First of all, setup and optimize the motion capture volume as explained in the Getting Started guide or the Hardware Setup documentation. If you plan to install any obstacles (e.g. walls) within the capture volume, make sure they are non-reflective, and place and orient the cameras so that every corner is thoroughly captured by multiple cameras. For typical rigid body tracking, attach the rigid body markers as instructed in the Rigid Body Tracking page.
General Setup Steps
There are two different types of markers that can be used to track an object with OptiTrack systems: Passive markers and Active markers. Passive markers are retroreflective markers that reflect infrared light emitted from the IR LEDs on the camera. On the other hand, the active markers are LED markers that emit the IR light. Either type of markers can be used to track HMDs.
Use appropriate adhesives and marker posts to securely attach the markers to the HMD. For active markers, the active Tag must be attached also in order to synchronize and power the LEDs also. Oculus CV1 HMDs can use the active CV1 clip enclosure to easily place 8 active markers over the HMD. Depending on which marker you are using to track the HMD, the setup instructions will vary slightly.
With the HMD bracket, simply attach the active marker bracket onto an CV1 HMD and use the active markers on it to define a rigid body.
When using the active markers, the markers are actively labeled individually from each of their own unique illumination patterns, and only the matching active markers get contributed to the rigid body solve. The biggest benefit from the individual labeling is that markers can be placed in perfectly symmetrical placements among multiple rigid body assets.
When attaching retroreflective markers, make sure markers are securely attached and readily captured by the cameras. For attaching the markers, we recommend using our 20 mm wide and 30 mm tall M4 threaded plastic marker bases with Acrylic adhesives, available at the webstore, to attach the markers onto the HMD.
A markered HMD will be defined as a rigid body in Motive. When placing markers, make sure the placement asymmetry is respected in the arrangement within the HMD. Also, the marker arrangements between multiple HMDs must be incongruent. For more details, read about marker placement from the Rigid Body Tracking page.
When using an OptiTrack motion capture system to track Oculus HMDs, avoid connecting its positional tracker, the Rift sensor, to the host PC. If the tracker is connected to the PC, IR LEDs on the connected HMD will illuminate, and it could interfere negatively with the IR tracking of the motion capture system. When Oculus tracker is not recognized by the computer, an error message may appear but you can ignore the error message (Critical Error - can't find the sensor) and proceed without the tracker.
Creating Active Clip HMD
This feature can be used only with HMDs that have the OptiTrack Active HMD clips mounted.
For using OptiTrack system for VR applications, it is important that the pivot point of HMD rigid body gets placed at the appropriate location, which is at the root of the nose in between the eyes. When using the HMD clips, you can utilize the HMD creation tools in the Builder pane to have Motive estimate this spot and place the pivot point accordingly. It utilizes known marker configurations on the clip to precisely positions the pivot point and sets the desired orientation.
HMDs with passive markers can utilize the External Pivot Alignment tool to calibrate the pivot point.
Creating HMD from the markers
In Motive, select the markers that are attached to the HMD and create a rigid body (Hotkey: CTRL + T) as you would do for other rigid bodies. Once this is set up, use the External Pivot Alignment tool in the Builder pane (rigid body → Edit) to calibrate the pivot point of the created rigid body:
For using OptiTrack system for VR applications, it is important that the pivot point of HMD rigid body gets placed at the appropriate location, which is at the root of the nose in between the eyes. External Pivot Alignment tool utilizes both the OptiTrack mocap system and the HMD's own tracking system (Oculus Tracker / Vive Base Stations) for precisely calculating the location of the pivot point of an HMD. When using this feature, both systems must be tracking the HMD simultaneously.
HMD Compatibility Notes:
External Pivot Calibration Tips:
Once the rigid body is created, select the asset and open the Properties pane. The following settings need to be configured for HMD tracking.
Deflection setting is the tolerable distance, in millimeters, that a rigid body marker may deviate from its expected position before it is unlabeled and unassociated with the rigid body. The deflection is set to 4 mm by default. For HMD tracking applications, we recommended lowering this value to 3 or 2. This will reduce the amount of computation required for labeling, and overall latency may be reduced.
The User Data value for each rigid body is used as an identification number to reference the rigid body in external applications. Log this value for each rigid body (including the HMD(s)) in the scene. This number will be used to associate the assets in the client applications using the plugin devices.
This setting may need to be modified when tracking HMDs with passive markers. To prevent the swapping of the rigid body definition, set this setting to 4. When tracking multiple HMDs, there could be limitations to a variety of unique marker arrangements that could be achieved. If this value is set to a lower value, a set of three markers on an HMD may be congruent to another set in a different HMD, and the rigid body definitions may be switched in Motive.
After the rigid body definition have been created for the HMD, the position and orientation of the rigid body pivot point should get placed precisely on the root of the player's nose with the respective orientation axis pointing the forward direction. If needed, you can use the Builder pane edit tools to recalibrate the HMD pivot point positions.
In most cases, you will be utilizing the previously described calibration tool for precisely positioning and orienting the HMD rigid body. However, if, for some reason, you want to manually position the pivot point without using the HMD Calibration feature, follow the instruction on this page: Manually Calibrating the HMD Pivot Point.
