@mickey666, no I have not. Interestingly it seems to have been developed by Stan Winston’s f/x shop. Which is now Legacy Effects which is who I work for when on my Marvel Films. Seems they have training at the Stan Winston school of effects. I want to look into it a bit deeper.
Maya aside, I’ve used something from a company called Brookshire. They created software and hardware that I’ve been using for years. The interface is clunky and old but you can record servos and then put them on an sd card and into their playback system called RAPU. I could not get it to play at all with EZB, but PTP found the issue and got it working for me. I’m surprised that after 15 years nothing better has come along. Especially with robotics and servos are so mainstream right now.
Anyways thanks for the link going to go explore it a bit more!
That would be perfect. I can make an import plugin to read that data and load it as frames, which can be applied to the auto position, that way there’s smoothness on the frame transitions.
It might also be just the wrong approach and servos should not be driven frame by frame, the Auto Position that @DjSures implemented is a robust solution, so maybe I will also try to just make the pose to pose movements really tight, to kind of mimic natural movements?
Thats what I was suggesting. just set the pose to pose movements at the same frequency as the actual frame rate and logically speaking, it should be smooth as butter my friend. There could be some hardware issues but thats not a timing code problem I think and would be minimized it you eliminate lag and com errors by running through different boards. Thats why we want to do run it off of a pi that has Windows 10 Iot core since itll be able to play the code that autopositioner plug-in produces.
Quote:
My interest in robotics was sparked here within this community...EZ-Robot got me into robotics, and since I am on the hook now I just cannot let go
Thats fantastic! Im sure @Dj would be happy to read that. Originally I began investigating this platform as a solution to a problem but have since grown to love the work that @Dj, his team and the community has done. Personally, though my body of knowledge and best skill sets are in biotech, I plan on getting much more involved in this community and that sweet looking EzB V4 board once this presentation is finished!
Quote:
I was reading your info once more, and now I understood correctly. Your friend build an animation rig which is a virtual representation of the real machine, this rig she animated in a way to match the mocap driven biped as close as possible right?
Which is a very good approach since the 3ds max biped is by no means a working representation of your real machine, its a very good tool to represent the mocap data though!
Yes, exactly. My dream is a software setup where I can just import (cleaned up) mo-cap data and have the machine move accordingly or even better, import the data, blend the motions and be able to play it like a game character -_- I rue the day I went into biology lol haha
Anyway, @mickey666maus and @DjSures, I have taken the code me and the community here and at another forum have made and am hiring an expert in max script. Its a simple job so it should be done soon but by tonight or tomorrow we will have a script that will pump out .csv file that is organized, reproducible, dynamic and can handle not just rotational joints but also things like slide joints (a person will have to first take the distance calculated by scripy that the slide joint moves and calculate the number of rotations per unit distance their machine requires and simply plug that value in to get the degrees of rotation for that joint to that is specific to their machine. )
Kind of like how you configure the firmware on a 3d printer if anyone here has ever done that. Anyway, im excited! it will open so many doors for really NEW things for people with fewer resources or just so its much faster!
Thanks @DJsures, yeah you tell me exactly what you need and I'll relay it. Ive already got the freelancer working on it but if you're willing to wait on the plug-in till its done in say a day or two I can make sure it will work best and be as user friendly as possible.
So include:
port names
lines by degrees (good, we had that already.)
time stamp
... got it. Guy I hired is expert at max script, C++ and C# with electronics experience so I think its gonna be wicked. Let me know if there are any other features that would benefit the community. I personally will get everything I need from whats been discussed but it'll be worth it spending a little extra $$$ if it can be made much more user friendly and have wider applications.
If there is nothing else, I'll be posting the file tomorrow then, tomorrow night at the latest and if everything is copacetic we will have ourselves a wicked new ARC plug-in.
This guy might also be interested in creating a plugin to unify the solution that he comes up with - might want to consider that. I’m by no means revoking my effort of having a plugin created for you - it’s that sometimes having someone own the whole process gets things done quicker.
I do feel that a file export is the best idea - although there’s an option of having his code send data to an ARC skill plugin via tcp directly. I do think the file is the best option
I'll ask about the tcp, perhaps making it optional since for those using anything with belts or actuators of any kind they'll need to take the joint types that are non rotational, like sliding joints and do that "1 degree of rotation equals 10mm" kind of thing that is specific to their build but I told him to make it so you'd only need to input the ratio in one box and it'll calculate the rest and provide all by degrees of rotation. My example file will have such a feature and you'll see what I mean. If it does have those kinds of joints. If it doesn't, tcp would work great I think, Ive been talking to him about the general R&D work my team does and am considering hiring him as a regular programmer so if this works out via file then going up the next step would be less of an impediment.
alright, Ill post an update of the progress on the code or the code plus example file itself same time tomorrow.
@fxrtst I know that you have been researching this topic deeply already, but did you ever stumble across this product?
https://animservo.com/about-animservo/
@mickey666, no I have not. Interestingly it seems to have been developed by Stan Winston’s f/x shop. Which is now Legacy Effects which is who I work for when on my Marvel Films. Seems they have training at the Stan Winston school of effects. I want to look into it a bit deeper.
Maya aside, I’ve used something from a company called Brookshire. They created software and hardware that I’ve been using for years. The interface is clunky and old but you can record servos and then put them on an sd card and into their playback system called RAPU. I could not get it to play at all with EZB, but PTP found the issue and got it working for me. I’m surprised that after 15 years nothing better has come along. Especially with robotics and servos are so mainstream right now.
Anyways thanks for the link going to go explore it a bit more!
That would be perfect. I can make an import plugin to read that data and load it as frames, which can be applied to the auto position, that way there’s smoothness on the frame transitions.
I’ll do that tomorrow for you - stay tuned.
@mickey666maus here you go buddy. this is an old concept model so its safe enough but just let me know as soon as you download so I can kill the link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jbYp27GBkVqAFb7LfVsrZPQ-bpymilGb/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xs_duO20QnaV6rohLy0T4m5CCODjVXqt/view?usp=sharing
Thats what I was suggesting. just set the pose to pose movements at the same frequency as the actual frame rate and logically speaking, it should be smooth as butter my friend. There could be some hardware issues but thats not a timing code problem I think and would be minimized it you eliminate lag and com errors by running through different boards. Thats why we want to do run it off of a pi that has Windows 10 Iot core since itll be able to play the code that autopositioner plug-in produces.
Thats fantastic! Im sure @Dj would be happy to read that. Originally I began investigating this platform as a solution to a problem but have since grown to love the work that @Dj, his team and the community has done. Personally, though my body of knowledge and best skill sets are in biotech, I plan on getting much more involved in this community and that sweet looking EzB V4 board once this presentation is finished!
Yes, exactly. My dream is a software setup where I can just import (cleaned up) mo-cap data and have the machine move accordingly or even better, import the data, blend the motions and be able to play it like a game character -_- I rue the day I went into biology lol haha
Anyway, @mickey666maus and @DjSures, I have taken the code me and the community here and at another forum have made and am hiring an expert in max script. Its a simple job so it should be done soon but by tonight or tomorrow we will have a script that will pump out .csv file that is organized, reproducible, dynamic and can handle not just rotational joints but also things like slide joints (a person will have to first take the distance calculated by scripy that the slide joint moves and calculate the number of rotations per unit distance their machine requires and simply plug that value in to get the degrees of rotation for that joint to that is specific to their machine. ) Kind of like how you configure the firmware on a 3d printer if anyone here has ever done that. Anyway, im excited! it will open so many doors for really NEW things for people with fewer resources or just so its much faster!
That’s amazing! With an example copy of the csv, I’ll create a plugin to import into ARC’s auto position! Awesome
I recommend the csv include the port names (ie d0 or d2, etc) as the header (first line of the file)
And every consecutive line be the degrees
If a time stamp is necessary, it can be the first row. I believe a time stamp would be important for you guys.
Thanks @DJsures, yeah you tell me exactly what you need and I'll relay it. Ive already got the freelancer working on it but if you're willing to wait on the plug-in till its done in say a day or two I can make sure it will work best and be as user friendly as possible.
So include: port names lines by degrees (good, we had that already.) time stamp
... got it. Guy I hired is expert at max script, C++ and C# with electronics experience so I think its gonna be wicked. Let me know if there are any other features that would benefit the community. I personally will get everything I need from whats been discussed but it'll be worth it spending a little extra $$$ if it can be made much more user friendly and have wider applications.
If there is nothing else, I'll be posting the file tomorrow then, tomorrow night at the latest and if everything is copacetic we will have ourselves a wicked new ARC plug-in.
That’s real great!
This guy might also be interested in creating a plugin to unify the solution that he comes up with - might want to consider that. I’m by no means revoking my effort of having a plugin created for you - it’s that sometimes having someone own the whole process gets things done quicker.
I do feel that a file export is the best idea - although there’s an option of having his code send data to an ARC skill plugin via tcp directly. I do think the file is the best option
I'll ask about the tcp, perhaps making it optional since for those using anything with belts or actuators of any kind they'll need to take the joint types that are non rotational, like sliding joints and do that "1 degree of rotation equals 10mm" kind of thing that is specific to their build but I told him to make it so you'd only need to input the ratio in one box and it'll calculate the rest and provide all by degrees of rotation. My example file will have such a feature and you'll see what I mean. If it does have those kinds of joints. If it doesn't, tcp would work great I think, Ive been talking to him about the general R&D work my team does and am considering hiring him as a regular programmer so if this works out via file then going up the next step would be less of an impediment.
alright, Ill post an update of the progress on the code or the code plus example file itself same time tomorrow.