Cheetah3D learns walking!!

[Martin]

Cheetah3D learns walking!!

Hi,
here are the first movies showing Cheetah3D with skeletal animation. These movies were just to cool to hold them back.

These animation are just imported from FBX files but they show at least that it is working

http://cheetah3d.com/download/Forum/AnimTest1.mov

Model is an already rigged and skinned FBX file but animation was done in Cheetah3D

http://cheetah3d.com/download/Forum/AnimTest2.mov

Last but not least an animated character which morphs from a man to a woman

http://cheetah3d.com/download/Forum/AnimTest3.mov

Bye,
Martin

P.S. If you wonder why the animations are so slow. That is caused by the screen capture application I use. Normally these animations run in real time.

 

[warosier@mac.com]

Awesome!

Awesome!

 

[Francois]

These movies were just to cool to hold them back.

That's for sure !
Very impressive ! Cheetah3D is about to go through a major milestone in it's already amazing life. Wow, this is going to give us a lot of fun ...

P.S. If you wonder why the animations are so slow. That is caused by the screen capture application I use. Normally these animations run in real time.

Good point !

As Luke suggested the other day, I also think you should start a specific gallery for animations for all the jewels you are going to get.

 

[fused]

Get in!!!

Very nice, All's I have to say is gimme gimme gimme.

Andrew

 

[luke Bocchinelli]

wow wow wow..

WOW !

IRobot watchout....

Regards

Luke

 

[OTB Designworks]

fantastic!

the fighter is just too cool.

cheers, chuck

 

[Martin]

As Luke suggested the other day, I also think you should start a specific gallery for animations for all the jewels you are going to get.

Since a few weeks I can also add animations to my gallery so that won't be a problem.

Bye,
Martin


P.S. I happy to hear that you like these movies. I'm also still hypnotized seeing skeletal animation in Cheetah3D.

 

[Eureka!]

Hi,
here are the first movies showing Cheetah3D with skeletal animation. These movies were just to cool to hold them back.

These animation are just imported from FBX files but they show at least that it is working

http://cheetah3d.com/download/Forum/AnimTest1.mov

Model is an already rigged and skinned FBX file but animation was done in Cheetah3D

http://cheetah3d.com/download/Forum/AnimTest2.mov

Bye,
Martin

P.S. If you wonder why the animations are so slow. That is caused by the screen capture application I use. Normally these animations run in real time.

Hi,
Very cool . I like the take manager that will be a usefull feature.
Will it be ready in 4.0 or sooner?

Greg

 

[Jake]

The first guy is broadcasting that right-hand punch. He'd get his ass kicked out on the street.

 

[Martin]

I like the take manager that will be a usefull feature.

I think so too. Especially since FBX is becoming the de-facto standard 3D file format. And FBX files use takes heavily.
But takes are also nice for non-linear animation or game developers.

Will it be ready in 4.0 or sooner?

There will be probably a public beta much before the release of 4.0 for registered 3.x users. So the answer is probably YES and YES.

Bye,
Martin

 

[fused]

I think so too. Especially since FBX is becoming the de-facto standard 3D file format. And FBX files use takes heavily.
But takes are also nice for non-linear animation or game developers.

Does the FBX format allow you to save and import takes. This would be very useful for sharing, as long as the bones are the same in each model.

P.S. I can't believe how quickly C3D has progressed and how stable it is.

Thanks
Andrew

 

[Martin]

Does the FBX format allow you to save and import takes. This would be very useful for sharing, as long as the bones are the same in each model.

Yes, FBX is also often used for Motion capturing data.

P.S. I can't believe how quickly C3D has progressed and how stable it is.

Thank you very much.

Bye,
Martin

 

[ces]

I'm really happy to see this implemented. Cheetah3D can become very powerful for character animation, because its clean interface makes it easier to focus in the creative process instead of "fighting against the UI".

Are you also considering morph targets, with perhaps some memory optimizations so that characters with lots of morphs could fit in memory?

If your scripting API has access to these animation features, C3D can be really powerful.

Btw, consider that when you release this version, the next thing people will ask will be dynamic cloth :-D

 

[Martin]

Are you also considering morph targets, with perhaps some memory optimizations so that characters with lots of morphs could fit in memory?

What do you mean with morph targets since I found two definitions for it.
1. Morphing the vertices of one mesh to another.
2. Morphing the skeleton between two poses.

Btw, consider that when you release this version, the next thing people will ask will be dynamic cloth :-D

I'm already worried about that. But you are probably right.

Bye,
Martin

 

[Jan Atom]

Very nice drunken fighter animation Martin, C3D, impressive!

 

[ces]

What do you mean with morph targets since I found two definitions for it.
1. Morphing the vertices of one mesh to another.
2. Morphing the skeleton between two poses.

It's the first one (mesh morphing). I didn't heard of it for skeleton poses.

It's mainly used for facial expression, but also for "parametric modeling" of the human body (let you control body proportions like weight and height, as well as race, gender, etc, and even allow you to have independent control of the shape of body and facial parts).

For example, look this set of facial expressions for Michael 3 (the base mesh is freely downloadable, but morphs are commercial)

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1620

Available morph packs are quite big, containing a lot of morphs that work on a base mesh.

Because of this, character animation apps use to arrange morphs dials in expandable trees (although the tree can get huge if you're not selective). You can expand/collapse each body part in order to show/hide the dials that belong to that body part.

Also, each morph is often two instead of one: One for the right part of the body, and another for the left, allowing you to model the real assimetry of the human body.

These applications often have an "autosimmetry" toggle that automatically update the left morph when you modify the right and viceversa.

For animation, the artist can animate any morph dial (although facial expressions are the most useful ones, because morphing a character from fat to skinny, or from african to japanese doesn't make much sense in the day to day work).

Also, I believe there're some morphs for emulating muscle motion and breathing.

As you can see, memory can become easily exhausted when lots of morphs are loaded, although I believe these apps have some kind of optimization, like only allocating memory for vertices that actually have a delta defined in a morph.

Btw, I believe it would be very interesting to implement motion capture with the mouse for facial expression: Imagine that the user could assign different areas of the viewport to different expressions, and depending the mouse distance to each zone, a mix of the expressions is generated... it would be like managing a puppet, and you could make a very realistic animation without dragging any bezier control... just express yourself with the mouse (I think some commercial apps already support this, although I didn't see it yet in action)

HTH,

ces

 

[Martin]

It's the first one (mesh morphing). I didn't heard of it for skeleton poses.

That is also the much more common one. I will also call that feature morph targets in Cheetah3D.

I'm currently working on morph targets. The morph targets in Cheetah3D will work very much like in the FBX file format. So that I can reach maximum compatibility between Cheetah3D morph targets and FBX morph targets. Cheetah3D will therefore have no MT tree but a list. So the use of MT will differ compared to Poser.

Cheetah3D will just record the vertices which actually changed of course. That saves memory and calculation time.

Morphing the color of the skin is more a job for material animation and not for MT. I also think there exist better concepts for muscle animation than MT. MT definitively has it's strength in facial animation even although it could be also used for other tasks.

Bye,
Martin

 

[ces]

Martin, do you think it would be possible to use "Folder" objects for grouping morphs, so that the user could build his own "morph tree" in the way he desires? It would be more intuitive than Poser, because each user can have a different preference on how to arrange morphs.

 

[fused]

Martin, do you think it would be possible to use "Folder" objects for grouping morphs, so that the user could build his own "morph tree" in the way he desires? It would be more intuitive than Poser, because each user can have a different preference on how to arrange morphs.

Ces what do you want to use morph targets for inparticular?

Andrew

 

[ces]

Ces what do you want to use morph targets for inparticular?

Andrew

During the last two years, I've been planning to begin a project about realistic human animation, but I wasn't able to find any software package designed in a way that a single person could create a complex animation. The big 3D suites are designed in the way the animation industry works in the present (ie: one or more animators are needed for a single character).

I really need mouse motion capture for turning my ideas into reality, because I think that's the only way for making it possible that a single animator could animate several characters in a short time.

I'm also a developer, so I've been considering to write my own tool for mouse mocap.

But, I'm really busy (with my "real" work), so for the moment I prefer to continue waiting, and hoping that Cheetah3D could offer the technology I need, or at least the possibility of implementing it through its scripting API.

Although Martin isn't implementing Poser compatibility, I think I should be able (ie: when I've some spare time) to convert the Daz models into the native rigging of C3D, once Martin releases a version with skeletal animation.

ces