 3D animators to record 3D pointcloud using a Microsoft Kinect sensor, and export them to popular mesh-cache and particle-cache formats for use most 3D packages.
One thing to use this for is to recreate the holographic effect as seen in the Prometheus movie.

 

  • What is it not?

It’s not meant for scanning static objects, it’s main focus is to capture moving objects at 30 frames a second.

 

  • Which drivers are used?

Brekel Kinect Pro Face uses the Microsoft Kinect drivers, the installer will automatically download and install these for you, or you can find them yourself here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/develop/developer-downloads.aspx

 

  • Does it support capturing using more than sensor at a time?

Currently only a single sensor can be used at a time, you can however run the software more than once and choose which sensor to use if you have more than one connected.

 

  • Which sensors are supported?

Both the ‘Kinect for Windows’ and ‘Kinect for XBox’ sensors are fully supported, the Asus Xtion and PrimeSense Carmine sensors are not supported.

 

  • What are the differences between the ‘for Windows’ and ‘for XBox’ sensors that are relevant?
    • ‘for XBox’ is officially only licensed by Microsoft for developers, ‘for Windows’ is licensed for commercial and consumer use
    • ‘for Windows’ supports nearMode which can track between 40cm and 3m distance, regular mode tracks between 80cm and 4m (mainly interesting for face tracking)
    • ‘for Windows’ adds control over the video camera’s exposure and whitebalance settings

 

  • What are the minimum hardware requirements
    • ‘Kinect for Windows’ or ‘Kinect for XBox sensor’
    • Power supply for the Kinect sensor
    • Microsoft Windows 7/8
    • 32 bit (x86) or 64 bit (x64) processor
    • Intel Core i5 or faster (or equivalent) processor
    • Dedicated USB 2.0  bus
    • 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics card with OpenGL support

 

  • The application crashes on startup

On certain graphics cards/drivers (NVidia Quadro cards have been reported) the rendering of the pointcloud can be problematic.

As a workaround you can use the shortcut in your Windows Start menu labeled “noVBO” to disable some of the internal OpenGL accelerations that may cause the crash.

 

  • I’m having trouble recording video files

Video output is dependant on which video codecs are installed on your machine.
When the ‘Ask for codec’ option is disabled the ‘XVID’ codec will automatically be used if available.

If you’re having trouble with codecs I can recommend the K-Lite codec pack and/or Xvid:

http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

http://www.xvid.org/

Remember to also install the x64 version of the codec if you’re using the x64 version of Brekel Kinect Pro Body.