Week 10 // August 04 - August 10
Last week I created a final comparison page with Laurel's and my videos embedded in it. However, neither browser on the machines in the lab was able to display the page without crashing. I guess having 12 embedded videos is a little too much. Laurel had a good idea to take screen-shots of the movies and use them as a link to the video files.
On Monday I worked on putting together a web-page with Laurel's and my videos. I spent some time making awesome screenshots (in order to make links) and I really liked the result. Laurel also sent me the latest scene with lava but unfortunately my graphics card couldn't handle the file. I got an I/O warning : "failed to load external entity." That's why the next day I decided to model a simple polygonal object that would resemble lava. I spent quite some time trying to constrain the hand motion to the skeleton but for some reason it didn't work. I thought the problem was because the skeleton was missing one of the spine joints, yet when I tried the motion on a different skeleton, which had that joint, the hands still didn't move. Since the rest of the body's motion was captured correctly, I decided to do an animation regardless. After retargeting the motion I realized that I have a problem of a different kind: the nature of the motion wasn't suited to the technique I was using (the mesh ended up flipping and twisting).
On Tuesday (August 5) Laurel and I met with Jessica and Alla (over the phone). It was our last meeting together for this summer. We went over all the movies comparing the IK-spline and lattice approaches, discussed the results and the future steps. There is still a lot more that can be done on the project with our summer's work being just the first layer.
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| Left to right: Ishita, Eakta (as a test subject), in the middle is a test object, Lillian and I |
Lillian had asked me if I could help her run a mocap session on Thursday. Lillian is a PhD student who works with Jessica. I saw her working on the robotic arm in the mocap lab a lot and I was interested in what kind research she does.
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| Kate as a test subject in a mocap suit (yes, the picture is blurry) |
On Thursday I helped operate the software during the session. It was really nice of Lillian to treat us all to a homemade ice cream after the session.
My last day on campus (Friday, August 8) I spent in the mocap lab in a full mocap suit with over 50 markers stuck to it. The picture shows me trying to pick up an object by its handle with only one hand without turning it (photo courtesy Ishita Kapur).
This concludes my awesome summer in working as an assistant student researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.
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