All Activity

@ChuckGram, here's the NetRender tut I was referring to today at LAT.

Lo res test render of Dan explaining modern women to Tech. No audio/lip sync yet or hand (But Dan does have hands now) animation. Tech stands bymajestically, unmoving, statuesque. lorestest.mp4

Happy Day? It's Live Answer Time Day! Bring your A:M questions to Live Answer Time at Noon CDT, Saturday October 12022. Actor Tom Bosley was born on this day in 1927.

That is allowed. I presume the mo-cap will need some doctoring. Since part of the contest is to include the video you shot, voters can assess if they think you have done too much real animation. And if you wanted to post here with tips on fixing mo-cap that would be useful as well.

I have a question now I'm thinking about it. How much are we allowed to edit the BVH before it becomes ineligible? Like to eliminate jittering or move things to prevent model clipping? or exaggerate something etc.

You have one month... to get your mo together! Get off the sidelines and get mo-capping! If you still have questions... ask!

Yes, the second video works now..thanks!

I have split IvanBryan82's Spring System discussion into its own thread... https://forums.hash.com/topic/52155-spring-systems/

Still no luck. Well my study into the Bone to Spring constraint was somewhat enlightening. Here I have the nose softbody driving the ear bone. Or at least try to imagine it as such. I'm still learning the ins and outs of modeling. bone2spring.avi

That works better!

try RMB>Save Video As

FYI your video isn't playing on my side. it's stuck as a blank player. In the TechRef there is a mention for two additional constraints called Mass to CP constraint and CP to Mass constraint on page 169 but I can't find it anywhere! 😰 I wanna see what I can do with the bone to spring constraint now. Hope some cool effects can be made in conjunction with that.

I've been playing with the Cloth Wizard and it came to me that I don't want to create the cage manually anymore. Haha looks tedious! Best to do it backwards where the Wizard will create the cage and I can delete the springs I don't need. I find it can have some real use case where it can fulfill effects that's just impossible to do with SimCloth or with Dynamics Constraints like this jelly thingy I made jelly.avi

You already know more than I do! I just finally found the cloth wizard. If you create a bone for each CP you can attach the CP to a bone and constrain the bone to the mass. But are Masses like bones?... if you select a mass then you select the CPs that are supposed to be attached to it? I haven't had much success creating springs from scratch. Do you have this problem... SpringTest.mp4

@robcat2075 Ok so I created a simple animation of a nugget and in the Muscle mode I selected four splines in the middle section of the model and ran the Cloth Wizard. What I gather is that to create the jiggly part, you'd need to model a spring cage with a "mass" particle constrained to each CP you'll want to jiggle. Then you'd have to change the spring that's connected to each "mass" particle to one of either 3 types like Structural, Fold or Shear. Only the mass particle that's not fixed will jiggle while those that is set to Fixed will remained unaffected by the simulation (it would be surrounded along the border). The Cloth Wizard does a great job at setting everything up automatically. But for the life of me, I can't find how to constrain the CP to the mass particle if I want to create the softbody cage manually. All that's available is a mass to bone constraint. Any idea how to add constraints to CPs?

See if the new one works.

interesting! The second video did not show up online...

Another one... Pillars000.mp4

Some soft body effects can be done with Simcloth. PRJ: SpringCloth005 SIMMED.prj Cloth set to "Springs" and suitable stiffness will try to return to its original shape after being deformed. The outer edge of the grid is an Attach Group, to prevent the cloth from being knocked away. @ivanbryan82

Re-filmed and resubmitted to Deepmotion. Worked a lot better. Rendered it out with Mel from my Bernie Snuffles book because he was a parody of Del Boy anyway. Piggy fall down.mp4

@ivanbryan82 Look at pg 182 of the TechRef for info on spring systems. If you know anything about Spring Systems I'd be eager to hear it.

The camera needs a clear view of the motion. A camera facing you, or you facing the camera would have worked better. It's legal to do this stuff outdoors where you have more room. Don't stop! Give it another go!

A long long time ago (2013), I bought an Xbox 360 kinect with the intention of using it to make Motion capture files for A:M (seriously I've never even owned an Xbox 360). It did not go well and the kinect ended up being stored in my wire monster (The big tote where I keep all my miscellaneous wires and tech doo-dads). Shamed into action by the Mocap contest, I started looking into the process again and discovered that there was free software capable of simultaneously capturing data from 2 kinect's, combining the info and then spit out a .BVH file. So naturally I went to my local second hand game store and bought a second kinect. This afternoon, brimming with undeserved confidence, I rearranged my living room to make space for an inflatable air mattress and attempted to recreate one of UK Televisions most iconic moments. This one... My wife kindly filmed the attempt. Untitled.mp4 I imported the resultant .BVH into A:M and well, see for yourself. Kinect.mp4 Yeah.... If you can believe it that was the tidied up version. Originally the kinect's thought my entire waist twisted 180 degrees about 2 seconds in. I'm pretty sure with some tinkering I could get better results but it's not a setup that I can leave set up. I also signed up for the free deep motion account and submitted the video my wife shot. It did an admirable job considering I wasn't facing that particular camera. But it didn't seem to understand the falling over. Again most likely due to the angle. deep motion.mp4 Anyway I hope that was a bit of a giggle for everyone.

The tools are still there. If they do not show in your interface, you can add the Dynamics Motion Mode button to a toolbar from Tools>Customize>Commands. Add Mass and Add Spring... In a Pose I was able to RMB>New>New Spring System So the tools seem to still be there. I've never used them and am not sure of their potential. Bullet Soft Body? I'm not sure that's possible since Bullet animates the mesh to be independent of any bones it was attached to. Maybe Spring System is for squishy meshes? I've never tried it!