Need some serieous CROWD help (character studio 4.0)

[gaggle]

Can you get just one guy to walk properly?

[PIXAR]

just tried it with 2 because i still wante to use my motion flow.

they don't walk straight:annoyed:

here's a quick rampreview to give you an idea

http://users.skynet.be/m2/test.avi (800kb)

divx 5.0

i even added an avoid wall, but nothing works:annoyed:

[bibi5000]

but nothing works

That's pretty normal with crowd simulations, especially the one of Max. Avoid using it as long as you can. If you want to do hardcore crowd simulations you'll have to use good tools like Massive.

:hmm:

[PIXAR]

using massive is not an option at all for me

[gaggle]

Well that goes for mostly everyone but WETA I think :)

CS comes with crowd-stuff, there's no point in having bought a product with certain features and then being unable to use them. That said, the little I've played with it yielded.. questionable results, and I never even tried getting anything working with bipeds. So I'm not someone who'll be able to explain why this is happening to you unfortunatly.

But still, I can ask questions and see if maybe you or someone else can suddenly go "aha!" :)
Anyway, so a minimum of two are required to use the motionflow thing? Very well. If memory servers the motion flow is a graph of interconnected nodes holding various actions the bips can use right?, I guess you have.. what.. a bunch of "walk forward"s or something in there?

What would happen if you were to simplify it down to just one or two nodes, and make the two bips walk the distance.. can you get that working?

[Maven]

PIXAR asked a question about CS and is looking for an answer for his CS problems, he is not looking for a suggestion of buing a 40,000 dollar beta program. Thats just rediculous to even mention. and he isn't even doing hardcore crowd simulations as bibi5000 mentioned.

I just hate when people answer questions with " you have the wrong software, buy product XXX and it will fix everything"

By the way PIXAR I don't have an answer for you.

[gaggle]

I agree with your comments leonec. The Massive suggestion thing was likely made as a joke, so.. yeh.. ah well. Just for the record though: PIXAR is the one asking and being told to use Massive, I'm just the one randomly asking questions to him to see if he can get something working :)

[BrandonD]

I've used Crowd in production and it's quite capable, so relax. It sounds like your problem is strictly in the Motion Flow network. Have you tried simulating the delegates without the Bipeds? If they move correctly then it's definitely your MoFlow network. The thing is that delegates by themselves don't have to rely on a library of motions to define how they react to the crowd simulation's environment. In a lot of ways this makes it a behavioral particle system. But when you introduce Biped, the system takes on a whole new simulation method. If Crowd tells a delegate to avoid a wall, but the Biped's motion flow network doesn't offer it a suitable motion to transition to, then it'll walk through the wall.

This is exactly why when you look at the Massive stuff Weta did, you can see that they thoroughly developed the "Brain Modules" of the characters. This is very much like a Motion Flow network - a library of possible motions and conditions to control transitions between the motions.

From my experience it takes quite a bit to develop a generic motion flow network for crowd sim. However, once you get a few that work, you can reuse and modify them as you go. You really have to think of a myriad of possiblities. For example, short clips for all possible turning directions, clips for forward, backward and lateral movement as well as pausing and stopping. It's very complex and definitely not something you should expect to be able to "whip out."

The good news for CS4 people is that Crowd no longer has much of a biped limit. In CS3 it tended to crash when you got over 100 bipeds. I recently ran a sim with over 5000. Of course with that many objects, the system was quite bogged down, but it still simulated properly.

Incidentally, since everyone keeps defaulting to Massive, you should realize that Massive on its own isn't enough to do what Weta did. Again, they spent a LONG time developing the brain modules for the characters (have you seen those spider webs!). Also, since it's a standalone tool they have a variety of tools to translate data back and forth between 3d apps. And then on top of all of that, even PRman wasn't enough to render Massive, so they wrote a special renderer called Grunt. So unless you have all of those things in place, don't assume that you can do shots like in LOTR.

[bibi5000]

Sorry, I know my answer wasn't very helpful. Forget about massive.

I just hate when people answer questions with " you have the wrong software, buy product XXX and it will fix everything"

I understand what you mean, but I wasn't suggesting that PIXAR should get Massive. Well, not really ;) . Btw if you read the interviews with the people at WETA, Massive doesn't make crowd simulation easier.

I just wanted to say I had bad memories of CS Crowd. :rolleyes:

Sorry PIXAR :beer:

[zicher]

The motion flow is definitely where you have to look for the problem. If they walk left, it's because there is no way for them to walk right.

Check the COM during transitions. Sometimes it's causing some turning side effect.

Go to discreet.com, in the character studio main page. On the menu there is a link to a sample animation file. Download, unzip, and read the PDF file. It's for CS4, but it gives you some insight about COM behaviour and getting bipeds to go where you want them to.

[PIXAR]

i just made new simple scene for testing:

1 long small plane as object to "Surface follow"

5 bipeds that have a motion flow with ONLY 1 BIP (the standard walk.bip) in it.

amazing, they still go to the left:annoyed: :annoyed: (tested it on another computer damnit)

IF anyone could please investigate my scene, i realy need an answer for this.

HERE is my testscene: http://users.skynet.be/m2/crowd.zip

[BrandonD]

Ah, you had a couple things going there. First off, the wall seek wasn't going to work unless the delegates are within its area of effect. Also, the Force method isn't what you'll want to use most of the time. Still, the big problem was the motion flow network. I loaded the Tutorial7.mfe from the CD and used that - no problem. That's actually a really basic moFlo that works pretty well for learning.

[PIXAR]

i just made a bigger Distance for my grid, all delegates are inside it and still having the same result.

If possible, could you please mail me the zip i uploaded with the changes i had to make? (or screenshots, just to have a clear picture)

(method is "angle" now)

[Dare]

Hello Pixar,

I had the same problem a month ago ....
Also, I`ve just investigated your crowd scene, and there is only one solution to the problem : change the angle in the edit transition dialog of your moflow ( 4 works fine ) for the first walk in the script.
This is a moflow problem, because when you dessociate the bipeds from delegates, everything works fine.
Yes, you have only 1 bip file, but copied 10 times in the script .:)

I can email you the fixed scene, if you want

Best regards
Dare

[PIXAR]

ooh yes please, here's my email

cedrik_vh@yahoo.com

[Dare]

Pixar,
CYM

tell me what ya think ...

Dare

[PIXAR]

a BIG thanks, at least it wasn't a bug (BIG luck for me this time)

as far as i noticed, the only thing i did "too" much was enabling the "Select Random Start Clips" in the Motion Flow.

was that the option you changed? could make sense because "Select Random Start Clips" is made for multiple clips.

[Dare]

No that was not the option I changed :shame:

I explained already, the tip is to change the ANGLE parameter in the EDIT TRANSITION dialog of the first clip in the script, look up the scene I sent you....

Actually, when I enable "Random start clip", the bipeds go left again....

Hope I am clear enough:)

[PIXAR]

ok, i found it!

gonna check this out in detail.

thanks again man, maybe i'll reply inhere later when i encounter more trouble (allthough am fine now for a long time i think)

[Dare]

no problemo :)

see ya :thumbsup:

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