Manus Core 2.0 | First Time Setup
Note: This article applies to both Prime 3 Haptic XR Gloves and Prime 3 Mocap Gloves
Note: This article applies to both Quantum Mocap Metagloves and Quantum XR Metagloves.
Introduction
When you connect a new device, MANUS Core 2.0 will take you through the first time setup to configure your device.
First, choose a name for your user profile
Then, depending on the hardware, the first time setup will take you through different steps. You can set up gloves, trackers, or both. You can also skip the process altogether and set up everything manually.
MANUS Quantum Metagloves
First, MANUS Core will check for connected dongles and gloves.
If your devices are connected wired or in the pairing mode, they will light up green. If they are not detected, the icons will remain greyed out.
Once your devices are connected, you will be able to calibrate your gloves.
There are three steps to calibrate each MANUS Quantum Metaglove.
First, place your hand on a flat surface and close your fingers, but point your thumb outwards. Then, hold still while the sensor data is being collected.
After that, raise your hand and make a fist, and again hold still.
Lastly, touch the base of the palm of your hand repeatedly with your fingertips. Continue till the calibration step is complete.
Now repeat the same steps for your other glove.
MANUS Prime Gloves
First, MANUS Core will check for connected gloves and dongles.
If your devices are connected wired or in the pairing mode, they will light up green. If they are not detected, the icons will remain greyed out.
Once your devices are connected, you will be able to calibrate your gloves.
There are three steps to calibrate each Prime Series glove.
First, make a fist: close your fingers and rest the thumb on the side. Then, wait for the calibration of this step to complete.
After that, straighten the fingers and bend the thumb. Again, hold still till the step is complete.
Lastly, make a pistol: straighten your index finger and thumb , and close all other fingers. Wait for the calibration to complete.
Do the same for your other glove.
Gloves with trackers
First, MANUS Core will check for connected gloves and dongles.
If your devices are connected wired or in the pairing mode, they will light up green. If they are not detected, the icons will remain greyed out.
Once your devices are connected, you will be able to calibrate your gloves.
After you complete the calibration for your gloves, you can configure your Tracking System. MANUS Core supports OpenVR(SteamVR) and ART tracking.
If you accidentally choose the setup with trackers and you only want to configure the gloves, you can either choose “None” from the dropdown menu or skip this step.
With the tracking system configured, you can assign the trackers to the gloves in the Users tab.
Trackers only
If you only want to configure trackers, you will see a menu where you can choose between OpenVR (SteamVR) and ART.
You will also see the framerate (updates per second).
After you configure your tracking system, you can assign the trackers to body parts in Users tab. You can configure just the hands or the entire body for Polygon.
Gloves Tab
Introduction
In the Gloves Panel, you can see all the devices you have currently connected.
You can see all dongles connected, all gloves paired to a dongle, all gloves connected wired, and all gloves ready to be paired to a dongle.
Each dongle and glove have a unique identifier you see next to their name.
Each glove will display their battery level, and each wireless connected glove will display its wireless connection quality.
You can also see the skeletal view of the hands and the data driving them.
When there is new firmware available for your connected devices, an exclamation icon will inform you about this.
You can also hide and unhide gloves from the viewport.
Viewport
In the main Gloves viewport, you have several viewers. All of them feature the ID of the device in the top left corner.
Hand Viewer
In the Hand Viewer, you can take a look at your virtual hands.
You will be able to see directly what you’re doing with your physical hands.
Data Viewer
In the Data Viewer, you can take a look at the data driving your virtual hands.
Each of the bars relates to the angle of one of the joints in your hand.
Haptics Viewer
And when you’re using Haptic gloves, you can experience the vibro-tactile feedback on each of your fingers. Simply click one of the actuators to experience the localized tactile feedback.
Devices
Gloves
When you select a glove, its details will be shown in the bottom right panel.
You can see the glove family type, its hardware revision as well as its firmware version.
You can also see its battery level.
For wirelessly connected gloves, it will show the wireless connection strength.
You also have the ability to unpair your glove from the dongle it is currently connected to.
Furthermore, you can start the glove calibration in the details panel.
Dongles
When you select a dongle, its details will be shown in the bottom right panel, just like with gloves.
Here you can see the hardware revision of your dongle, as well as the firmware it's currently running.
Each dongle automatically selects the best available wireless channel when you start MANUS Core.
You can pick another wireless channel, and you can update the channel utilization overview.
With the channel selection menu, you can also manually select a specific channel.
Users Tab
In the Users tab you can configure hand tracking and Polygon full body tracking
In the viewport on the left side, you will see all the active trackers and their real-time positions. You can move around the viewport using the WASDQE keys and holding the right mouse button at the same time.
On the right side you can see the tracking system, all users and options for configuring them.
Tracking systems
Here you can see what your current tracking system is. If you haven’t set the[AB15] [AB16] tracking system yet, MANUS Core will display “none”. If you want to choose or change the tracking system, you can do that in the settings.
Users
All the users that you have created are visible here. MANUS Core automatically assigns the hardware which was configured during the first time setup to the user. If you have any unassigned hardware, you can assign it manually.
User ID
Clicking on the User ID opens a menu in the bottom right corner.
If you have trackers already assigned to hands or full body, the “calibrate” button will be available. If any of the tracker configurations are not complete, the button will remain greyed out.
Tracker configurations:
1. Hands only
2. 6-point full body Polygon tracking
3. 8-point full body Polygon tracking
You have the ability to edit body measurements. You can either do it visually by dragging the values till the avatar looks correct, or you can measure from joint to joint and put in the values manually(in centimeters). Mass, arm ratio, and leg ratio are represented by percentages.
You can also adjust the offset of the head tracker (forward) and hip tracker (forward and height).
You have the option to reset and start over.
Lastly, you can delete a user if you don’t need it.
Tracker
You can assign the trackers to specific body parts by choosing them from the dropdown menus. The trackers are color coded to help you identify the ones you are looking for. As you progress, you will see the black markers turn to the color of the tracker you assigned.
You can also do an automatic allocation. To activate it, stand in the center of the room and choose “continue allocating”.
First, stand in a neutral pose, with your arms on the sides of your body.
Once this step is completed, raise your arms and hold them in front of you till the allocation is completed.
In both cases, once the trackers are assigned, a digital avatar will appear.
If you need to start over, you can press the “reset to default” button.
Gloves
You can also assign gloves to your Polygon setup to bring finger tracking to your setup. Make sure to choose the correct Dongle, Left Glove, and Right Glove.
You can add new user manually. When you click on this button, it will take you to the first time setup page.
Recording tab
Recording Details Panel
In the Recording Details Panel, you can see an overview of the currently available sources you can record: gloves, polygon users, and unassigned trackers.
For each available source, you can decide if you want to hide or unhide them in the viewport.
Using the recording functionality you can save hand, body and tracker data to a file.
You can also load in previously recorded data, live stream this previously recorded data to applications with MANUS core integration and export a recording to FBX.
Before you record, it’s important to check you have everything configured for your needs.
Recording Details
Framerate
With the recording framerate setting you can set the frequency of your data recording.
You can select a frame rate at which you intend to use the recording afterwards, for example in your animation software or game engine.
Or you can also pick a frame rate which will easily down sample or up sample to the framerate you will use.
The framerate at the top refers to the viewport rendering frame rate in the Dashboard.
The Dashboard will record and render at your selected frame rate.
If you are using the MANUS Dashboard with a SteamVR headset, you have the option to see the viewport in VR as well.
With this option enabled, the framerate will refer to the frame rate of your SteamVR headset, for example 90FPS, 120HZor even 144Hz.
The MANUS Dashboard will still use your selected recording framerate when recording.
Scale skeleton
If you are recording full-body Polygon data, you can choose to include the physical dimensions of your actor to scale your recorded skeleton.
With this option disabled, the recorded skeleton will use the default MANUS Polygon skeleton dimensions.
Timecode & Genlock
With the timecode setting enabled, you can synchronize your recording with an external time code generator.
Make sure the MANUS Time Sync Cable is connected to your line-in audio jack and select the audio interface the cable is connected to in the Settings Tab.
Recording
With all recording settings explained, we can now record.
To start recording, press the recording button in the middle of the toolbar.
While recording, you can see the number of recorded frames and the duration of the recording increasing.
When you are finished, simply press the recording button again, to stop recording.
Triggered Recording
The Dashboard also has support for synchronized recording with OptiTrack Motive 2 and Vicon Shogun.
When you start recording in Motive or Shogun, the MANUS Dashboard will then also start to record.
Make sure you have the option enabled in your settings, and the trigger port is configured correctly.
For Motive you will need to enable the Remote Trigger functionality inside Motive.
Then in the MANUS Dashboard enable the Motive trigger and set the port 2 higher than your command port.
By default, this means your trigger port number will be 1512.
For Shogun you will need to enable the Triggered Capture functionality inside Shogun.
You can set your trigger port to a specific number, by default it is set to port 30.
Then in the MANUS Dashboard also enable the Shogun trigger and set the port to the same number as in Shogun.
Saving, Loading & Clearing
Saving
By default, a recording will be saved once you stop recording.
You can select the folder where these files are saved.
You can also easily open this folder to see your recorded files.
If you are using triggered recording, the files will be saved in the folder you configured in Motive or Shogun.
Loading
You can also load previously saved files.
Simply click Load and select the recording you would like to open.
Clearing
When you finish your recording, the recorded animation will be loaded automatically, so you can easily review and edit it.
When you want to go back to your live data, you can click the Clear button to unload the recorded data.
With Automatic save disabled, you can discard your unsaved recorded data, and go back to live data.
Playback& Editing
With a recording loaded you can play back and go through your recording.
You can use this functionality to both review your recording and to stream your recorded data, as if it were live data.
Simply click anywhere on the timeline to skip to that point and drag to go through the recorded data.
The play/pause button allows you to play and pause your recording.
You can also easily go to the beginning or ending of your timeline selection.
If you want some precision, you can step one frame at a time ahead or back.
With the set begin and set end buttons you can trim your timeline selection.
You can also do this by dragging the timeline handles.
With the loop button you can toggle the looping of the playback of your recording.
Exporting
With the recording done we can now export.[AvdB20] If you trim your recording, only the selection will be exported.
Selecting Sources
In this example we will export the polygon body data, so we will untick the glove and additional tracker data.
With trackers enabled, you can also export additional tracking data, for example when you’re using prop tracking.
Export Settings
With the export mesh setting enabled, it is very easy to visualize your recording and also use your recording in Unreal.
No need to worry about setting up a character with a skeleton before importing your animations in Unreal.
When only exporting glove data, we could use the wrist rotation setting to select if we wanted to include the orientation of the hand in the exported animation.
With the Export tracker positions options, we can include the original tracking data which was used to solve the skeleton which we will export.
The Keyframe reduction option offers the ability to shrink the recording file size by discarding some data, but this will reduce tracking accuracy.
And using the naming convention we can make it easier to use the exported data after we export it.
Now simply press Export FBX, and you’re all done.
Settings Tab
In the Settings Panel, you can adjust certain features of MANUS Core.
Overall
UI Scale
The Dashboard uses your Windows scaling settings to determine how large UI elements should be.
If you want to adjust the size of interface elements independent of your Windows scaling, simply use the dropdown menu to select a different UI scale.
Whether you are looking at the Dashboard on a large TV from far away in your mocap space or you’re sitting behind your desk, you can easily see and use the Dashboard.
Render to VR headset
If you want to visualize your gloves or Polygon in VR, make sure that this checkbox is on.
Disable automatic user creation
When you connect a new device, MANUS Core will automatically take you to the first time setup. You can disable this option.
Connection dialog
Hardware
Force firmware update
In case your device got disconnected during firmware update and did not update correctly, you can go through the installation process again if you check this box on.
Automatic Channel Optimization
Each dongle automatically selects the best available wireless channel when you start MANUS Core.
If you want your glove and dongle pairs to always use a specific wireless channel, for example when you're using many wireless devices at the same time, you can disable this automatic channel selection.
Glove
Disable Prime Series IMU Data
The MANUS Prime II & X Series gloves use 2 kinds of sensors: orientation sensors and bend sensors.
When you experience sensor drift, you can decide to disable the orientation sensors. With these settings, you can select to only use the bending sensor data.
3D Hand Orientation
The hand orientation slider allows you to rotate the visualization of the digital hand in the Gloves Hand Viewer.
With this setting you can make the finger articulation more visible when looking at your digital hand.
Tracking
Keep tracker position
This option lets you retain the last known tracker position in the viewport after it loses connection.
Tracker timeout
If this option is on, the trackers that lose connection will disappear from the viewport.
Tracker timeout time
You can set the amount of time that will have to pass before a disconnected tracker disappears from the viewport (in seconds)
Tracking systems
ART
In this panel you can configure the ART tracking system. You can turn it on and off using the checkbox.
Updates per second
Here you can set the frame rate for the system.
Port
OpenVR (SteamVR)
In this panel you can configure your SteamVR tracking system. You can turn it on and off using the checkbox.
Updates per second
Here you can set the frame rate for the system.
Recording
MANUS Core has triggered recording functionality for OptiTrack Motive and Vicon Shogun.
Motive trigger
If you are using OptiTrack Motive software and you want the recording of the hands to start at the same time, make sure this checkbox is on.
Motive port
For Motive you will need to enable the Remote Trigger functionality inside Motive.
Then in the Manus Dashboard enable the Motive trigger and set the port 2 higher than your command port.
By default, this means your trigger port number will be 1512.
Vicon Shogun trigger
If you are using Vicon Shogun software and you want the recording of the hands to start at the same time, make sure this checkbox is on.
Vicon Shogun port
For Shogun you will need to enable the Triggered Capture functionality inside Shogun.
You can set your trigger port to a specific number, by default it is set to port 30.
Then in the Manus Dashboard also enable the Vicon Shogun trigger and set the port to the same number as in Shogun.
Timecode
MANUS Core has built in timecode functionality
Interface
Here you can choose the device you are plugged into. If you don’t see your device, you can refresh the list and try again.
Genlock
This setting allows you to turn on and off the Genlock functionality. By default, it’s turned on.
Keep interface alive
If you disconnect your device and you plug it in again, it will automatically reconnect.
Version information
In this panel you can see which version of MANUS Core and its Dashboard you are currently using.
Tray
When you close the MANUS Dashboard, it will minimize to the tray and run in the background.
If you right click on the icon, you can see four options.
MANUS Dashboard
Clicking this option will launch the MANUS Dashboard.
Restart MANUS Core
This button closes and re-launches MANUS Core.
More
Dev Tools
This will open the Dev Tools, where you can set up your skeleton for retargeting.
Disable client session timeout
This prevents sessions which are no longer sending signal to MANUS Core from being disconnected.
Compress all Logs in a ZIP
This creates a zip of all your settings which you can later send to us with feedback.
Open Settings folder
This opens the folder where all the settings and your Logs ZIPs are stored.
Reset settings
This clears the settings to an installation state. It can be used if MANUS Core does not behave correctly.
About
This will show you which version you are using.
Exit
This fully closes MANUS Core.
