Ramon3141
Alright, kind of a tall order but here is where I am at and would love some help or points in the right direction from the community.
I'm building a machine with crazy unusual kinematics. I have 4 typical G9 tower micro servos and 13 separate nema 17's. Due to the nature of the machine, they had to be steppers ( which is unfortunately where the complication starts. )
I have Dual L6470 Stepper motor controller driver boards. each handles two steppers over SPI, which is sweet. attached is the datasheet and schematics.
Now I've animated the CAD model I made to print my parts via Auto Desk on 3Ds Max and used to mo-cap data to manually set key frames and such to get the machine to move exactly as desired in the animation.
Here's where Im starting to hit a wall. Original intention was to use 3Ds Max to inform ARC what to move and how much. I saw a member of the community already working on it. Then once I have my model in ARC with its new positional data, send that over to the boards through a micro-controller like the ezB4 or Rpi3 or something. I've gotten stuck on multiple points and would love some advice, either on solving these problems or alternate solutions?
Basically I have a machine with no feasible nor timely way to work out kinematics, an animation of that exact machine moving exactly how id like the physical machine to move, Id like to use the animation to tell the nemas and servos how much to rotate and how fast by simply having it reproduce the movements of the animation after Ive set the points then take that and run it through the hardware to the actual machine which is made and waiting dumbly to be told how to move.
info needed:
- method for uploading my model to ARC and using 3ds max to program motion.
- method for taking that data and relaying it to boards/nemas.
not really an expert in this field, have an electrical engineer working with us but due to a deadline he is swamp with other aspects so yeah, thanks again.
I should add, the nema's all need to work independently from each other as each control an entire axis of movement. I haven't said exactly what the machine is for 2 reasons 1) it doesn't impact how well the question can be answered and 2) Im not allowed to.
Id really appreciate any help on this, any part of it and and pointers or suggestions ! thank you.
What you want is the Auto Position control from ARC. Voila! Here’s the link: https://synthiam.com/Tutorials/Help.aspx?id=180
Thanks Dj sures, I already planned on doing that. great work btw. its just not very feasible to manually enter every joint key value from every frame for several dozen frames. ARC is the closest Ive ever seen to making programming a NEW robot (especially one with alien kinematics) as easy as key frame animation. There are a bunch of them available with proprietary software to run 5-6 axis robot arms but the same can be done to a totally different kind of robot in theory with user WBS00001 already having done some of the scripting . I think it'd be an amazing plugin or something to 3ds Max to export animation data to control ARCs model. That way, for those that are willing to take the time to learn 3ds-max or something they can program machine movements even off of public Mo-Cap data or something. It opens up many avenues for innovation.
Anyway, I stayed up late looking for a solution and think found one. Anyone in the community can maybe tell me if there is a flaw or better solution?
okay so I'll use a python/max script to take key values of joints in my animations in real time then automatically enter that data set per frame to the Auto Position control which will spit out UWP code that I can run on a pi configured to control 13 stepper IC's via SPI. Does that sound crazy? or is it really as straight forward as this give or take? Anyone have a different solution? any flaws? stress confused
If you can give me an example output of the 3ds max export, I can look into creating an import plugin for you.
The. Absolute. Man.
anyway, absolutely. Gotta get home from my day job to get that data for you but hopefully its feasible and people can then do even more cool stuff. Once Im allowed to talk about it I'll post it to show what was done thanks to ARC.
@dj that would be a game changer. But I think it should be for MotionBuilder. MotionBuilder takes animation from any 3d package or mocap and allows you to edit and splice together animations smoothly. This is owned by Autodesk who also own 3d studio max, maya etc. then animations could be shared in the .fbx format.
@ramon3141 this is something I’ve been struggling with for a few years. I’ve been coming from a self taught cgi back ground except mine is with lightwave. But the concept of using an animation package to create motions has been a 30+ years dream.
But what I can share is this link to a thread on the discussion I started 2 years ago: https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/8392
PTP at my request built a POC plug in to control Perception Neurons Motion capture devices. I’m in the process of getting one of their new mo cap suits to transfer motion to full body robots.
https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/10286
..and there is a Kinect plug in as well.
Give me an example FBX file. Not any random one you find. A real FBX file generated from your real robot model. An FBX of some guy walking down the street or a pot moving on a desk doesn't help. I need an actual real FBX file of your real robot doing real things. I'll make a plugin import that data.
I know @mickey666mous has a JD model and an animation set up in 3D max. He can export the scene in .FBX.
If he doesn't chime in soon, I'll create one for you.
alright, hold on. I'll tell someone on my team to send it to me so I can get you that fbx file.