I went to the Stan Winston school to watch 3 videos by the author of the plug in (not free). Yes he has put quite a lot into the plug in.
His helper objects and naming conventions allow you to use any models or he has prebuilt servos where you can represent motion of a servo. You can also attach mocap data as long as you follow his naming. You can animate just about anything and attach helpers.
Somethings were unclear as in the videos it seems like you can only use translational Y for most things but not sure if that’s the plugin or if just his examples.
Also you can use educational version but NOT maya light.
And yes after you animate you record and spit out the code to go to the controller, but limited to 8k files. That’s about 20 secs animation for 18 servos.
A plug in would be easy as you can look at the order in a text file for frames and positions.
My big question, can I use that data with the Dynamixels? I will most Likely use those for my professional robots. Not sure how to get those two to play together.
Hey @Djsures, here is the template. A little late but its here I'll post the script and instructions on how to use it shortly. This works reliably and is robust. We downloaded a bunch of random single object animation scene that had joints and it worked for everything so hopefully it will come in handy to the community you've built here.
(p.s not related to thread but I saw that post with the your old video. You really are very personable and even though I am new to the Ez-Robot community I personally would love to see a askDj series!)
Ha @Mickey666Maus, that would be amusing to see x) Im sure if I were to wire it then it would very likely tear itself apart quickly haha well, I just order the PC, ezBv4 and associated tech suggested by @Djsures and we will see if this thing blows up once the plug in is made. can't wait till I can post a project showcase! unfortunately, it'll be about a month or so till I'm allowed to but it will be fun.
The script will take a few more days to post, it was a bit of a pain to use so Im having him turn it into a UI and UX friendly plug-in that asks for conversion formulas for slider joints, allows you to add multiple scenes to the same csv or select a particular frame range instead of the default of the entire scene etc
Things that make is super easy to use even for newbies or even for people who can't animate at all but have a JD animation someone posts and want to program their JD.
@Ramon3141 This sound so cool! Combined with the plugin, we would have a powerful animation tool for ARC, and could add so much more personality to our robots! This is a great leap forward!
I watched the videos a few more times to see how the helpers are working in conjunction with the animations I.E.animation is tied only to the "Y" axis of the helpers. See pic. Brow slider attaches to the "y" of the brow helper etc.
But i thought to myself, we should be able stay away from complicated math to solve the Euler angles. Let the program solve the angles and just grab the passed on values from the helpers.
Mocap data on mocap skeleton ------> retarget to new skeleton bones------> bones rotation to helper single axis.
So each helper slider represents a single servo. That could be written out to a csv and loaded into ARC from a plug in.
When PTP was working on the live data from Perception Neurons software, it was pushing out raw Euler angles which he created math to solve. This skips over that step. For you guys you can do the same thing for IK solving. IK to Retarget then to helper. So again you avoid the Euler angle math/solving.
@fxrtst Hey, I guess for whatever reason I turned off notifications for this thread...so I might have a bit of a delay at times!
You are absolutely right in what you are saying, if your 3d model matches your robot, all you would have to do is to extract the rotational values locally and store them in the format needed for further processing!
Extracting the values is not my problem, I do have a problem in correctly setting up the IK for my robot, since mechanical rigging with all the dependencies and constraints is not an easy task...this is why I still use FK to get things done.
Also I never used Maya, I did everything in 3ds max so far...
I went to the Stan Winston school to watch 3 videos by the author of the plug in (not free). Yes he has put quite a lot into the plug in.
His helper objects and naming conventions allow you to use any models or he has prebuilt servos where you can represent motion of a servo. You can also attach mocap data as long as you follow his naming. You can animate just about anything and attach helpers.
Somethings were unclear as in the videos it seems like you can only use translational Y for most things but not sure if that’s the plugin or if just his examples.
Also you can use educational version but NOT maya light.
And yes after you animate you record and spit out the code to go to the controller, but limited to 8k files. That’s about 20 secs animation for 18 servos.
A plug in would be easy as you can look at the order in a text file for frames and positions.
My big question, can I use that data with the Dynamixels? I will most Likely use those for my professional robots. Not sure how to get those two to play together.
Hey @Djsures, here is the template. A little late but its here
I'll post the script and instructions on how to use it shortly. This works reliably and is robust. We downloaded a bunch of random single object animation scene that had joints and it worked for everything so hopefully it will come in handy to the community you've built here.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pYTcRHukt4mjG5cuBfKYq4ako1xEgWtkc_s6ls63NYc/edit?usp=sharing
(p.s not related to thread but I saw that post with the your old video. You really are very personable and even though I am new to the Ez-Robot community I personally would love to see a askDj series!)
@Ramon3141 looking foward to see the script! That is a huge amout of data...if you wire it incorrect your machine will make a really sweet mess!
Ha @Mickey666Maus, that would be amusing to see x) Im sure if I were to wire it then it would very likely tear itself apart quickly haha well, I just order the PC, ezBv4 and associated tech suggested by @Djsures and we will see if this thing blows up once the plug in is made. can't wait till I can post a project showcase! unfortunately, it'll be about a month or so till I'm allowed to but it will be fun. The script will take a few more days to post, it was a bit of a pain to use so Im having him turn it into a UI and UX friendly plug-in that asks for conversion formulas for slider joints, allows you to add multiple scenes to the same csv or select a particular frame range instead of the default of the entire scene etc Things that make is super easy to use even for newbies or even for people who can't animate at all but have a JD animation someone posts and want to program their JD.
@Ramon3141 This sound so cool! Combined with the plugin, we would have a powerful animation tool for ARC, and could add so much more personality to our robots! This is a great leap forward!
I watched the videos a few more times to see how the helpers are working in conjunction with the animations I.E.animation is tied only to the "Y" axis of the helpers. See pic. Brow slider attaches to the "y" of the brow helper etc.
But i thought to myself, we should be able stay away from complicated math to solve the Euler angles. Let the program solve the angles and just grab the passed on values from the helpers.
Mocap data on mocap skeleton ------> retarget to new skeleton bones------> bones rotation to helper single axis.
So each helper slider represents a single servo. That could be written out to a csv and loaded into ARC from a plug in.
When PTP was working on the live data from Perception Neurons software, it was pushing out raw Euler angles which he created math to solve. This skips over that step. For you guys you can do the same thing for IK solving. IK to Retarget then to helper. So again you avoid the Euler angle math/solving.
I might be missing something here or....?!
@fxrtst Hey, I guess for whatever reason I turned off notifications for this thread...so I might have a bit of a delay at times!
You are absolutely right in what you are saying, if your 3d model matches your robot, all you would have to do is to extract the rotational values locally and store them in the format needed for further processing!
Extracting the values is not my problem, I do have a problem in correctly setting up the IK for my robot, since mechanical rigging with all the dependencies and constraints is not an easy task...this is why I still use FK to get things done.
Also I never used Maya, I did everything in 3ds max so far...