Motion Capture via Webcam

[My_Main_is_Engi]

Is there a way to achieve motion capture with a webcam and free mocap software,without needing kinect or sth similar?

[Marco Skoll]

If you're a blazing hot programmer with excellent maths skills, yes. Otherwise, no.

If you want to piggyback off another hobbyist's motion capture code, they do mostly rely on things like Kinect.

[Capt Fuzzy]

You have to know exactly how motion capture works in order to use it properly.
Theoretically, you can use any camera to capture motion data, the "hang-up" is the software.
If the software is written to take input from only one type of camera then that is the only type of camera that you can use.
Kinect, and it's associated software is designed to pick up motion, that's all it's meant to do, so if you want to use a different camera then you will either have to come up off that wallet and buy the "professional" software, or as Marco basically said, write your own software...