Week 5 // June 30 - July 6
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| An avatar skeleton next to an imported .v file motion |
On Monday (June 30) I was working more in-depth with lattices. The tasks I set for myself included:
- creating a simple character
- creating a skeleton for it (& researching if it is necessary or can I do it without it?)
- finding .vsk and .v motion files
- animating this character using motion capture
- applying a lattice deformation
I have successfully created a simple enough character, which I could practice retargeting on. Creating a skeleton for it wasn't too hard for me either. I even found some jumping jack .v files (motion files), which I was about to start retargeting when I realized why Laurel needed me to help her with a plug-in compilation: without the compiled plug-in we are not able to use motion capture data with Maya 2008.
Since I couldn't continue my work, I decided to look up some more information on using lattices and found various Maya tutorials. I got side-tracked playing with a motion path, which was rather fun (see more information on my findings under the Maya links). I also spent some time tampering with lattice weights. After I bound the lattice and selected the points whose weights I wanted to change, I used the Component Editor to manipulate them. The "SkinClusters" tab lists the lattices points vertically on the left and the joints horizontally across the top. The weight of 0, means the joint has no effect on the point; the weight of 1 (100%), means the point is fully influenced by the joint.
Most of the Tuesday (July 1) Laurel and I were trying to get an installation disk for Visual Studio 2005. We needed it in order to compile the plug-in for Maya 2008 for the computers in the mocap. Finally, we decided to instead install Maya 2008 on a computer that had VS already installed. I knew exactly which one we could use: my station from last summer! I still remember how much fun I had trying to free up some space on it to load VS 05. Our plan to compile the plug-in in the graphics lab and then copy it over to the mocap computers succeeded and the plug-in now works like a charm!
Our regular Tuesday 6 p.m. Graphics meeting was moved to 4:30 p.m. when Ronit presented a dry run of her SCA paper (to read more about her work see my notes from the first week). At 5:30, all of the graphics people departed for dinner at Damon's at the Waterfront and then went to see Wall*E. I was glad that the other DMP student, Melissa, was able to join me. Both of us had a lot of fun!
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| CRA DMP 2008 Mentors and Mentees @ CMU: From left to right: Julia, Dr. Mankoff, Laurel, Dr. Hodgins, Melissa, Kate, Catherine, Dr. John |
The next day (July 2) Jessica, Laurel and I met up with the other DMP participants and their mentors. Julia Schwarz and Catherine Grevet are both working with Jen Mankoff on Carbon Footprints project. Melissa Gallagher is working with Bonnie John at the Human-Computer Institute on a usability of a user interface design. Laurel and I are working with Jessica Hodgins on animating non-human objects using Maya. All of us had lunch over at Phipps. It was really great to hear about other students' research, the mentors' experiences and advice.
The rest of the day I worked on creating a simple IK system for a cyliner. For some reason, the joint would bend properly but the mesh wouldn't. Curiously, when Elise started a new scene and performed the exact same steps, it worked for her! *sign* Mental note to self: if something isn't working in Maya, sometimes it is worth to just start over.
I created a model of a pencil, which I animated using a few of mocap motions. The animation had a lattice over the pencil's mesh, which was skinned on top of a walking (one-legged) skeleton. The resulting proportions and the quality of motion are something that I need to refine but for now I am glad that the concept is working like I expected it to.
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