Active frame extraction from motion capture

Question

I am new to this area - I have a background in a Gait and Posture.

I have a series of motion files of timestamped coordinates (containing X, Y, and Z in mm) with a number of joints (30).

What would be the simplest way to extract the following from the motion observations. 1) The number of active features (i.e. active joints). 2) average speed of motion.

Same file is the format of NxP. Where P is the number of joints and N is the number of frame observations.

What I am looking for is some pointers into possible areas to explore.

Regards,

Dan

Answer 1

A couple of possibilities you might like to explore - both using completely free, (and open source), software:

1. Python + Numpy/SciPy can easily read in your coordinate values and calculate the data you require - it is also possible to plot in 3D using matplotlib.
2. You could use your positional data to animate a stick figure in Blender - some of the test blends would provide a good starting point for this.