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Miku Dances with Real-Time Motion Capture via Kinect

Daily Video: Yū Higuchi, the developer of the MikuMikuDance program that enables users to create dancing videos of Hatsune Miku, posted a video on Sunday to demonstrate real-time motion capture of dancing via the Kinect sensor. Microsoft released Kinect last month as an add-on to its Xbox 360 console to support 3D motion-sensing in games. However, independent programmers soon developed driver software to allow personal computers to connect to the Kinect sensor through the USB port. Crypton Future Media originally created the virtual idol Hatsune Miku to launch its line of Vocaloid vocal song synthesis software.

Last Monday, Higuchi posted a video test of his MikuMikuDance program accepting real-time motion capture data from Kinect, but that earlier test only worked on the upper body. In Sunday's new video, Higuchi demonstrated full-body motion capture to control Miku's dancing. In addition, Higuchi now offers the driver for the Kinect support in his free MikuMikuDance program. MikuMikuDance not only creates dancing videos of Miku, but also of other characters with 3D modeling data.

Last month, the Japanese arm of the graphics processor maker Nvidia announced on its official Twitter account that the MikuMikuDance software now supports its 3D Vision setup for stereoscopic 3D video. Higuchi himself posted a demonstration video of MikuMikuDance in stereoscopic 3D, although this video uses red/blue anaglyph glasses instead of the full-color liquid-crystal shutter glasses that Nvidia's 3D Vision uses.

[Via Hachima Kikō, Temple Knights]