To create the object track for my grappling hook. I looked to create something that could be attached the wrist with tracking markers in the form of coloured balls. I started by looking at using a small piece of plastic guttering, as the cylindrical shape would be able to fit around my wrist and the plastic would hold anything I stuck to it. After going to BnQ to look for piping I realised that I would either have to get a several meter long pieces with no efficient way to cut it, leading to a potential cutting hazard. But the hole itself was too large for my arm so would need to have some padding fitted inside it. All the other pipework was too small for an arm to fit through comfortably so I decided that guttering would not be cost efficient or practical at all.
It was when I saw someone walking outside BnQ with a cast on their arm that I thought about wrist supports. A quick purchase on Amazon later and I had a wrist support ready to go.
The next problem was how to add the tracking markers. I needed a way for them to be stable, as when I tested object tracking it was always good to have them stick out to give the object depth and a more reliable track. I originally wanted to use ping pong balls but I realised that the size of them would be larger than my model would cover. So after some experimentation, I cut up some coloured washing up sponges and used cocktail sticks to stick them in the wrist support. This basically became a homemade iron maiden for your wrist, so using more of the sponge to act a buffer on the inside, this had the added benefit of keeping the toothpicks stable so the tracking markers didn’t move around.
From my original tests, I found that my tracking markers didn’t contrast enough. And I should have used RGB instead of red, yellow and teal. To fix this I added black dots with a sharpie on everything. to allow key points for my markers to track. And this worked effectively enough for me to move onto my final track.
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