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tS7.5 Character Animation
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
tS7.5 Character Animation // Roundtable
Post by splinters // Oct 13, 2006, 10:06am
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splinters
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If I had posted this, the boss would have skinned me alive.
Still, as he has done it...check it out..
http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=893
Excited yet? |
Post by GraySho // Oct 13, 2006, 10:15am
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It does look like the blue cones are the new "nails", and it seems that there can be more than one nail. I just wonder if those widgets are lit by the scene lights. I hope not. Widgets should always be visible, independent of lighting conditions (As well as anything that's not representig actual geometry like lights, cameras etc.). Anyway, looks allright so far.
And I wonder what the story tab is for. Like a storyboard editor? A representation of every x th frame of the animation?
I'd also like to see rigging and animation as seperate procedures, so if something went wrong during animation, the base rig isn't affected (f*****).
Btw. I like the "slim" widgets, the bold ones always covered too much. |
Post by b_scotty // Oct 13, 2006, 10:42am
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Now that is looking sweet!
Thanks for the update, Roman. :) |
Post by KeithC // Oct 13, 2006, 11:26am
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Very nice; it looks like he's using Rich's character for the demonstration. Looks enticing so far....
Might have to hold of on XSI:Foundation a little while longer.:)
-Keith |
Post by Humdinger // Oct 13, 2006, 11:41am
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Well...
I can barely see..not mention read, the text in the upper left insert.
Roman...any chance of a larger image of the 'IK Navigation' window..? |
Post by Gwot // Oct 13, 2006, 12:11pm
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Things I liked in the screenshots: The new transform widgets (nice and standardized), the 3d look of the rigs and the limit parameters, the timeline and keyframe widgets (looks a lot like motion builder only more visible with the orange keys)
Here are some questions I have that will influence whether I upgrade or not:
Am I going to be able to use the link editor for wiring sub component animation to the skeleton and/or control rigs that I build? Like adding twist bones that smooth deformation along a limb that are driven by the the rotation of a hand or foot etc?
Will I be able to drive corrective blendshapes with my rigs (again through some sort of wiring using the link editor or other)? Will I also be able to drive facial animation using custom slider panels or even 3d components and controllable within the viewport? I tend to make my own custom rigs for driving multiple elements such as morphs (including blending), finger curls foot rolls etc.
Blend Shapes/Morph Targets: embedded or separate, duplicated meshes? Please say embedded.
Will I be able to animate in layers and blend the layers together in order to edit motion capture or hand animation in a non-destructive fashion (preferably right from the main timeline)? See motion builder or Softimage's C.A.T. for excellent animation layer reference.
Will there be better transform widgets than what is in truespace now? Preferably more like what other apps offer? From the small inset on the upper left it looks like what appear to be NORMAL transform widgets. Hopefully that is the case. =]
If that is the case then I'd like to request further user customization of the widgets such as disabling visibility of specific axes as well as having objects capable of storing their own transform widgets that activate automatically whenever the object is selected. See XSI's transform setup function which allows exactly this. Great for simplifying rig manipulation and smoothing workflow in genera. XSI lacks the ability to hide individual axes though so even if you have one disabled, you can always see it. Which is distracting.
Will I get half decent deformation and playback speed in realtime when I'm working or will the app slow down with low to med rez meshes and/or reasonably complex rigs? What about multiple characters in the same scene?
Will I be able to reference components, meshes and rigs so that making changes to the source will propagate on down to the other 300 or so scenes I've already animated for a character if someone higher up demands a change later in production?
Will I be able to create and keyframe custom selection sets and parameter sets, both by hand and via scripting/custom UI components? See messiah's armatures, xsi's synoptic views, or any animation app worth its salt that allows custom script/code calling from user created buttons and UI components.
Will I be able to store poses and motion clips for reuse as well as remap/retarget them for use by other rigs? Will I be able to copy/paste or even mirror transforms, keys, poses and motions from limb to opposite limb?
Will the timeline support general copy/paste/transform/stretch/flip/ripple etc. operations without having to open up a dopesheet or curve editor?
Will parameters and transform channels be capable of being locked and not receiving keyframes, regardless of whether auto key is active or not? Controlling what I or another animator can and cannot keyframe is very important in rigging. I'd like to be able to lock everything down that shouldn't be animated and hiding it away from visibility or selection too.
Will I be able to customize the look of my rigs, both solid and wireframe in terms of visibility or shape?
Will I be able to edit motion paths directly in a viewport?
Will I be able to set ghosting attributes that don't slow playback down to a crawl?
Will I be able to animate bone length or stretch parameters?
Will I be able rig and animate bone chains using spline curves? These are great for spine controls, tails etc.
Will I be able to use a host of constraints and parenting that can be key framed for blending and general activation/deactivation as needed?
Will there be support for soft constraints, user defined up vectors etc for better controlling just how an object is constrained to another?
Will I be able to stack constraints and blend them together?
Will I be able to ragdoll a rig? Will I be able to blend from animation to ragdoll and back to animation again within the same scene?
Will I be able to create my own subsystems that are also driven by the rig such as muscles, fat, and other things that can all reduce the amount of keyframing required to produce more realistic effects.
Will I be able to animate displacement or normal map blending by wiring such things to the rigs as well?
Will I be able to mix cloth and hair simulations with my rigs?
Will I be able to script most of the above mentioned things into rig setups so that I can automate the process as much as possible and not have to rebuild rigs from scratch every time?
I'm sure I have more questions but that's probably enough off the top of my head. :banana:
I don't really have much interest in things like collaborative spaces for modeling, or project sharing - waste of development resources in my opinion. Don't really care much about integrating dynamics with my rigs either, unless it can be integrated well with all of the above things I mentioned. All I really care about is good solid animation tools and the capability to build good solid rigs designed for workflow. The rest is fluff.
I bought truespace 7 out of interest mainly in the link editor and the realtime viewport capabilities more out of curiosity and the lack of a proper demo. Realtime features is something I feel other software vendors are only just starting to wake up to. Technology has always been a limiting factor, but these days, there should be more and more focus being put towards realtime rendering and playback.
The link editor will be a key component in any future success TS will enjoy provided it is properly integrated throughout the program (personal opinion). I don't have enough experience with it yet to reach a conclusion on that just yet though. As a rigging tool though it is one of the main attractions. Also the wiring capability for realtime/interactive work is a bonus.
As a modeler and rigging/animation tool TS has a long way to go from what I've seen so far though. Part of this stems from the lack of features which Roman is indicating here will be addressed, but also because of the half finished feeling I got between the old stuff that's still left in TS vs the New stuff. I like where the new stuff is heading. I don't like that it's not all there yet and so I don't bother using it when I already have access to such programs as modo, silo or xsi. I plan on importing a rather large character project into TS though - more as a test to see if it can handle all the normal maps and materials I've made for it. Hadn't planned on animating it in TS after looking at the current animation/rigging toolset - nasty stuff. Hopefully 7.5 might change my mind. |
Post by RichLevy // Oct 13, 2006, 12:42pm
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Very nice; it looks like he's using JimB's character for the demonstration. Looks enticing so far....
Might have to hold of on XSI:Foundation a little while longer.:)
-Keith
He mentioned the mesh was by some guy named "Carpenter", I wonder who that guy is? Never heard of him, probably some for hire modeler...
:D
Rich |
Post by splinters // Oct 13, 2006, 12:58pm
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splinters
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And the prize for longest single post goes to......:rolleyes: |
Post by GraySho // Oct 13, 2006, 1:03pm
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GraySho
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And the prize for longest single post goes to......:rolleyes:
I'd rather call it "longest constructive post" from someone who seems to have a lot of experience in the field of animation. |
Post by splinters // Oct 13, 2006, 1:06pm
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splinters
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Ah, then maybe my :rolleyes: should have been a ;) |
Post by RichLevy // Oct 13, 2006, 1:26pm
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RichLevy
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http://gwot.cgsociety.org/gallery/
This is the CGSociety bio of Gwot...
I'd say he knows his way around rigging and animation very well, and I agree with most of everything on his list (which is not to imply I know very much about any of them :D)
Rich |
Post by KeithC // Oct 13, 2006, 2:00pm
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He mentioned the mesh was by some guy named "Carpenter", I wonder who that guy is? Never heard of him, probably some for hire modeler...
Now why did I get you and Jim confused? I changed it.:D
-Keith |
Post by Alien // Oct 13, 2006, 2:03pm
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<snip> and it seems that there can be more than one nail.
I hope you're right about that.
I'd also like to see rigging and animation as seperate procedures, so if something went wrong during animation, the base rig isn't affected (f*****).
I agree.
I can barely see..not mention read, the text in the upper left insert.
Roman...any chance of a larger image of the 'IK Navigation' window..?
I'll second that request.
If that is the case then I'd like to request further user customization of the widgets such as disabling visibility of specific axes as well as having objects capable of storing their own transform widgets that activate automatically whenever the object is selected.
Sounds like a great idea to me. :)
Will I be able to store poses and motion clips for reuse as well as remap/retarget them for use by other rigs? Will I be able to copy/paste or even mirror transforms, keys, poses and motions from limb to opposite limb?
Would be great if this was included.
Roman: I know you're probably fed up of hearing this from me, but we really could do with more mouse wheel functionality on all sorts of things. For example, when setting constraints, it would be nice to select an axis [axes?], & then be able to adjust the constraint by just rolling the mouse wheel, with 1 click of the wheel for every 1 degree. I'm not suggesting this as a replacement for the ability to drag the constraint handles manually, but in addition to that. |
Post by Steinie // Oct 13, 2006, 2:54pm
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Rich,
I had stumbled on your "other name" over at gameSpace Forum. You obviously know more than your letting on.
Gwot,
You should have wrote the specs! Good stuff......I think;) I'll take your word for it and hope they use your talents somewhere in the future.
I just want a bone system that works.....period.
Any hint on output ? |
Post by Gwot // Oct 13, 2006, 2:59pm
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Sorry if my post sounded harsh. It really was meant to be constructive, as Roman had asked for input, I thought I'd give it. I am a customer of this software after all so I figured why not? I've got nothing to lose and everything to gain if anything I mentioned ends up in the next version.
I really only meant to list off a bunch of the things that are important to me and actually exist in my current toolset for the work I do. This is the stuff I'm using in my work every day. This is the stuff that programs like Maya and Max, XSI and Houdini can do and it's pretty much the bar in terms of what you should shoot for in terms of animation. It's not the holy grail of feature sets, but it is a fairly necessary list if you want more artist/animator types to dig into the software. I've got much more than that to ask for too, but as has been mentioned already, my post was kindof on the long side. =] |
Post by brianalldridge // Oct 13, 2006, 7:12pm
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Sorry if my post sounded harsh. It really was meant to be constructive, as Roman had asked for input, I thought I'd give it. I am a customer of this software after all so I figured why not? I've got nothing to lose and everything to gain if anything I mentioned ends up in the next version.
I really only meant to list off a bunch of the things that are important to me and actually exist in my current toolset for the work I do. This is the stuff I'm using in my work every day. This is the stuff that programs like Maya and Max, XSI and Houdini can do and it's pretty much the bar in terms of what you should shoot for in terms of animation. It's not the holy grail of feature sets, but it is a fairly necessary list if you want more artist/animator types to dig into the software. I've got much more than that to ask for too, but as has been mentioned already, my post was kindof on the long side. =]
Why not try applying for the beta team, they probably would appreciate the constructive crits:) |
Post by SteveBe // Oct 13, 2006, 7:13pm
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Hi Gwot! I didn't find your post at all harsh, some very good points.
All I can say is, as an owner of tS 7.11 you know the power and possibilities
of the LE and new core.:) |
Post by Mike // Oct 14, 2006, 6:07am
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It's a fantastic post! Bravo! :banana:
I'd rather call it "longest constructive post" from someone who seems to have a lot of experience in the field of animation. |
Post by Gwot // Oct 14, 2006, 6:49am
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Thanks for the support guys. =]
Brian: my understanding of beta team acces is that I have to pay an additional 'proTeam' fee of $500.00 to get access to that stuff. At least that is what recent emails from Caligari have indicated to me. |
Post by KeithC // Oct 14, 2006, 7:09am
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You've got to pay to help bug-test? |
Post by Bobbins // Oct 14, 2006, 7:21am
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No.
Beta testers are by invitation only from Caligari.
In addition to the beta testers, Pro-Team members are allowed access to some of the early versions of tS 7.x so they can also give feedback. |
Post by Humdinger // Oct 14, 2006, 7:59am
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Hey GWOT..
I am pretty sure you can email Norm directly and ask to become part of the TS 7.5 Beta Team, as long as you have time to put into testing. Norm is pretty strict about that from my experience.
norm@caligari.com |
Post by splinters // Oct 14, 2006, 9:03am
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splinters
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... as long as you have time to put into testing. Norm is pretty strict about that from my experience.
norm@caligari.com
Oh yes, that man can drive a herd...better put some time aside if you do ask...however, you look like you would be a real asset to the team...:D |
Post by JPSofCA // Oct 14, 2006, 10:47am
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It's good to see the progress on the animation features! :)
I do like the visual aspect - the skeleton and joints appear both easy to see, and easy to select...the visual feedback of the range of the 3D spherical joint is a nice implementation and seems very straightforward.
So long as the bones and joints have a solid, noncorruptible foundation so that we'll never have to see our meshes become inverted and contorted beyond repair after manipulation, the new system will be just fine. Any features beyond reliability will be welcome additions.
The only suggestion that I can think to make is for editing musculature. I think it would be nice for the vertices within a muscle's group to cause the polygons they surround to be highlighted differently from those whose vertices are outside the muscle group, as described as follows...
Object in solid mode:
Polygons surrounded by vertices within muscle group: SOLID
Polygons surrounded by vertices outside muscle group: TRANSPARENT
Object in transparent mode:
Polygons surrounded by vertices within muscle group: TRANSPARENT
Polygons surrounded by vertices outside muscle group: WIREFRAME
Object in wireframe mode:
Polygons surrounded by vertices within muscle group: WIREFRAME
Polygons surrounded by vertices outside muscle group: VERTICES ONLY
And as vertices are added to the muscle group, the polygon faces can update accordingly. I think this would give a clean "workspace" foundation to build on whatever actual muscle-editing features are implemented. I think this would be a nice step forward from the old style of simply highlighting muscle group vertices. This seems like an easy to implement feature, and I would find it visually beneficial to improve workflow. It would be aesthetically pleasing as well!
My next suggestion is for some form of custom muscle editing that goes beyond bulge-before / bulge-after type editing...something where I could define and assign vertice placement at any position of a flex, move to another position in a flex and do the same, and have tS interpolate vertice positions in between (but not beyond) those ranges of motion for me - the amount of defined positions should be limited by only available memory and desired filesizes. This is only a generalization, I just think that something beyond (or perhaps in addition to) the typical "bulge" would be nice. I would like to see a more "flexible" ;) (I can't say a pun was not intended) muscle solution!
Anyway, I love where it's going so far...keep up the good work!
:jumpy: |
Post by Gwot // Oct 15, 2006, 3:50pm
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Thx splinters, I might just give that a shot. =]
Agreed on the muscle bulging. For myself I'd actually love to see some sort of generic muscle template that can store its own custom shapes for things like taut, relaxed and flexed. Each one of these would essentially be a stored morph shape that is driven by bone rotations (with additional overrides for the animator if they need them).
At its simplest I would envision drawing the muscle onto the skeleton, perhaps in a muscle layer or other custom state where mousing over the bones highlights them first. Clicking on a highlighted bone then attaches the first anchor point of the muscle which you could then slide along the length of the bone and have it stay at the point where you release the mouse button. Offsetting from the bone itself might come in handy too. Repeat for the next bone to create the secondary attach point. This would then generate a generic muscle that already has the 3 morph states embedded. The user would be free to edit these as they see fit to create the best fitting shapes for that particular muscle. The second anchor bone that was used automatically becomes the driver bone for the 3 morph states with it's current orientation being used as the relaxed pose. The other two poses would be driven by any deltas that this bone is offset from this initial relaxed state. Again, these values should be tweakable by the user in order to get the best looking transitions.
Muscle anchor points should be tweakable at any give point during or after initial creation.
Other features that would rock in this system are dynamics properties that allow for jiggle, as well as hookups to drive normal maps or displacement maps for really fine muscle driven detail control. The ability to store existing muscle setups individually or as entire 'muscle rigs' for future reuse would be sweet too.
I've already planned out a system like this for future implementation into my own rigs in XSI - though it wouldn't be nearly as interactive as what I've listed above... most likely it would be automated through a script with a lot of hand tweaking of individual muscles. I don't code so I don't think it's possible for me to build something exactly like this, though I could script it to about 75% of what I outlined above probably.
James |
Post by Jack Edwards // Oct 16, 2006, 4:23pm
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Hey cool! Busy for a few days and I come back to find Roman's cool post about the Animation features... :jumpy:
Couple of things I'd like to see implemented are soft selection influence groups with the bones. Useful for doing spine animation. Oh yeah and ditto on the spline controls for bones.
Also the tendon thing like in Maya where you can just pick up the foot and it automatically bends the knee to match. Definitely gotta have the ability to link the rotation to an external object for easy directing the angle of the knees and elbows. Just move the linked object and the knee or elbow follows. That way you don't have to worry about it just going any which way when you move the feet.
Pose blending'd be nice for facial and hand animation.
Need the option to switch between linear and spline based function curves.
Vertex animation support for .X files pls....... Be nice if we can create the seperate animations all in one scene and have tS save them out sequentially in the .X file.
Would love to see bone driven normal mapping displacement... that's some cool stuff.
Thanks for the update! (BTW, can we get Gwot on the beta team?) :D
-Jack. |
Post by roman // Oct 17, 2006, 10:28pm
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Agreed on the muscle bulging. For myself I'd actually love to see some sort of generic muscle template that can store its own custom shapes for things like taut, relaxed and flexed. Each one of these would essentially be a stored morph shape that is driven by bone rotations (with additional overrides for the animator if they need them). This is a tough job to do manualy, there are over 600 skeletal muscles in human body, working in many cases in complex groups to achieve certain movements. But muscles are not connected to skin directly. Facial muscles for example are connected to fascia which are conected to fatty tissues, dermis and epidermis. It would take a surgeon to do this by hand.
Rather than do this stuff manualy we could extract muscle motor forces and tendon damping forces at each joint from motion capture data by extending our style based IK algorithms. That would give you a realistic skin deformation in an automated way. Would that be beneficial? |
Post by Gwot // Oct 18, 2006, 3:35am
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Hi Roman, sure, automation is one way to go - anything extra in this area is good. There are definitely times though where that hand built approach is required, especially when it allows you to go in and tweak individual muscles as needed. You won't want to rebuild every real world muscle by hand, as often the simplest setup is all you need and goes a long way towards achieving more realism. I think even with a facial setup I would simplify it a lot to focus on larger more prominent areas and then have finer control through morph shapes - though I'd certainly like to try and build one anyway some day. =]
I wouldn't be able to use a complex muscle system like that in our games, since it depends on some sort of shrink wrap deformer that forces the skin against the muscles. Your system seems like it might be easier to integrate into game content export as well. I'm not a programmer, so maybe this is off the wall... but would it be possible to bake that extra layer of automated deformation out so that it could be used by a vertex shader? Just wondering if there's some way it could be used in a game engine too, as I'm always chasing after more deformation control in realtime.
Cheers,
James |
Post by Humdinger // Oct 18, 2006, 5:26am
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Hi Roman, sure, automation is one way to go - anything extra in this area is good. There are definitely times though where that hand built approach is required, especially when it allows you to go in and tweak individual muscles as needed.
Yup...Words like 'automation' frighten me a bit.
One thing that I really hope makes it's way into the new Character Animation system will be 'morphing of a mesh that has a skeletal rig'.
After I pose my rig I would hope to be able to then open up some saved morphs of the mesh itself and then apply them to the posed mesh...animated over a series of keyframes.
Bulging muscles..a throat that 'expands' as a creature swallows something...a very extreme/ stylized facial expression...viens poping on a forehead..whatever ..custom morph targets that work hand and hand with the skeletal rig is crucial to me.
Horns growing out of a head...eye balls that 'throb' as a creature moves about..etc..all these things for me require morhping... or you fall back on very complex skeletons that often still fall short of the control one gets with being able to edit your mesh at the vertex level. |
Post by Gwot // Oct 18, 2006, 5:39am
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Humdinger: Agreed. Our engine at my studio allows for morph targets on top of skeletal deformation so I've been able to build some animation rigs that drive facial morphs, but also build corrective morphs at joints like elbows and shoulders that are driven by the rig itself. It all exports and works just fine in game. It's more work to setup than an automated system, but I wouldn't trade any of that fine control for a fully automated setup I don't think. To smooth the process a bit I automate the setup process itself through scripts, so I get a nice compromise of automating the setup without sacrificing control. |
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