Alternate Search Modes

While working on rotoCap today I thought a nice feature would be allowing the user to manually launch rotoCap on a per-frame basis instead of a run of the whole image sequence. Additionally I am adding a flag to the keying sub-process whether or not to overwrite existing keyframes on a drone. If existing keyframes are found then the engine can use them as initial search coordinates, saving time by not having to start at the origin of a UV plane during the initial UV survey.

Homogenous RGB Mass Self-Centering

The colorSeek engine of rotoCap has been given some new methods for searching and evaluating masses of targeted RGB ranges. Instead of basing tracker position on a single pixel test, the new method treats a positive RGB test as the origin for a localized survey of the surrounding pixels. If it detects the pixels immediately surrounding it are within the RGB range it will expand the survey (patch) till it finds the edges of the color mass.

The engine then calculates the center of the mass by simply offsetting the target tracker half the size of the mass. This theoretically will eliminate any false positives due to the quality of the source image due to sensor noise and blurs due to fast movement. The centered coordinates are then passed on to the next frame's processing cycle to use as an origin for the new search.

Break for Debugging

While not moving as quickly as I had hoped, the ideas I've been integrating have been encouraging. Though like any grand scheme, there comes a time to pause and make sure future development is on a stable foundation. For the past weekend I've been going back and fixing little bugs so I don't have to worry about them later. Though not as satisfying, it is essential to maintain a level of coding discipline.