Luuk Steitner
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Posts posted by Luuk Steitner
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Well, the one on the right is very smooth
With 10 passes you'll loose some motion, personally I would never use values above 5 for the head (if a normal quality video is used) With 10 passes bigger movements will still be visible, but in this video there are no big movements.
I hope you'll enjoy the ease of direct pose control
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Nice Paul. What are the smoothing settings you have used? I think the head bone can use a bit more smoothing.
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Well, if you want us to guess; The most common way to do this is using booleans. An other way would be to just model the hole in. And, a third way would be to use a cookie-cut decal.
Am I close?
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That looks pretty good, you might want to use the smooth function to get rid of the jitter.
Why don't you try using a pose for the eyelids? If you use the eyebrow B features for the eyelids you could exaggerate them to ~150% and drive blink poses that close on -100% I think that's easier to do then trying to find a correct size and place for the eyelid bones, plus you will have better control over the motion curve.
Keep going
, nice character btw. -
That's a good start. Maybe you could alter the wing flap action a bit. When the bird moves his wings down, his body raises too much. A wing is not 100% efficient, so if you move it downwards there is always some loss.
I'm looking forward to see more
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Maybe it would be easier to render a second layer with only the object. Place that one on top of the layer with the reflections etc. If you then change the the layer with the reflections, the object itself will be unchanged. Isn't that what you're looking for?
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Hello all,
I have good news: After much testing the new version for Zign Track is ready, and is now able to export directly as Animation: Master action files driving bones or poses. Tracking accuracy also is improved.
But, that's not all: I have released an extra version 'A:M Track'. This is a special version that is only compatible with Animation: Master, because it only exports to A:M action files. Because of this it has a special price: $99.00! You can purchase it from the Hash store.
At this moment I'm not yet done with updating my website, but I'm on it (Hash was faster than me). I've updated my site. I will upload the new demo version tomorrow.
You can download the A:M action tutorial here, or from my site.
Many thanks to those who helped me testing the new features!
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BTW It cost me $2 to fill my tank with gas. Are people really paying $50 for a tank of gas?????
Yes, I do....
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Okay I must have been pretty tired when I wrote that. It is actually the smile/frown pose that is exhibiting that behavior.
Hey Ben, you are right. When I noticed the frown wasn't exported I thought it was just because there was no frown detected and I needed to make it more sensitive, but I was wrong... I forgot to set one value in the code and because of that the frown value was always zero
So it was easily fixed. I tested it again and it appeared I even had to reduce the amount of frown 
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How are determining upper and lower limits for the poses? Some of them used their full range, while others only half of it. Does Zign compute upper and lower limits on each capture, or do you use a fixed scale?
The poses are computed using a fixed scale. Because of this you might want to adjust the poses the first time you try them, but you'll sure they will be the same the next time. If it wasn't fixed a character could be shouting while he speaks normal or vice versa. It's actually the same as it works with the BVH or bone action, those also are computed on a fixed scale. If you like you can add exaggeration.
Also it seems like the brow pose is clamping at 0, even though the manual says it goes to -100. It looks like the keys below zero are being clamped out, as opposed to having 50 be the midpoint. But it could just be my capture I'm not sure yet, just something you might check.Take a look at the spline for the eyebrow in the action itself. In my tests they go all the way up and down. Or maybe it's the neutral frame you have set in Zign Track?
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Not bad
I wonder what causes the jitter on the hands and eyes. I can't imagine that it's caused by the action, that would be strange. I wouldn't worry too much about using the smooth filter, if you use 1 or 2 passes for the head only, it removes the jitter but it leaves the total motion almost unaffected. The smoothing routine is designed to reduce small peaks. -
One of the best capture tests to date. Still room for improvement but it could just be the mouth poses and not the capture software.
Can you tell me where it didn't work for you, Ken? I'm pretty close to the material, so I don't always see what others do. I'm mostly seeing the need for more brow expression.
What I notice is that if the mouth opens, the upper lip moves as far up as the lower lip moves down. Normally the lower lip would go down further then the upper lip. That can easily be corrected by adjusting the mouth-open pose.
Can you tell how your lip poses work? For the A:M pose export that I have written for Zign Track the poses are based on as much properties as possible to detect the shape of the lips. I wonder how you have it set up for your poses because you create them in A:M.
Maybe you should give the Zign Track pose control a try? You can add a few poses that drive the existing poses. I was done adjusting Squetchy Sam in 10 minutes.
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As I was programming the new A:M Action export function for Zign Track, I needed to do a good test myself. I choose a song from one of the best Dutch bands and play backed it. OK, it turned out I'm not very good at this because I forgot my lines a few times, for the rest it was pretty good. I exported the Action with only poses for the facial expressions.
I have used Squetchy Sam for this example. I added a some poses to Sam so it matched the poses in Zign Track and applied the action. I needed one little tweak on the lower lip so the mouth closed better, that is because of the neutral frame I selected in the video. Besides that I haven't done any tweaking at all, and it came out pretty nice. I added some body movements and eye blinks. I still need to animate the hands and dress him up, but I don't have the time for that now (That's why I post a WIP
)Here is the video (I also need to change the offset of the soundtrack a few frames I think...): RenLennyShadedSmall.mov
For those who want to see how I have done it, here's the project file: V14_Sam_PosesTest.zip
BTW, how does the song sound to someone that does not understand the language? I know if you understand it you'll find it a beautifull song
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You only need the 'translate to' constraint for the hips, because the hips will translate the whole body. For each other bone you use an 'orient like' constraint. The compensate buttonis the one I pointed at with the red arrow. Click it every time before to apply the 'orient like' constraint.
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That looks nice Ben, did you use export as pose drivers directly from Zign Track?
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Can you tell at what point you have a problem? Are you able to import the BVH in an action? Do you know how create constraints? If you understand those two things it can't be hard to get it done.
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Much the same thing with a static camera: Magic Mouth Motion 2b Once again, just partially blocked. I'll delete the older versions tomorrow.
I was just about to do a screen capture of my face rig when I noticed that most of the bones are sitting too low in the face. I guess I forgot to move them after adjusting the mesh.
Oh, well. It's a learning game.
I will test again and see what happens. Logic tells me that moving the bones up will only have made the problem worse. I'm going to try the pose method soon but first I want to check that the mouth corners are tracking correctly by videoing some extreme poses and tracking them without any filtering.
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Edit: I just moved the bones up and then scrubbed through to the end of the choreography and it all looks much the same.
Are you sure all mouth bones are actually moving? I think you might have given them wrong names so they don't move. I only see the jaw and lower lip moving. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it looks like.
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Here is an example of the previous test but with the Zign Track update too fix the rotation of those bones:
It doesn't look all that different to me and the mouth does something strange in the last few seconds. It is possibly a combination of me not getting the bones positioned correctly and bad miming. I really should finish this model and get the weighting done too.
No real animation here. Just a few rough poses at the beginning.
Can you show a picture of your face rig? And can you check what happens at the end of the time line for the mouth bones in the action? I noticed in one of my tests that one bone had a strange ending. I'm not sure what caused it, but I'll try to find out what happens.
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There was a good tutorial about this on zandoria.com but the site is off line at the moment. Here is what was still in Google's cache:
If you've ever wanted to use motion capture for any of your A:M models, but thought that it was probably too complicated, then this tutorial is for you.In this tutorial, I will show you how to add a calibration pose into your model that will allow you to import and use motion capture data with the click of the mouse. While I'm going to be using BVH files for this tuitorial, you can repeat the set-up for several different types of motion capture devices. NOTE: version 9 of A:M doesn't support motion capture but it was restored in Version 10. This tutorial is done in version 8.5p+
Step 1
Import the model or skeletal rig that you want to use motion capture with. In this example, I'm going to apply this set-up to a basic skeleton. At Zandoria Studios, we use default skeletons that are set-up with spherical limits, kinematic constraints, and fan bones. Since these poses are assigned to a simple skeletal model (with no geometry), you can use the "import model" command to bring in an appropriate skeleton with all of the rigging set up. Once this motion capture pose is created, all of the models that use this rig will be automatically set-up for motion capture. In A:M version 10, there is an "autoassign bones" feature, that makes this workflow even faster!
Create a new Action. Right-click and choose New>Motion Capture Device>BioVision BVH File.
Right-click The "shortcut to BioVision BVH File1" and choose "Capture Sequence". This will load the BVH file into the Action.
Scale the BVH so that the markers roughly line-up with your skeleton, It is important to try and match the lengths of the legs with your skeleton so that the "stride" will be correct.
Step 2
Now you have to make some Constraints that will make your skeleton move and orient like the BVH file.
Use a "Translate to" to lock the hip of your skeleton to the hip of the BVH. Follow this constraint with an "Orient like"-- Use "compensate mode" to keep your skeletons hip/pelvis from moving when you apply the constraint.
Align the legs of your skeleton to the BVH, by using "Aim like two" constraints. Use the drop-down list of bones to pick the targets for your constraints. Target 1 is where the small end of the constrained bone points. Target 2 is where the base of the constrained bone points. In the illustration below the Calf bone of the model skeleton is constrained to aim at the RightAnkle and RightKnee of the BVH.
In this example, I used "Orient like" constraints to align the bones of the torso and upper body to the BVH skeleton. You can pick the constraint targets with the eyedropper tool, just as you normally do when making a constraint.
Step 3
Once your skeleton is constrained to follow the motion capture, create a Pose from the Action. Be sure that the Key filters are set as shown below. Name your pose "BVH" and save your model. This pose will now be usable to load any BVH file that is set-up the same way.
Step 4
To load a new motion capture file for your model, create a new action and drag-and-drop the "BVH" pose into the action. Version 10 of A:M will support motion capture, but Version 9 does not...
Right-click the channel for the "shortcut to BioVision BVH File1". NOTE: Do not right-click the shortcut, make sure that it's the channel. Choose "Capture sequence" and load the BVH file that you wish to use.
Your model will follow the new BVH file, it doesn't matter which file you used for making your constraints, just be sure that the BVH file was set up the same way. You can find lots of free BVH files on the web to practice with.
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It appears to be mostly just up and down movements of the jaw.
No sound forming lip shapes as far as I can tell.
Now why is this?
Mike, you were right! This video was made with the A:M action bone control. I was just doing a lot of tests to improve the output accuracy (for all formats) and I used A:M actions with bone control because that's the fastest way to test it. For some reason the mouth shape wouldn't do what it's supposed to do. I took me a while before it occurred to me what mistake I had made; I used the same method as I did for the BVH for controlling the bones. I forgot that the BVH axis orientations are different and I didn't adjust it for the mouth bones. So, in stead of rotating the Y axis I was rotating the Z axis... doh...
Sorry Paul, I'll finish some more things and I'll send you the new test version. You'll find the output results are much better this time
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Hey Luuk,
You might make adjustments like this optional.
The way I build poses, the widening of the smile is driven by the wide/purse pose. the smile pose drives only the corners of the mouth. I never let any pose overlap action with another pose, that way they can all combine together but never create unnatural action.
That is actually a good idea. The reason I made the smile reduce the wide pose is because it is harder to 'model' the smile in the the pose when the mouth isn't wide. But that could be solved by applying the wide pose while creating the smile, and when the smile is done remove the link the 'wide' from the pose. Is that how you do it?
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Maybe it's a good idea to show what I'm working on for version 1.2. The new A:M action feature works quite well, as far as I have tested. Here is a picture so you can see what the possibilities for the poses are.
The eyebrow poses involve up and down movement, the others speak for themselves I guess. I did some tests with these poses, and it looked pretty good. One thing I'm not sure about yet is if the mouth poses work 100% like they should. I need to do a few more tests to see if the result is good on all movements, and maybe I have to adjust the scaling of those movements. I hope Paul and Ben have some time to test the mouth poses, if not I'll do an extensive test later this week.
I''l explain what the mouth poses do: The mouth wide/purse pose should contain exactly what it's name says. This is also true for the mouth smile/frown pose. As you know, the mouth also gets wider on a smile, so when Zign Track detects a wide smile it reduces the mouth wide pose, so they don't add. The mouth open/close and shift left/right would be obvious.
Using these poses is a little bit less accurate like the original tracked footage, but the advantage is that the shapes it produces always suit the face (if the modeler made nice poses of course).
Tell me what you guys think about this. I want to have it as good as possible before I release it. Maybe I'll change some things if that can give better results.
Other than this, I'm working on some improvements for the output for all formats. On the left you can see that I have added an extra "neutral frame" spin box. This can be used to specify on which frame the face is most neutral. I did this because Zign Track was giving some strange offsets if the face in the first frame was not neutral. I'm also changing some calculations to improve the accuracy while the face is moving. This should solve the lip issues that sometimes occur. When this is done there should be very little manual tweaking required for the animation.
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I think people should realize that Zign Track is a facial motion capture solution, not an overall workaround for a good face rig and lip synch poses. The more you rig your face and setup mouth poses the better Zign Track's results will be for you... am I right Luuk?
Yep
Billiard
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
That looks very good. I assume you are going for a photo realistic look? I think the balls may be a little bit less bright, then it would look almost real too me.
Great job!