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This guide details how to place and mount your Coil Pro, alongside information about the capture space, and recommendations for best practice.
Placement of the Coil Pro
The Coil Pro emits an electromagnetic field (EMF). This field acts as a bubble that encapsulates you and your motion capture equipment into a defined capture space. To ensure that your capture space is as large as possible, we recommend placing the Coil Pro in the middle of the room you are using. Placing it near a wall will limit the radius you are able to move around the Coil Pro. It is also possible that the Coil Pro's signal quality will be negatively affected by any ferrous (iron) metals that you may be unaware are in your walls.
On that note, it is also recommended that the Coil Pro is not placed directly on the floor. This will prevent any disturbance from metals or cablings that may be present in your floor.
It is also important that the Coil Pro is placed on a completely flat surface. This will keep the positioning of your motion capture level. If the surface or tripod the Coil Pro is mounted on is not level, your body/hands will appear skewed in Studio.
Mounting the Coil Pro
At the bottom of the Coil Pro is a 1/4”-20 UNC thread mount, meaning that it can easily be mounted to a tripod. You may even wish to mount your Coil Pro to the ceiling to unlock as large of a capture space as possible. If doing this, just be sure to switch on the Ceiling Mounted check box in Rokoko Studio.
The Capture Space
The Smartgloves can pick up the signal from the Coil Pro within a 5m radius (i.e. a 10m diameter area), but for optimal EMF accuracy, it is currently recommended to stay within a 3 meter radius (the team is currently working on extending this further in future software updates).
Within this space, your Smartgloves will have absolute position. This will help all but eliminate any drift you've previously seen with a Smartsuit Pro. Do be mindful however, that positioning your Smartgloves too close to the Coil Pro will saturate the EMF sensors, meaning your position cannot be picked up. Rokoko Studio will warn you if your Smartgloves are too close (usually when you are standing less than 50cm away from the Coil) by showing a red field around your Coil Pro.
If you see this happening, simply take a step back, and the red warning will disappear.
Recommendations for Optimal Use of Capture Space
For optimal use of the Coil Pro, it is recommended to remove other electronics and/or metallic objects from the capture space. However, as long as your Smartgloves display green in the Details panel in Rokoko Studio, you will be able to use the Coil Pro without any significant interference.
If you are two or more actors using Rokoko Smartgloves in conjunction with the Coil Pro, we recommend setting the distance to the floor of your Coil Pro (from the floor to the bottom of the Coil) manually in Rokoko Studio. If you are just one actor, this distance will be calculated automatically upon calibrating. But you can always set this yourself if you wish to.
When moving out of the Coil Pro's capture space, the IMU sensors of your Smartsuit and Smartgloves will take over to calculate your global position, so that there is as little disruption to your recording as possible. Similarly, when you then step back into the Coil Pro capture space, the EMF sensors will resume control of your positioning. For optimal performance, we recommend staying within the Coil Pro capture space while recording a scene.
If you need to move your Coil Pro to a different place within your recording area, you will need to switch it off before doing so.