Day 24

Today we carried on painting weights for the whole day.
So there's basically nothing much to show (:

However, Mr Leong and Mr Douglas figured out a pipeline that saves us from the weight painting torture.
So all we have to do is to position the joints properly and make sure the head joint is working properly.

Day 23

For the whole day of today, i did weight painting!

We have to paint weights on all the characters so as to import into Motion Builder.

Encountered several problems and asked my team mate Nick, for help.


I personally find that painting weights on the fingers is the most difficult part as it requires a lot of concentration because every little mistake will screw the movement.

Day 22

As the stadium crowd houdini file we did earlier was in non-commercial version, i decided to convert it over to commercialized version by doing it over again. In the mean time, got an unpated version of the stadium.
I also created a file node such that I do not have to transfer all of the nodes to the other file.

I added on the scatter node to see the static particles but found out that the screen also has particles on it.

And so, i went back to the actual geometry file and file out the stadium and the screen seperately.
Then, i used the merge node to merge scatter and the screen together.

So i started off by creating the particles by going up the tairs, not the seats.
These are the nodes i used.

I then used the copy node to multiply the particles using the exact settings of the stairs geometry.

My work at the end of the day! (:
After that Mr Leong came in and went through painting weights with us, he will be teaching us more on motion builder tomorrow.

Day 21

So Basically for today, I will messing around with the file that we showed Mr. Douglas today.
And i will also be discussing with Ruth how many kinds of simulations we need.

Whether static,

marching,

and people moving through the door.

And also, my team mates said that the moving crowd should not be walking around in the centre of the stadium. So, Ruth and I both tried to make the particles follow along a curve according to what Mr. Ron taught us.

I also updated the schedule with more details. But its not completed yet as my fellow team mates haven't passed me the notepad with their detailed roles written. (:

Day 20

Wow, end of the forth week already, time sure passes fast!

Today, I was working on instancing for the whole day.

First, i tried to do a simple instancing simpulation to understand how it works.

Then I implied the instancing method into the stadium file that Ruth is working on.

Ruth is in-charged of the static blue particles, while i'm in charged of the moving crowd that will be walking around the stadium(which are the red particles).

Initially when i scaled the grid, all the particles will drop except for a few particles.

soooooo, i figured out that it might be the gravity, hence i turned off the gravity! and it stayed!

Mr Douglas and Mr Ron came in, so, by 3 weeks me and Ruth will have to come up with all the needed simulations.

Day 19

Today i was doing more research on the motion capture.

And this is what I got from the web.

Motion capture, motion tracking, or mocap are terms used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement on to a digital model. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications, and for validation of computer vision^[1] and robotics. Infilmmaking it refers to recording actions of human actors, and using that information to animate digital character models in 2D or 3D computer animation. When it includes face and fingers or captures subtle expressions, it is often referred to as performance capture.

In motion capture sessions, movements of one or more actors are sampled many times per second, although with most techniques (recent developments from Weta use images for 2D motion capture and project into 3D), motion capture records only the movements of the actor, not his or her visual appearance. This animation data is mapped to a 3D model so that the model performs the same actions as the actor. This is comparable to the older technique of rotoscope, such as the 1978 The Lord of the Rings animated film where the visual appearance of the motion of an actor was filmed, then the film used as a guide for the frame-by-frame motion of a hand-drawn animated character.

Camera movements can also be motion captured so that a virtual camera in the scene will pan, tilt, or dolly around the stage driven by a camera operator while the actor is performing, and the motion capture system can capture the camera and props as well as the actor's performance. This allows the computer-generated characters, images and sets to have the same perspective as the video images from the camera. A computer processes the data and displays the movements of the actor, providing the desired camera positions in terms of objects in the set. Retroactively obtaining camera movement data from the captured footage is known as match moving or camera tracking.

All motion capture shots starts and ends with a T-pose.

Vicon motion capture Data.

Facial Motion Capture

Facial Motion Capture

Avatar Motion Capture on Set

Mr Leong came in to install the commercialized version of Houdini. He also showed me his pipeline of fbx import, which is almost done.

He asked me to research more on instancing, starting from 10 particles, and then 100, then a thousand.

So i did some research and tried as well.

These are some of the links that i looked through.
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?180071-Random-object-instancing
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1050&Itemid=216
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini9.5/copy/instancing

Day 18

For today, there is nothing much i can do but more research research and research.

So, my task for today is to research on the actions and movements of people when they walk up and down the stairs.

Tried looking for people walking up and down the stairs but can't find any suitable. ):

I also found some theory of climbing stairs.

Stair climbing is the climbing of a flight of stairs. It is often described as a "low-impact" exercise, often for people who have recently started trying to get in shape.

Climbing is the activity of using one's hands and feet (or indeed any other part of the body) to ascend a steep object. It is done both for recreation (to reach an inaccessible place, or for its own enjoyment) and professionally, as part of activities such as maintenance of a structure, or military operations.

Day 17

Today we came in seeing our computers are still cloning. ):
But luckily we still have the previous fyp lab available for us, though its not the commercialized version of Houdini.

We went to the fyp lab and i started working on the simulation whereby the particles can go up the stairs.

Initially I tried myself by building a stair using a curve, but i found out that the particles were actually sliding up, not against the curve but against the direction.
I went to discuss with Ruth about it, then i saw Mr. Ron.
I told him about my problem then he said that i was actually going the wrong direction. And so, he demonstrated a file. (:



The particles are actually moving up the stairs.

This is what is happening in the 'popnet' node. The creep node can be used to let the particles creep up the stairs.
Or, the collision and property works as well. The behavior option in the collision node is set to 'slide on collision'. In such way, the particles will slide along as it hits the wall of the stairs.
As for the property node, the 'cling' ooption nder the 'misc' tab can be used to make the particles cling to the wall.

Day 16

GRRRRR.

Today i went to search for ways to randomize the particles in Houdini.

But i also happen to search back the same file or tutorial.

References:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=8152&sid=0881183998a63cd113e91e56fc851a3e

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=88262&sid=530704dc957d016fcc5f17019e9d3fd8

From the above website, i downloaded this file.

But Mr Douglas once asked us to not use this file as it is too complexed for us.

So i decided to play around with the files that i have on hand first.

Mr. Ron came in and asked to see 2 simulations done by me and Ruth by tomorrow.

So i tried to make the particles go up by creating a curve in the shape of a stairs.

But i encountered some problems. It seemed that my particles only managed to follow the direction my stairs is pointing to, but it is not following the curve. ):

Day 15

Mr Douglas came to visit us again today!
I showed him what Ruth and me did throughout the week.

Mr Douglas also said that I have to think of a way to randomize the people in the crowd.
So i went to look for some expressions for randomizing people.
And we talked to Mr Leong about the mocap import stuffs, he said that he will actually develop a pipeline for it.

Day 14

Today we moved to the lab where Jiabao and people used to be at.
And for about half the day we were busy with converting files from the educational version to the commercial version.

After which we started to work on our camera, in the mean time waiting for
Nick to pass us his completed Stadium.

Day 13

This was what Mr. Ron showed us yesterday.
I've learned different new things that might be helpful for this Final Year Project.
Such as ;
- The 'drag' node can be used to slow down the speen of particles.
- The 'intercept' node can be used as collision inbetween the particles.
- The 'metaball' node can be used as an obstacle in the field.

And also, today i tried to import a FBX file with an animated character, but unfortunately, I encountered a few problems. I couldn't copy the character's geometry node to substitute the geometry(platonic).




But after i consulted Mr. Ron about it, i got it (:
However, there is still some problem with the fbx importing that we need to check with Mr Leong about it. I also tried merging instead of importing, but there were lots of errors.

I also tried research on fbx format file importing on the webs and various forums.

References:
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini9.5/io/fbx
http://animbyu.groups.et.byu.net/wiki/index.php?title=Houdini_and_Maya
http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/7556-fbx-export-from-maya-import-to-houdini/

Day 12

This was what i did yesterday, flipbook-ed it and here you go!
I still need to get the directions of the characters right and put in the animated character.


I followed Mr Ron's example yesterday and also tried out using a line instead of a circle.
This will probably be the way the I will be doing the static stimulation.

-The 'resample' node will be used to control the frequency of the particles along the line.


After which I tried to substitute the characters in..
But the problem i had was, the rows of people were facing the opposite side in alternative rows.
and i wonder how do i get that right ):

TADA! got it with the help of Mr. Ron! :D
All i have to do is to correct the Normals.
Add in a 'point' node, and change the normals to 'Add Normal' and add 1 to the Z axis. This way, all the particles will be facing the same way.