Calibrating lens distortion takes time but doing the nodal offset calibration is relatively quick because you can do it with 4 or so images. There are no real shortcuts though. If you knew exactly how much you moved the sensor (ie: a 20 degree tilt) you could adjust the offset manually I suppose. But if you are using a zoom where the nodal point moves, that might not work. As I showed in one of my other tutorials, you can use an aruco to set where the 0,0,0 origin is in your studio, this is very quick. But any time you change the position of the sensor relative to the nodal point, it gets more complicated.
Great info. As far as the top handle mount, is there any benefit from mounting the bliss that high rather than just mounting the bliss onto the camera itself? I wasn’t sure if using the top handle may allow the bliss to see more? Thanks again.
I should have gone into this more. A Bliss or Vive will work fine mounted to the camera's shoe, but if you have a big lens like mine the handle has a few advantages. It pushes the tracker further forward so it can see more without that fat lens or any follow-focus gear getting in the way. Also putting the tracker further up and forward like that makes it easier for you to operate the zoom/focus or other camera controls without sticking your hands in front of the tracker, blocking it's view. Specifically for the Bliss, the USB cable exits straight down out of the tracker, if you mount it on the camera's shoe you may have trouble attaching the cable and making the sharp turn to avoid hitting the camera body or lens. If you use a long USB extender cable, it may have quite a beefy plug and stiff cable that is hard to bend. With the move forward and up the handle gives me the cable can exit straight down with plenty of room to make an easy bend. You can use a right-angle cable adapter to get around this too.
I've found the full cage setup has a lot of advantages, the chief one being that you can hang a ton of stuff of the cage without damaging the camera. Things like handles, lights, microphones, wireless mic receivers, batteries, mini-pcs and so on. You can end up with a real beast of a rig, but it's guaranteed you won't damage your camera body or accidently rip out cables/connectors. The whole thing I use is sturdy enough that I can just grab the handle to move the whole setup, tripod and all. I wouldn't do that if any part of the camera was carrying the load or if the cables were hanging loose of the camera/tracker connectors.
This depends on your setup. If you have a big sea of green (or LED wall) and the talent is the only real thing on it, the Bliss can have a hard time finding stationary things to lock onto because everything it sees is either featureless green or is moving. To avoid this problem people either put high contrast markers at the edges of their greenscreen (out of shot) or they include some practical (real) elements in the stage that don't move such as furniture, rugs, potted plants...etc. The other alternative is to tilt the bliss either down or up and place markers out of shot on the floor or ceiling. You can use the viewer that comes with the bliss to see what the tracking camera sees, it will show you if it is finding reliable tracking points.
