Free tool
Mocap Camera Planner & Coverage Map
How many motion capture cameras do you need, and where do they go? Set your room, your camera and how many performers you intend to capture, and see exactly where the volume holds up — and where it drops markers. Runs in your browser. No signup.
What it actually works out
Coverage, not a camera count guess
Every cell of the working area is tested against every camera: is the marker inside the field of view, inside range, and is anything standing in the way. Two cameras that clear all three give you a 3D point — fewer give you nothing.
Performers are the occluders
The reason camera count scales with cast size is that people block each other. Add performers and they become opaque cylinders in the solve, so the map shows the holes they open up rather than pretending an empty room.
Worst case, not a lucky frame
Performers move, so one arrangement proves nothing. The map keeps the worst result across several random arrangements inside your working area — the number that decides whether a take is usable.
Real camera figures
PrimeX 120, 41, 22, 13, 13W and SlimX 13 with their published field of view and range, all editable. A heat map drawn from a guessed lens is a promise an install can't keep, so the optics are an input here, never an assumption.
Fewest cameras that cover it
Step the count up until the working area clears your view threshold. It reports what it found, and tells you when the room, the range or the working area is the real constraint instead of the camera count.
Placement that reflects practice
Cameras spread by perimeter distance rather than by angle, so they don't bunch into the corners of a rectangular room. Staggered heights are offered because varying elevation is what actually reduces occlusion.
What this is, and what it isn’t
This is a planning tool for the stage where you are still choosing a system: how large a volume you can cover, how many cameras that takes, and how much the answer moves when you go from one performer to six. It models the three things that decide whether a marker reconstructs — field of view, range, and line of sight — and it is honest about being a model.
It is not a substitute for a site survey. Real rooms have trusses, lighting bars, set pieces and mirrors; performers carry props and lie on the floor; and a camera’s usable range depends on marker size, exposure and how clean the room is. The map treats performers as the only occluders and the room as empty otherwise, which makes it optimistic about clutter and pessimistic about nothing.
Camera figures come from published datasheets and every one of them is editable, because a coverage map drawn from a lens nobody confirmed is worse than no map at all. When a layout matters, send it over — we’ll check it against the room.
Speccing the LED side too? The LED Wall Builder does the same job for panels, power and rigging. For shot planning inside a finished volume, that’s Volumate.
Building a capture volume?
Form Volumes designs, installs and supports optical motion capture, camera tracking and LED volumes. Send us a layout from the planner and we’ll come back with a system, a price, and what we’d change about it.