Tips on templating and how it can reduce post-processing time

You could save a lot of time by identifying your marker data in live mode instead of Post-Processing Mode. All it takes is utilizing a little feature we call “templating”. 

Surprisingly, many customers don’t even know what templating is. And those who do, often don’t realize the benefits it offers to their motion capture process. 

Cortex uses a template to identify markers, and the template is a collection of links. Those links provide allowable distance between markers. Using the links, list of markers, marker order and relative location of unnamed markers in the volume, Cortex applies an identity to the unnamed markers that the cameras see in order to get usable data in post process

If you take the time to build a great template, you can apply it during a live recording, which prevents you from having to identify markers in post processing mode.

When using a template in Live Mode, you should always use “New Subject”, which is a tool in Cortex that can be used in both live and Post-Process Mode. Creating a robust template and utilizing the New Subject feature allows scaling of the previously created template to fit new subjects which eliminates the need to recreate the template in post process for each subject.  

Being able to use New Subject to fit the template in Live Mode also prevents the user from needing to spend a large amount of time identifying features in Post Process Mode.  

Let’s say you have two people you’re recording data on – one of them is 5ft and one is 6ft. You would use New Subject to fit the “Robust Template” or “Golden Template” to the 5ft person.The beauty is, the same Robust/Golden Template will work on a 6ft person.

Templating offers Cortex users a huge benefit in that you can get identified data as soon as you’ve recorded it in Live Mode, which will reduce the amount of work you need to do in Post-Processing Mode.

Here are our top three tips for building a template:

1. Make sure you’re starting with a static capture and then extending for a range of motion capture that’s representative of the dataset you’ll be using the marker set on. So, for example, if you’re using it on gait analysis, you want to make sure you’re extending the template using gait data.
2. Ensure that “New Subject” is used between each subject that you extend the template on. Scaling the template first to fit a new subject will ensure any extensions made afterwards will encompass only the range of motion of that specific subject and not the difference in size between the current and previous subject.
3. Extend the template for multiple subjects, because different subjects will move in different ways, for example in gait analysis, various people (subjects) will have different gaits. You need to make sure the template encompasses the range of motion that you would expect from your full sample size.

And remember, if at first you don’t succeed, because building a template takes time (but is still worth the effort), you can always contact one of our legendary customer support team members for help.