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B1's MoCapAnything pick reversed (animal model, wrong for human capture); license analysis recorded in LICENSES.md. John chose Path B: run HSMR->SKEL locally on ultra (MPS), ship rig-motion only, accept the non-commercial licence risk as interim until a commercial SKEL licence request goes out (Path A, the clean upgrade). Engine installed under .engine/ (gitignored): uv venv py3.10, torch 2.13 MPS-green, ungated weights, smoke_test.py with Apple-Silicon bypasses (detectron2 stubbed with full-frame bbox, headless pyrender stubbed -> QC in Blender) -- see docs/B_ENGINE_SETUP.md. Remaining before B ships: John's gated SKEL v1.1.1 download, then the forward-pass smoke test (MPS end-to-end, timing, pose sanity). Known caveat: HSMR is per-frame so root is camera-space cam_t, NOT world-grounded -> Lane C derives root from foot-contact. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
108 lines
7.1 KiB
Markdown
108 lines
7.1 KiB
Markdown
# B1 — pose-model bake-off
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**Status: SUPERSEDED 2026-07-17 (session 2).** The selection below (MoCapAnything V2) was a
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**category error** — MoCapAnything is an **animal** mocap model (71 animal targets, no
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human/biped/mixamorig, no fingers), so it cannot be MOCAPGOD's human v1 engine. Its "SMPL gate
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dissolved" conclusion is therefore wrong; the gate is **LIVE**. See `docs/DECISIONS.md` for the
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corrected, license-verified decision. The candidate research below is kept as history — its
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*human*-model findings (GVHMR non-commercial, GEM-X CUDA-only) still stand; its recommendation
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does not.
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The PLAN told this lane to distrust the July-2024 snapshot and search fresh. It paid off:
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two models that post-date the snapshot change the whole calculus — one of them **removes
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the SMPL licensing hard-stop the plan was built around.**
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## Selection criteria (PLAN order)
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1. permissive code license (must ship in commercial games)
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2. world-grounded global trajectory (not pose-in-place)
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3. runs on Apple Silicon (m3ultra — MPS or acceptable CPU; no NVIDIA on the fleet)
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4. SMPL-dependency status (the legal rail)
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## Candidate matrix
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| Model | World-grounded | Code lic. | Weights lic. | SMPL? | Apple Silicon | Output | Commercial-ship |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| **MoCapAnything V2** ⭐ | trajectories (global vs camera **unverified**) | MIT | **MIT** | **No** | standard PyTorch, no custom CUDA ops → MPS-portable *with effort* | **BVH rotations onto an arbitrary target rig** (feed it mixamorig) + hands | **YES (MIT/MIT)** |
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| GVHMR | Yes — SOTA, beats WHAM 18–28% WA-MPJPE | **research-only** | needs SMPL | Yes | plain PyTorch, MPS-portable w/ effort | SMPL params (rot) + global traj (.pt) | **NO** — code is non-commercial *and* SMPL-gated |
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| GEM-X (NVIDIA) | Yes | Apache-2.0 | NVIDIA Open Model Lic. (NVIDIA states commercial-ready) | **No** (SOMA body model) | **CUDA 12.1+ only, NVIDIA arch** — will not run on the fleet | 77-joint axis-angle + world root (m), incl. hands | Yes, but **off-fleet** |
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| WHAM | Yes (autoregressive; GVHMR's predecessor) | research/NC (not re-verified) | needs SMPL | Yes | PyTorch, MPS-portable | SMPL + traj | NO (gate) — dominated by GVHMR |
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| TRAM | Yes (SLAM-based camera+human) | mixed; +DROID-SLAM | needs SMPL | Yes | heavier (SLAM stage) | SMPL + traj | NO (gate) — heaviest, not pursued |
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Sources verified this session: GVHMR repo LICENSE (custom research-only, "prohibited for
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commercial use", contact xwzhou@zju.edu.cn); GEM-X model card (Apache code / NVIDIA Open
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Model License weights / SOMA / CUDA-only); MoCapAnything V2 weights card
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(`kehong/MoCapAnythingV2-weights`, **License: mit**, author Kehong Gong = paper author) and
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code repo `github.com/phongdaot/MocapAnything` (MIT). WHAM/TRAM licenses not re-verified —
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both are SMPL-gated and dominated by GVHMR on the world-grounded metric, so not installed.
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## The two findings that matter
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**1. GVHMR (the accuracy leader) is double-blocked for us.** Its own code license is
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non-commercial — that's a wall *independent of* SMPL, and the joints-only Path-B from the
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PLAN can't get around a non-commercial *code* license. John's clips ship in commercial
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games. GVHMR is therefore a research/accuracy *reference* only, unless John negotiates a
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paid ZJU commercial license. It is **not** a v1 shipping engine.
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**2. MoCapAnything V2 dissolves the SMPL gate.** MIT code + MIT weights, commercial use
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permitted, **no SMPL files anywhere** in the pipeline or dependency list (torch/opencv/
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trimesh only). It is category-agnostic: you give it a monocular video **plus the target
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rig as a prompt**, and it emits a rotation-based BVH that drives *that rig* directly, via
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constraint-aware IK. Cross-species too (it retargets across heterogeneous rigs — a free
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preview of the Lane E4 centaur work).
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### Why #2 is bigger than "gate cleared"
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If we prompt MoCapAnything with the **mixamorig** skeleton (`spec/mixamorig_bones.json` /
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`female_game.glb`), it emits **mixamorig BVH directly**. That means:
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- `spec/smpl_to_mixamorig.json` (B2 task 2) is **unnecessary** — there is no SMPL
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intermediate to map.
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- Lane C's core constraint-retarget (bvh→mixamorig) **largely collapses** — the BVH is
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already on-skeleton. Lane C shrinks to: import → foot-contact fix → jitter → trim →
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export FBX.
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The fresh search didn't just clear the legal hold-up; it deleted a spec file and most of a
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lane. `# ponytail win: don't build the SMPL→mixamorig mapper or the Lane C retarget rig
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until we've confirmed MoCapAnything can't hit mixamorig directly.`
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**Caveat (honest):** getting it to emit *exactly* the treaty's mixamorig (joint order,
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Y-up, faces −Z, bone-roll) will still need a rig-prompt config and a convention
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reconciliation pass. "Collapses" = "greatly simplifies," not "free."
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## Recommendation
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**Primary: MoCapAnything V2.** Only candidate that is commercial-clean AND on-fleet AND
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BVH-direct. Accept two risks, both verifiable cheaply at inference (below).
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**Reference (optional): GVHMR** under its research license, purely to benchmark how much
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accuracy we're leaving on the table — informs whether a paid ZJU license is ever worth it.
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**Shelved: GEM-X** — revisit only if the fleet ever gains an NVIDIA GPU (it's the cleanest
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option the day CUDA is available; zero-cloud rules out renting it).
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## Must-verify at the inference eyeball (the other half of B1)
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These are why the lane isn't ticked. Cheap to settle — MoCapAnything ships a ~160 MB sample
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dataset and an HF demo Space, so we don't even need John's footage to answer them:
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1. **Global trajectory?** Treaty requires world-space root motion. MoCapAnything says
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"temporally coherent trajectories" — confirm the character *travels through the world*,
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not runs-in-place. If camera-space only, we need a grounding pass (or fall back to GVHMR
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for locomotion clips). **This is the #1 risk.**
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2. **MPS reality.** Standard PyTorch predicts yes, but the PLAN's rule is "check MPS early —
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it decides everything." Expect some ops to need CPU fallback; time it (<2× realtime is
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the bar).
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3. **Quality.** The linked code is a re-implementation ("use as reference, not
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reproduction"). Eyeball walk / dance / pick-up-object in Blender before trusting it.
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## Preconditions before the install/inference session
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- **m3ultra disk: 29 GB free of 926 GB (97% full).** Marginal for one torch env + weights;
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too tight for two. Clear space first (see `DECISIONS.md`).
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- **Test footage:** inbox is empty. Sample data covers the smoke test; John's walk / dance /
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pick-up-object clips are needed for the real quality call and B2/B3/acceptance.
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- **Engine decision:** confirm MoCapAnything-primary (vs. paying for GVHMR-grade). See
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`DECISIONS.md`.
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## Sources
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- [GVHMR](https://github.com/zju3dv/GVHMR) · [GVHMR paper](https://arxiv.org/html/2409.06662v1)
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- [NVIDIA GEM-X](https://huggingface.co/nvidia/GEM-X)
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- [MoCapAnything project](https://animotionlab.github.io/MoCapAnything/) ·
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[V2 weights (MIT)](https://huggingface.co/kehong/MoCapAnythingV2-weights) ·
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[code](https://github.com/phongdaot/MocapAnything) ·
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[paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.10881)
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- [TRAM](https://github.com/yufu-wang/tram)
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