It depends what kind of animations you need and what degree of precision you need.
Vive combined with IKinema Orion does its job really well, but as of now there are a couple of things which does not make it the best possible solution.
In my case I create my own mocap solution in UE4 using Sequencer, and I also added into the entire setup a pair of Noitom Hi5 VR Gloves, so that I could record both full body animations and fingers animation as well, which is a very handy solution ( pardon the pun ) and lets you have a more accurate result, especially because 99% of the time you’re going to animate fingers in post.
Pros:
Very accurate
Plug&Play setup ( 2 minutes and you’re good to go )
Realtime streaming ( only to UE4 though, no Maya/Motion Builder which would be handy ) and offline recording ( FBX and BVH )
Cons
- No possibility of customization in UE4, so basically you can’t tweak hands position or anything else, and this is an issue with very precise movement ( hands/fingers animation )
- You can only stream to the UE4 Mannequin, or use the IKinema Male/Female characters, so if you have a custom character you need to pay 200£ to IKinema to have the retargeting and be able to stream the animation in realtime…which is something that really makes me question the usability of the entire system, since one of the first thing you would do is to have realtime animations applied onto your character
- Retargeting on the UE4 Mannequin is a bit off on the shoulders, but everything else is ok
If you own a Vive this is a good solution for home mocap, and also now with the price of Vive1 on sale, yep, still good!
Sample here:
With Perception Neuron you need to take extra precaution with the proper user calibration and especially related to cause drifting to the sensors by using mouse/keyboard while wearing the entire suit.
Pros
Affordable
No tracking cameras limitations
Free plugins for lots of softwares ( UE4, Unity, Motion Builder, iClone, and so on )
Cons
Not so accurate ( because of the IMU sensors )
First time usage can become a nightmare, especially if the wifi doesn’t work as expected
Forum support is very basic, but the neuron support email does answer quite quickly
For good results you need to test different setups, so it might take time to get very good results
Sample video here:
Overall I think both of them are good solutions, so basically now for the same price you can buy Vive+Orion or Perception Neuron, so it’s really up to you which one to choose.