Army of Stormtroopers, (poses/joints, Cheetah3D)

Army of Stormtroopers, (poses/joints, Cheetah3D)

If I wanted to create for example, an army of 100 Stormtroopers, each identical to each other in polygons, joints, skeleton tags and morph tags, is this possible using only one model (with joints, skeleton tag, morphs and poses), and importing it into a single file scene 100 times, but having each model have its own set of Poses so I can animate an army? (Or is Cheetah not geared for such a thing and I'm way over the limitations?)

Right now, when I try something like this with only two identical joint models, they blend into each other, to where the 2nd one imported just stands there, with no response when its separately named poses are set (joints also named differently, but copies of each other), but the first object responds to all the poses, even the ones named for the 2nd joint model.

I don't want to have to re-bind a skeleton tag to every Snowtrooper for example, or have to recreate every pose for each character, which each took a considerable amount of time to create. If Cheetah has an answer to this very important Character Animation issue (take the movie ANTZ for example, where thousands of nearly identical ants are in the same scene, or even Lord of the Rings' Orc army).

So the question: Does Cheetah offer the ability to duplicate a set of joints with poses and have each work individually in the same scene?

If not, this feature is absolutely necessary for animators. If so, how? I haven't had any success so far with trial and error. Thanks.

C3D is basically not set up for this -- e.g. in C3D a pose or a take is a property of a SCENE not a SKELETON, so once you have two figures in a scene the entire pose/take system becomes kind of useless. The way I would do it if I had to would be scripts (use a script to record the positions of joints and then use that data to animate each member of a crowd).

It's not absolutely essential for animators -- it's only needed for crowd scenes. Most of the high end 3d programs use specific tools to handle crowds.

My question, too

I am way ahead of myself but I also have in mind a multiple character scene. Not 100 but maybe 20 characters in a row, all using similar steps. Curious what the capability would be for this.

As I said, Cheetah kind of sucks to animate TWO figures. As n becomes bigger the situation gets worse proportionately.

This isn't necessarily something difficult for Martin to fix -- it's just a limitation of C3D right now.

I have a similar problem. I built the coins and pot in Cheetah and pasted the image together in Photoshop. Now my client want to animate the whole image 360 degrees in Cheetah. The problem is, even filling the pot with coins using the ring modifier makes it almost impossible to move, I think the polys are in the millions. So I don't see how it could be possible to rotate such an image. Even if I could, I think a 73 frame animation would take about 2 days to render. And my machine is maxed at 2GB memory. Am I fighting a loosing battle here? At the moment I'm saying it can't be done. It's the coins that are causing the problem, too complex. But then in reality the coins are not that complex. Is it my machine? Or is this a common problem? I couldn't imagine 100 soldiers on the move.

Several things to note, here. Animating an "army" of anything likely requires particle physics, something that C3D doesn't have, as Pod pointed out. You would tie your animated character, or whatever, to each particle. You can use the array tool to make many duplicate copies of a model, but I dare say it would copy the bones and IK setup. In Terry's case, the animation is of the camera, so doing this shouldn't be difficult. The thing to do in that case is to re-model the coin, so that the poly count is low.

For instance, I created the model below with only 652 polys. Even duplicated 40 times, it's only 26,080 polys. It may not be exactly what Terry's modeling, but you can get it close. I modeled it using a plane and subdividing it 3 times. Then I made it editable, and used the shell tool to make it thick. Then I selected all the edges along the side and did a bevel. I selected each beveled part and extruded it inward. You wouldn't have to do those last few steps, if you could use the wireframe as a bumpmap and reversing it, but I had no success in v5. Another thing you can do to reduce the poly count is only model the facing side. Remove the side of the coin that the camera doesn't see, before duplicating the coin.

I tried to show you with a decent texture, and/or bumpmap, how much better it could look, but as you can see, the material I created looks nothing like the render. This is one of the things I don't like about v5.

Terry,

Another thing you can do (and is probably better), is to use a disc, go to it's properties and give it 45 corners. Make it editable, and then do the shell tool. It produces an even smaller poly count at 227 and it's a more perfect circle than the other technique. You can certainly bevel the edges, but the increased poly count shouldn't be too bad.

What I found VERY ODD was the fact that my textures worked fine on this particular model in the same scene, as above. One took the textures fine, the other didn't. They both used quads. The edges were done with the second material using the wireframe.

If you want hugh crowds of characters you need instancing, something I want to add in a later 5.x update. Particles and instancing is actually almost the same. Instancing is just more general purpose.

Bye,
Martin

Thanks for the advice, Robert. I kind of came up with the same solution. This is what I sent the client, relieved I might add. Now I can animate. It's just a simple cylinder. The coins won't be that big so it should work fine. As you can see the poly count has a tremendous difference. I just love it when the impossible becomes possible. This is Cheetah 4, as yet I can't see the point in version 5. Or rather I don't really have the time at the moment to experiment. The node system looks like it will take some getting used to. I'm looking forward to seeing what other people come up with in 5.

Cheers
Terry

Wow, Terry! How did you get only 90 polys?

alvordr said:

Wow, Terry! How did you get only 90 polys?

Click to expand...

Just a simple cylinder, no subdiv, and a jpg material. It's something I never thought of before, created your work in Cheetah, render, and use as a jpg material. Almost the same effect, but with no polys. :icon_thumbup:

alvordr said:

...
What I found VERY ODD was the fact that my textures worked fine on this particular model in the same scene, as above. One took the textures fine, the other didn't. They both used quads...

Click to expand...

I had the same problem with a texture. I opened it up in Photoshop, and realized that it was in the CMYK color mode. Cheetah3D chokes with CMYK.
I'm willing to bet a million of those fake 3D coins that the problem is in the image itself.

Thanks for the feedback. For now, I can easily duplicate a character, but each duplicate clone trooper needs a new set of poses. The good news is, they retain their joints and mesh bindings.

Looking forward to particles and instance copies, thanks.

Nice work on the pot of gold and the tips too.

TerryG said:

Just a simple cylinder, no subdiv, and a jpg material. It's something I never thought of before, created your work in Cheetah, render, and use as a jpg material. Almost the same effect, but with no polys. :icon_thumbup:

Click to expand...

I thought of that earlier, but I figured the triangles created by the cylinder would cause the texture to warp. Good work.

Andreu said:

I had the same problem with a texture. I opened it up in Photoshop, and realized that it was in the CMYK color mode. Cheetah3D chokes with CMYK.
I'm willing to bet a million of those fake 3D coins that the problem is in the image itself.

Click to expand...

Andreu I think you're missing the point. One coin is built/real, the other is a jpg. Think of building a real face, take a render, make it a material and drop it onto a plane. And look at the poly difference in the scene. A million to 1.

Robert, without a subdiv you are safe. :icon_thumbup:

Why didn't you use a bumpmap with the clover? That would make it even more easier. You can reduce even more by setting your ground sections to 1.

Regards,

Peter

peer said:

Why didn't you use a bumpmap with the clover? That would make it even more easier. You can reduce even more by setting your ground sections to 1.

Regards,

Peter

Click to expand...

Smaller than 9 polys?

Ehm, no not smaller than 9 polys, well if you would use a cube :tongue:
But I misread the post, I thought your example was with the disc. Anyway, I'm in some dream mode or something because of the new iMacs....
Please ignore all my posts today!!

Regards,

Peter

TerryG said:

As you can see the poly count has a tremendous difference. I just love it when the impossible becomes possible. This is Cheetah 4, as yet I can't see the point in version 5. Or rather I don't really have the time at the moment to experiment. The node system looks like it will take some getting used to. I'm looking forward to seeing what other people come up with in 5.

Click to expand...

Hi Terry.
Maybe this is kind of helpful. I took a disc and the shell tool and ended at 26 polygons per coin. Added an image to the bumpmap channel of the standard gold material. For adding more coins I used the ring modifier, shifting the coin mesh for building kind of stack of coins.

Cheers
Frank

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

frank beckmann said:

Hi Terry.
Maybe this is kind of helpful. I took a disc and the shell tool and ended at 26 polygons per coin. Added an image to the bumpmap channel of the standard gold material. For adding more coins I used the ring modifier, shifting the coin mesh for building kind of stack of coins.

Cheers
Frank

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

Click to expand...

Thank you Frank, yes this does look helpful. It spins around lovely, very lightweight. And the gold is nice too. Is that the new gold material in Cheetah 5? You should have seen my first attempt it was laughable. The polys were in the millions and there were only about 10 coins in the stack. Then my brain started working. Doh!

Thanks again :smile:

Terry