Maestro demo video- walk generator

[Mike Pauza]

Looks pretty darn cool Eric!

I'm at home on my laptop and can barely hear the audio.
Any chance you can crank it up?

Also, can you tell us how does your walk generator work from a technical standpoint?


Thanks Eric. -Mike Pauza

[calilifestyle]

yeah this looks great. just the whole scrippting thing makes things bit hard on my side. if this could get refinded ill buy it its looking more like biped and if it get to that point tell me where to buy. BTW where do you go for the current version

[ericsmith]

I'm at home on my laptop and can barely hear the audio. Any chance you can crank it up?

Hmm. The source is pretty much as loud as it can go without clipping. Maybe it's a compression problem. I'll look into it.

Also, can you tell us how does your walk generator work from a technical standpoint?

There's a couple of fundimental priciples at work.

1. We've created a command that lets you move the time slider a percentage of the distance between the previous and next keys. This way, the time slider can be placed at different points in the stride relative to the distance of the overall stride. Without this, all steps would have to be a pre-determined length in time, which would be very limiting.

2. The other command allow you to add numerically to a channel's value based on the difference between two other channel's value's, either local or world. The fact that this command works additively, as well as relatively in the amount added, means that we can analyze the character's overall size, as well as other factors, to make sure that the animation "fits".

So basically, with these (and a few other similar) commands, I've created a macro that executes all the secondary animation involved in a walk once the basic footprints are keyed.

Hopefully, that explains it fairly clearly.

yeah this looks great. just the whole scrippting thing makes things bit hard on my side. if this could get refinded ill buy it its looking more like biped and if it get to that point tell me where to buy.

Just keep in mind that you don't have to get into the scripting part if you don't want. You can use all the macros that we've already created with one click. The fact is, we could have hidden all of this stuff from the end user and just hard-coded everything, but we thought it would be better for users (as well as our own production) if they had the ability to build on and customize what we created.

BTW where do you go for the current version
The latest release can be purchase here:

http://www.stillwaterpictures.com/maestro

Eric

[calilifestyle]

ok so this sounds really sweet. i looked at the websit and for the price this look great. now one thing how do u set up a rig with Maestro. i see the videos but none on how to start from scrach. does one 1st set up a bones/skelgones then links the controls to Maestro, or is there a rig (biped type) drop into mesh and go to work. im asking cuz i just got into the bone tools in lightwave and been trying to us ik booster and well its driving me crazy. after playing with it for about 30 mins i feel like im car sick from the mesh getting all deformed, spinning the wrong way, man i miss biped :sad: foot prints and all .how often are you guys updating this plug.

[ericsmith]

Rigging works with skelegons in modeler. So all you have to do is this:

1. load the provided skelegons into your character mesh in modeler.
2. adjust the skelegons to fit and save the model
3. in layout, load the character, launch Maestro, and hit the button for the rig that corresponds with the skeletal structure in your character (ie. biped, quad, wings and tail, etc.).

Less than a minute later your character is fully rigged, with a control panel all hooked up and ready to go.

Eric

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