Animation: Project Mayhem - a.k.a. building battling bipeds

[Theta-Dot]

That's amazing! The scope of this... it's huge. VERY cool stuff. I would think this to be intellectually fun for you...
I really don't understand the mechanics of it all, but it looks pretty believable in terms of realism. Find yourself a nice big set and some good models and then add some post work and it will look god like. awesome work man


=ThetaDot=

[Adso]

Thanks Man! You know - It's probably the most brain taxing project I've ever done. The number of times I thought I'd go completely crazy ... way too many to count! :insane: :argh: :banghead:

I can't wait to start dropping this stuff into a different set. I'm playing about with Dreamscape and Afterburn at the mo. so they may well play a big part.

Something I'm also pretty excited about is the skeletal rig I'm currently using for characters. It's perfect for skinning and it's already set up to go. Time to do some damage with the old poly count, I reckon! :D

[Wacksarn]

That is extraordinarily impressive.

I'm working on a game (don't get too excited - it's going to be freeware) where a shot like that in a cut-scene would be perfect.

Can you give any more technical insight in to how it was done?

Once again - that really is one of the best pieces of development work I've seen posted on these boards.

Kudos.

[lildragon]

I think you have stubbled across something potential groundbreaking here for all Max users, as should be rewarded and such, you've been plugged on both cgtalk.com and 3dfestival.com your tireless efforts really needs to be appreciated here. I'm utterly impressed.

congrats

salud

[Cableguy]

Any chance of making the algorithms/code open source? It would be great if the technology was public domain, so people could develop it in various directions, and in other apps.

[Jones_Stork]

Look to this adress: http://www.thearma.org/
It should help you with swordfighting knowlege.
We have started together with my friends a project of a game about medival swordfighting, as I`m teaching it for five years.
There would be a huge system for these fights which means a lot of animations. So I thought I can share them with you when I finish them. That should help you focus on the programming tasks.
I think your project rocks :buttrock: and I would be glad to be involved.
So if you are interested, contact me by e-mail.:wavey:

[DFGFX]

Hello sir!

Is there any chance me and you could cooperate at making this?

Email: df14@mail.ru
Msn: df14@mail.ru

..

I know a lot of maxscript
I know Medium Modelling
Medium Animation

I have had the idea of the same project for long, thus i have some good ideas.

[CGmonkey]

That is utterly amazing :bowdown:

Too bad I'm using Maya :shrug:

[Hugh]

It's only started recently, but I recently started working on a simple neural-nets system for Maya...

I'm hoping to be able to expand it into something like what you've done.... I would look further at yours, but your site seems to be down - neither the video link nor the website itself seem to be working.....

Was it all in MaxScript? I would have imagined that something like this would need a fair bit of API programming too (then again, I don't use Max, so I don't know what you can do with MaxScript)

Anyway, sounds cool - pity I can't get at it yet - will look at it when I can!

[chot]

it wont work for me :banghead: i've got the latest divx, when i try to start it says, The requested class could not be found in ClassFactory

EDIT: uhm, found the prob, i've only got 130k of the movie (time for :banghead: again :rolleyes: ). next prob, why cant i download it all? mirror please!!

[jason-slab]

o wow amazing stuff,
this looks like something that disceet should buy into!

is it not possable to do with 3dsmax bones instead of char studio?
somehow? just wondering


anyhoo keep us updated, this is amazing


|jason

[Hugh]

I'm downloading it (slowly) at the moment - once it's down, I'll mirror it on my server if that's okay.... (pretty fast server - www.vfxtalk.com )

[mimo8]

can´t neither download the mov
nor go to your page

perhaps my fault
bummer

[lildragon]

Ok I'll strip away this avi till the server lets up a bit, I think we tapped your bandwith. Once it's down I'm sure we can find some mirrors for ya which will keep your site alive.

salud

[FabioMSilva]

danm cant enter the site! i really want to donwload that! it would be SO AWESOME!

[Hugh]

As a lot of people have been trouble getting to the site, I hope it's okay if I post the interesting information on here.....

(Adam: If it's not, e-mail me (hughmacdonald@brokenpipefilms.com) or a mod and they or I can delete the rest of this post)


NOTE: This is from Adam's site, which is suffering under the load - this is for people who are interested in Mayhem but can't get to the site
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is Mayhem?

It's an experimental work - a suite of maxscripts that work with Character Studio and let you generate characters with programmable AI behaviors for use in crowd scenarios.

This experiment came about initially because I got it into my head to try and recreate a bit from one of the battle scenes in the movie Braveheart. Then I got interested in the work WETA Digital was doing with Massive, and other crowd software such as Softimage|Behavior and AI.Implant... Well, I guess my experiment got a little bit out of hand :-)

Why is Mayhem Necessary? ( the *really* techie bit )

To put it in a nutshell, because crowd currently can't create type of crowd simulations that I (and I suspect other people), expect to be able to produce with it.

In the latest release of Character Studio (4), crowd stability issues got fixed but no new functionality got added. To me, this was a bit frustrating. Crowd has some great tools such as cognitive controllers, per frame functions, and motion flow graphs. These are all things that should make generating your own "battle-bipeds" pretty easy. So why is it so difficult to make crowds do anything other than vague “wander about and don't bump into things” type of activities?

There are a couple of reasons that I can see. One issue is in how crowd solves bipeds. Bipeds work best with the “back tracking” and “use priorities” features turned on. However for simulations that are dynamic (biped interactions are necessary), any biped can affect or be affected by any other biped over time. Each biped must get solved simultaneously frame-by-frame for the simulation to work.

Unfortunately motion flow graphs are optimized to use back tracking and use priorities. If you turn those features off and try to solve all your bipeds simultaneously, your pretty motion flow graph becomes pretty useless. Not a good situation.

Another issue is in how motion clips are assigned to bipeds during a solve. Under the ‘back tracking’ and maxscript ‘biped.addPrefClip’ methods of motion clip assignment it’s impossible to make bipeds perform actions of a “stop-on-a-dime” variety (hit someone, react to explosion, etc). Unfortunately these stop-on-a-dime actions are *exactly* what you’re after. Hmm … not a good situation at all.

After hitting brick walls with these and a couple of other things, I had to drop the whole notion of using the biped and motion flow components of Crowd, and just built my own tools and geometry / bone bipeds instead. And thus Mayhem was born.

How Does Mayhem Work?

It works inside 3ds Max and alongside Character Studio. There are three stages to the crowd generation process:

Crowd Setup and Configuration - "Crowd Builder"
This script initializes / assigns all the crowd delegate behaviors and their behavior targets. Delegate data variables for the characters are assigned or reset too. It's basically doing stuff that could be done by hand, but when you've got a couple of thousand orcs to setup, this script is really, really necessary.

Solve The Crowd - "Master Control Program"
This is the character behavior engine bit (and yes, it is named after you know what). Run as a "per frame fn," this script manages what the delegates do and associated character actions. Behavior rules can be dropped into this script (range of vision, mugging on/off), as well as values like hit-points, weapon damage, etc. Solve time depends on the number of characters. For this animation (1000+ chars) it took a couple of hours.

Build Character Animations – "Choreographer"
After the solve is complete, this script assigns the character animations for all activities that played out during the simulation. I originally used crowd’s motion clip synthesis but it was very slow. Eventually I realized that the characters knew what they were doing far better than the motion clip synthesizer did. So I wrote a maxscript to handle the results, and now a each characters animations get assigned in seconds instead of hours. Sweeet.


After all these maxscripts are done, you’re left with a huge bunch of animated characters, ready and raring to be rendered! Plus ...

the characters use instanced geometry which really keeps the file size down
all character key frames are editable so you can go in and tweak 'em if required
the skeletal structure used is well suited for replacement with boned / skinned characters

What Are These "A.I. Behaviors" All About?

Sounds super techie, but essentially it's just video-game logic to determine how the characters behave, wrapped up as buckets of code. The type of behaviors include generic character functions (e.g. mobility), character specific functions (e.g. class), and task specific functions (march, fight). Here's some examples of the ones I've been using so far, together with pics so you can spot where they're used in my little demo movie.

Fighting Behavior
This works broadly along the lines of an AD&D-style fight:

Find an opponent
Decide who attacks first
Decide whether attack is successful
Yes - Roll Dice for moves and hit points damage
No - Roll Dice for bad attack or blocking moves
When an opponent is killed / dies from mugging
Search for a new opponent (using “threat asses”)
If no opponent then help allies (“mugging” behavior)
If no enemy within range of sight, then proceed to assigned
“goal” (e.g. enemy line of defense)

Mugging Behavior
If another enemy opponent isn’t available, then the guy can assist his nearest ally by mugging that guys’ opponent. Mugging attacks do a huge amount of hit-point damage since they’re usually not defended against. Also I generally stipulate that an enemy can only have one mugger a time. Otherwise characters start running around in groups, mobbing a single guy at a time. (looks damned funny though :-)


Mobility Behavior
Various behaviors used for assigning movement animations to characters (walking, running, stopping, etc.), together with a adjustments for random gait.


March Behavior
Uses a "follow-the-delegate-in-front" rule to get people to walk in nice loooong lines.


Charge Behavior
Uses the same follow-the-delegate approach as "March" but allows for a speed variation


Class Behaviors Behavior
Yeah, I know it’s a rip-off of the LOTR shot. But it’s also what happens when a "Defender" class character meets a "Kamikaze" class character. Defenders will hold their line no matter what, and Kamikazes try to break through no matter what. Result = Carnage!

Mayhem - The Next Stage?

So what’s up next for this project? Well, there’s a many improvements, additions and half-baked ideas I've got in mind (time allowing!). Some of these are:

Wardrobe – a script to add randomization to character appearance and materials.

Animations v2 – currently the character animations I'm using are pretty basic - they weren’t really intended for anything else but testing the code. Plus what I know about sword fighting has been learnt either from movies, or fave games of mine like Blade of Darkness and Neverwinter Nights. Ideally I’d like to chuck mocap anims in there, and increase the number and complexity of moves.

Master Control Program fixes – I’m sure my maxscript could be so much more efficient! I think it spends cycles worrying about character actions when they’ve already been assigned. Also behaviors could be more modular – I should be able to drop in behavior rules in the top of the MCP and not worry about consequences. I’ve also been pondering whether this script could actually run as a bunch of cognitive controllers. Haven’t had time to test this yet, though.

Plugin for Character Studio? – It might be possible to embed some of my maxscript stuff as a new behavior under crowd. Under investigation!

New Characters – Ooopsie, I’ve just been watching Gladiator again. It’d be awesome to recreate the Felix Legions vs. the Goths, especially some of those marching formations that the Romans use. It’d be incredibly cool to have catapults flinging Afterburn fireballs and wreaking havoc on the barbarian horde… muwahahaha

Character Classes – I realized this the other day while playing WarCraft - characters with distinct classes (archers, pike men, sappers) should also have distinct associated behaviors, fighting animations, and different interactions with other classes (e.g. archers attack swordsmen, but panic and break ranks when the swordsmen get too close). Doh! Why didn't I think of that before?!? (note: I ended up experimenting with this a bit with the "Defender" and "Kamikaze" classes - see above).

FX – Okay, this idea is a little bit out there even for me but I’d like to be able to change materials in response to how much damage a guy has picked up, plus be able to track points for where effects could occur in relation to a character (dust from footsteps, blood spatter from a hit on the arm, etc).

That's all off in the future still. A broader goal is to start adapting this stuff to scenarios other than the medieval hand-to-hand-combat variety (actually a lot easier than it sounds since it's not close quarter combat). I'd especially like to try doing some WW2 stuff since I'm a huge Battlefield 1942 fan (Omaha beach here I come), but hey - we'll see how it goes.

Stay tuned for developments!


Thanks and Acknowledgements

Stephen Regelous and WETA – LOTR and Massive are just awesome - they've been a huge inspiration for this project!
Unreal Pictures – Character Studio is great! But can you please, please, please upgrade crowd just a l-e-e-tle?
Frank DeLise - who gave me the initial inspiration for all this stuff at a CS3(!) demo way, way, way back
Brandon Davis - whose description of his own crowd projects made me de-mothball this one, after I'd hit one brick wall too many. I figured if someone else was doing out-there crowd stuff, then I couldn't be that crazy :-)
Glenn Cotter - who’s always patiently listened to what I’ve been up to and never, ever said, “Dude - you’re mad”
Ste – I sincerely look forward to receiving the crate of beer that you now owe me!

[lildragon]

Cool beans Hugh, the load should lighten soon everyone

salud

[Hugh]

I've got another 50 mins or so on my download of the video - as soon as I've got it, I'll uplod it to my site....

[Pharaun]

This is some really cool stuff. Waiting impatiently for the server to respawn. :D

[magicm]

WOW!. Really impressive work! I guess this took 'some' time to create..

:drool: & :applause: & :beer: etc etc

Keep up the good work!
- Martijn

[flingster]

can't we have it for cinema4d....heh heh.

looks absolutely stunning job...congrats
:beer:

[Enrique Gato]

AAAAARRRGHH!!!! I CAN'T ENTER YOUR SITE!!!! PLEASE, I WANT TO SEE THIS ANIMATION SCRIPT!!!

[Hugh]

The script itself doesn't seem to be available on the site yet - at least I can't find it....

[mattregnier]

This is absolutely amazing. At this point I know you are still in your early development, but you should definitely consider licensing this and make back a little $$ for all your time/effort. Possibly release the version you have as a beta, and then ask for response, see how people use it, pros/cons, and what they would like to see added. After the beta run, then definitely tweak some things and release it as commercial. Keep it up, every now and again there are some really awesome problem solvers out there and you are one of them. You have a very bright future, keep it up :thumbsup:

[SuperMax]

How about some screen shots for poor us 56k :(

[Dichotomy]

Can't :banghead: download :banghead: ...:banghead:
Want :banghead: to :banghead: watch :banghead:

Just thinking about it :drool:

Sound friggan awesome!!!!!!

[tyio]

will you give your script free or it's a shareware for Hollywood !

[Gamoron]

Looking forward to seeing it.

[lildragon]

Due to such overwhelming response in Project Mayhem, 3DFestival.com has offered to host Adam Watkins "Project Mayhem"information page - view it here http://www.3dfestival.com/story.php?story_id=1192

this is such a great project I had to help out :)

salud

[SuperMax]

Finally!!

Merci LilDragon

For a while there i thought i had a prob with my net connection as nothing related to Mayhem was opening up!

Now if youll exsqueeze me

im gonna see what all this fuss is about :applause:

[SuperMax]

okaaayyy Maybe not

the Avi is still unavailable for the moment. but read the article and sound Like AWESOME stuff happening there!

[Hugh]

I would have got the avi up on my site sooner, but I had to go out 5 mins before it finished downloading....

Uploading it now - will be up in about 10 mins...

[Hugh]

Okay - you can now grab the video from either of the following:

http://www.brokenpipefilms.com/mayhem/mayhem.avi (US Server)
http://www.bits.bris.ac.uk/hugh/mayhem/mayhem.avi (UK Server)

I don't know how long the UK one is liable to stay up - the file is sitting in /tmp which may be cleared out at any time.... What comes from overfilling my quota, I suppose!

I will be keeping an eye on bandwidth usage - I can't see it being a problem, though.

lildragon: If you want to link to this up top, do feel free to...

The US one is running on a server that is mainly dedicated to vfxtalk.com - there are a couple of smaller sites also on the server - brokenpipefilms.com being one of those... So the server should be pretty fast...

[mattregnier]

hugh-
rock on man, screaming downloads :D

[AndreKling]

Hey i donno if this is the right place for this, but here are some ideas for your's next generation. Status, kinda general and soldier kinda stuff, for exemple one of the bipeds could define ( a bit ) of the constraints of the next character. Another cool stuff would be a experience level, and the quantity of motion liberty of the character would be related to his or her experience level, so a general would fight better than a simple soldier.
Just some thoughts.
Andre

[mattregnier]

Another mirror up

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mdregnie/mayhem.avi

enjoy-

[r2d3]

fantastic script you developped their . loved the trailer
:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Stupeyfied]

Absolutely stunning work...that is amazing...I got goose bumps just watching that avi... /me gurgles in his own drool...great job man...and thats an understatement...

[Steve Green]

Very cool - I'm just thinking of the possibilities if you used normal maps derived from high-res models.

- Steve

[Hugh]

Just added another server - linked in this post (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=603574#post603574) - a bit up the thread...

[lildragon]

Awesome thx for the mirrors guys, most appreciated. http://www.3dfestival.com/story.php?story_id=1192 I'm sure Adam would agree ;)

salud

[DFGFX]

Just saw the video again.. Very nice. If you need aaany help, ask me. i can help a lot...

I have many ideas, eg, different terrains have different speed factors and actions... eg. swamp speed =0.4
ground speed =3


and maybe a different action for different terrains

example a mountain. Like climbing it, or a ladder which some characters can pick up.

[ndog]

Fantastic work!

Does anyone know the name of the soundtrack?

[iBlue]

dude! SICK! :eek:

[percydaman]

SUPER SICK!:drool:

[mattregnier]

lild- no prob for the mirror man. We need to spread this around and get this guy some publicity. This project has soooo much potential and is absolutely amazing :D

[Hexodam]

WOW!!!:eek:


ok, now there are two, no three options.
1. Make this a comercial product
2. Make this an open source project with lots lots of people on sourceforge.net
3. Continue the awsome job you are doing right now :applause:

[katon]

that is very cool man and amazing you made it your self. way to go.:applause:

[MayaV]

hi adam

need to congrachulate u dude first.....:thumbsup:

you have finally done it, given answers to massive and grunt.

i think it will be not be news if i heard that u have been invited to join the core character studio development team.

cheers man

this is amazing

one thing i want to ask you that r this maxscripts available publically????

regards

Vivek

[cgwolf]

Hey nice job

[swampthing]

Originally posted by ndog
Fantastic work!

Does anyone know the name of the soundtrack?


Carmina burana by orff i think

Ozzy Osbourne used to use it to open his shows

[Raideen]

:applause: :applause: :applause:

My CONGRATS!!!!! This is sweet

[ndog]

swampthing, thanks
:thumbsup:

[Adso]

Holy Cow - I think my website has melted!

Sincere thanks to lildragon, Hugh, and mattregnier (and anyone else) for their mirroring efforts. I really do appreciate it!

Ok, gotta catch up with all these posts. Then I'll try post some responses...

[pencil-head]

YOU ARE A GOD!
very impressive. keep up the good work:thumbsup:

[aenema]

awesome script! I hope all your hard work pays off on this project and you get something really good out of it :) :thumbsup:

[RockinAkin]

Great work!

I predict this will be the biggest plugin to hit Max since Brazil.
You're sitting on a diamond here... so be careful and market yourself well.

And be sure to email me if you need any extensive Beta testing... :D

-DivideByZero-

[RockinAkin]

Oh... i just realized.

I love the name "Project Mayhem", but if you're planning on marketing your project in the future, you may run into some legal troubles from the creators of the film "Fight Club" because the Project Mayhem was the name of a group the film was based around.

Just a heads up.

Keep up the good work.
-DivideByZero-

[chot]

WOW! realy great work! didn't know maxscript was that powerfull :P :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Adso]

I love the name "Project Mayhem"

No way! I've never actually seen Fight Club so I didn't know. (Always meant to rent it tho - appearently there's a CG penguin in it that I've always wanted to study)

Not to worry - the name is just "Mayhem"

[Hugh]

Hehe - I had assumed that it was a specific tribute to Fight Club.....

Having that file on my website seems to have completely filled my bandwidth limit (well, I was over half a gig OVER my bandwidth limit before it shut the account down...)

I've tried opening it up again, but am not completely on top of this server admin system, so instead moved it to:

http://www.vfxtalk.com/mayhem/mayhem.avi - this is a replacement for the BrokenPipeFilms.com one.....

As it's not at the top of CGTalk any more, I suspect it won't be getting quite as many downloads, but next time remind me quite how many people will be grabbing it, and I'll put it under an account without such a small bandwidth cap....

[lildragon]

This is the first time I'm awarded technical innovations, and I'm very pleased to do so. Like I said you've got some potentially huge in your mitts, market yourself well and above all else, DON'T SELL OUT.

You have received the CGtalk choice award .Please feel free to display this image anywhere you like! Stunning work.

upon receiving this award, it guarantees you a spot in the cgtalk gallery hall of fame (http://gallery.cgtalk.com) - which you are now placed

http://www.cgtalk.com/plug_award/cgtalk_award_may03.jpg

P.S. Please email me @ tito@cgnetworks.com so I can send you the award .psd file

salud

[Viper]

Holy crap!! This is something! If you ever sell that, I'll look into buying it for sure! amazing stuff :)

[Viper]

Just saw the anim, have a couple of questions :D

1-The animations is entirely based on a single plane. Does your script consider elevation, cliffs, gravity and stuff like that? Or is it something for the future? Either way, just curious :D

2-Is it possible to add a third group? Say, it could be just a diferent race with it's own attributes, but being on the same side of one of the other two?

I'm just curious really :D

[Adso]

Thank you lildragon for the award - that really has made my day!

I had no idea that posting this work would generate so much interest so darn fast. Deepest apologies to everyone who's been having download problems - my own website has just been upgraded this afternoon so that should help alleviate matters somewhat (the DNS changes are taking effect slowly right now). I'll also try encoding the vid in other formats for the non-DivX users out there.

To answer a couple of questions/comments.

Q. Will it be released to the public domain?
Hehe, I wondered how long it would take for someone to ask that! :) Sorry, but no. It'd be great to give it back to the Max / CGers community but I've got too much time invested in it. Would I like to release it to the public as a Max plugin or integrated with CS 4.5 crowd? You betcha! Who knows what the future will bring ... I'll keep y'all posted.

Q. Are you looking for assistance?
Not really at this time, but thank you very much indeed for offering! If I get stuck or overloaded I'll be sure to ask! Jones_Stork: Thanks for the recommendation for the medieval fighting site, I'll definitely check it out. I'm quite lucky in that a relative of mine teaches fighting for theatre and film. I'm going to pick his brains as I think he's got mocap experience/contacts too.

> Didn't know maxscript was that powerful
Maxscript is pretty damn amazing stuff at the end of the day. Bless Discreet for coming up with it. But I'd also have to pass much credit to Unreal Pictures for Character Studio crowd, which is what my maxscript stuff sits on and works with at the end of the day. If I had to code a lot of what crowd does then this script would've been completed in time for the release of "The Hobbit" :)

Q. Does your script deal with elevation, cliffs, gravity?
Something for the future, so no pole vaulting uruk-hai for the time being :)

Q. Could you add a third group?
Oh, that's a fun idea! Humans, Orcs and the Scourge all meeting in the middle in one big huge punch up. And then a battalion of space marines land in the middle and really spoil everyone's day ... Not a problem. Guys don't care who they go after or how they whack each other.

Thank you for all the kind comments, everyone! I'm off to go get myself a much-needed beer! :beer:

Cheers,
Adam

[sin]

This is realy awesome stuff ..this is it !!! this is IT !!! All my 3d life i wait for plugin like :bowdown: MAYHEM :bowdown: . Good luck !

[c81]

I could see this being used in the next Age of Empires game where theres a Huge battle about to happen.

great stuff

[Adso]

A Quicktime 6 version is now posted and a small size version will be up shortly too (also QT6). The upgraded server my site is now hosted on seems to be holding up well :applause: (DNS changes gradually kicking in!).

So at the risk of scaring my web hosters again ... check out www.adamwatkins.com (http://www.adamwatkins.com). If it all goes screwy again then please try accessing it again later - or check out the hosted info from this thread.

Cheers!

[Hugh]

hehe - I managed to scare the company we've got our server with....

They e-mailed us saying that it was going to get very expensive if that level of bandwidth kept up - data was leaving the server at 4Mb/sec at the peak.....

Managed to transfer almost 5Gb in the few hours that traffic was at a peak....

[Popsicle_g]

:applause: :eek: :thumbsup: :airguitar :drool:

OtotheMG

Great work.. if you continue developement, this will take you places.

[brittnell]

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.... (picture clapping of hands and jumping up and down like a little girl here)

:bounce:

This is SUPER cool.

You sell it, and we will buy it.

Fo' Sho' Tho'!

[/b]

[jaguarlover7201]

holllllllllllyyyyyyy shit man no words to explain how good this is seriously:bounce: :applause: :love: :wip: :beer:

[boxcrash]

Very cool, wow. great work.:) :buttrock: :bounce:

[Baal]

Anyone mentionned you were insane to do this alone ? ;)

This is completely extraordinaire, I am stunned by what you have accomplished !

You sure have built something everyone will need to have ! :thumbsup:

Congratulations ! Now, get a :beer: and relax a bit !

[erilaz]

Wow... I KNEW I should have started on that maxscript project sooner! :p

Well done. Very well done indeed!:D

[Smoke_DT]

Wow! This is amazing, more than 1000 fighters.. a real battle.?:thumbsup: :beer:
Is there an end of the battle? Who won? Who long is the battle takes?

[Teyon]

Wow. That was cool!:thumbsup:

[Onno]

:surprised

That's just plain awesome: the trailer is utterly breathtaking.
Even though I am a complete non-character animator guy, I can understand how great this is.

Keep up the fantastic work!

[RedFish]

Well I think that the scope alone is impressive to say the least.
But if you have time I would really like to know what kind of system it took to calculate all this, and what the poly count of the models you used was.

But absolutely fantastic.

Props go out indeed

[CaptCunning]

Wow! Nuf said. Can't really come up with a compliment that hasn't already been uttered!

[Adso]

The poly count for these guys was around 1200 each, so that's about 1,440,000 polys total? (Or maybe a bit higher - the uruk-hai polys are slightly higher I remember)

Most of the development was done on an old Dual 1Ghz, 1GB Machine which was slooow. I recently upgraded to a dual 2.8GHz Xeon, 2GB machine which has just been awesome to work on. Using that I managed to render all the Mayhem shots in just a couple of days! (times ranging from 8 secs per frame to about 1m30s for some shots - with scanline)

Now that I'm getting all the time savings from the new machine I've been able to go back and freely experiment with things I didn't have time to before, including a test using the 'ole CStudio bipeds again (y'know maybe I was just too mean about them pesky bipeds! :) )

I've been evaluating HumanIK as a means to copying motion captured animations onto the characters (The jury is still out on that one :hmm: ) Experimenting with boned, hi-res skins currently, and thinking about ways of getting randomization of appearance between characters (as memory efficiently as possible).

Mayhem :: the insanity continues ... :insane::argh::surprised:p

[Nath]

Good grief...

[Teyon]

It scares me that folks can feel comfortable reffering to a 1GHZ machine as old when I'm sitting in front of a 450Mhz machine. Mine must be nearly prehistoric. LOL. Keep us posted should you make any updates, Adso.:thumbsup:

[Noldor3D]

Nice job man! :buttrock:

[xeno]

i just have to reply becoz i have only just seen the trailer.. I am stunned, this has got to be the coolest thing ive ever seen! How on earth can ONE person do this? Congratulations d00d, this is awesome work. I cant even begin to imagine how much time and effort u must have put in here, but it has been worth it!

Like they said, u have definitely found something very very important and potentially revolutionary!

[xeno]

sorry for the dubbelpost!

[MConte05]

Sorry to bring back such an old topic. But I was wondering if this guy had anything to do with the new Rome: Total War engine, since it seems to follow the same principles of what he created, as far as A.I. and frickin' huge battles.

[huijiao2001]

how is mayhem going ?

[Adso]

Oooo ... errr ... um ... yeah I guess I should do an update, huh? The ole website's VERY out of date since I've been so damn busy in the last year.

The latest "Mayhem"-style stuff can be seen in the upcoming movie "The Day After Tomorrow" - in the shot where the crowd of refugees are crossing over the Rio Grande river into Mexico. Discreet is demoing this shot at their roadshow currently, so check it out if you get the chance. Or you can see it, plus some other stuff we've done at Uncharted Territory here (http://www.discreet.com/events/nab2004/showcase.html).

The current movie project is called "Kingdom in Twilight" of which there's some info at this fan site (http://www.kristanna.com/new_section). I'm doing all the army stuff for this ... think vikings. Lots an' lots an' lots an' lots of frickin' vikings, plus a bunch of other races, some cavalry stuff, generic crowds, weapons galore - sheesh you name it. Keeping me real busy I can tell you!

Some of the cooler developments from this include:-

- A tool rather unimaginatively called "People Builder." This lets you pick accessories from a large pool of items (helmets, shields, weapons, belts, bits of clothing, etc) and dress them onto your characters. It lets you manually or randomly en mass adjust materials for items so that you can get a *lot* of randomization out of your assets.

- Placement and some control over crowds with Particle Flow instead of Character Studio (thereby avoiding the requirement for CStudio entirely). This is still a work in progress but is proving pretty damn useful so far.

- Some neat tricks for crowd character animation using cached streaming animation data. Keeps the filesize way down, the render times down, and you maintain your mocap quality down to the cloth-sim level :D

- FX controls, for changing materials in response to damage received where it's received plus environmental effects (aka dust from footsteps)

I've also gotten to play with some awesome tools (CAT and Endorphin) that have really opened up what we can do animation wise (quadrapeds and virtual stunt guys!) Very cool stuff.

Regarding doing a plugin for Character Studio / 3ds Max - well, that's kind of up in the air now since Discreet went and purchased Unreal Pictures (http://www4.discreet.com/company/press.php?id=673). We'll have to see if this results in CStudio Crowd getting a much needed facelift (therefore making Mayhem redundant), or whether CStudio crowd survives at all.

In any event, my work at Uncharted Territory should be finished by July so keep an eye out for a website update, some new piccies/movies (work restrictions allowing), and possibly some technique tutorials...

[Steve Green]

Sounds great Adam,

were you using normal maps on the crowd characters in the end? I thought you could paint or simulate cloth creases on a high-res mesh at key poses, bake out the normal map then morph the material based on what the animation of the lower poly character is doing.

Cheers

Steve

[Adso]

Hey Steve,

We investigated Kaldera for this very purpose. Unfortunately Kaldera doesn't support network rendering yet so we had to skip it. For future versions I guess...

[Q_B]

Ok, all there was to say was said and all the praise to this work are not enough.

Congrats on your achievements.

A question: wheteher its CS, just a plugin, whatever u want it to be... when will you be putting it up for sale????? you will, won't you :hmm:

[Adso]

Heh, who said anything about selling it? ;)

[Steve Green]

Hi Adam,

the normal map plugin itself works OK over the network, or are you talking about the generation of the maps themselves?

I wouldn't have thought network rendering for the generation of the normal maps would speed things up that much although I can see how it's a bottleneck if you can't stack them up and you've got loads to do for crowds with lots of variety.

I did read a post on the DCP forum that it's problematic doing that over backburner. I don't know what Maxscript access it has if you wanted it to at least batch on a single machine.

Cheers

Steve

[Adso]

Hey Steve,

The problem we had was in submitting a job (which used normal maps for bumpmaps) to network render - the Kaldera plugin didn't work on the render farm machines. I emailed Mankua about it and they said network rendering was scheduled for later versions. Didn't look into it any further.

If you've experienced different there, then let me know how you did it!

An additional problem was that the normal maps didn't work with Brazil skylight. Again, I guess that's for future versions.

Cheers,
Ads

[Steve Green]

Hi,

Maybe they misunderstood you - I only tried it on a second machine (more of a render window box), but I installed Kaldera on that machine and then copied an updated normalmap.dlt file (1.02 which fixed a couple of bugs, but not to do with network rendering)

I'll ask Diego about skylight, it's the same with Lightracer and Vray's skylight, just comes out flat.

Cheers,

Steve

[Steve Green]

Actually it's not quite flat, but not as detailed as the geometry version, maybe normal maps just don't have all the info necessary to create the real darkened nooks and crannies...


- Steve

[teruchan]

The trailer needs the "Wilhelm"...

T

[mmoses00]

"cached streaming animation data"

Any explanation on this?

I have experience using mocap data in Motionbuilder and running character rigs from Max to Maya to Motionbuilder to C4D. (Don't ask why!)

I am very interested in what you are doing with Particle Flow and crowds. Especially how you are getting mocap data onto the crowds with variation.

I am currently investigating the Endorphin, Motionbuilder/HumanIK and/or CAT, particle flow crowds, + Brazil pipeline. Endorphin to Motionbuilder is a snap, but I wish CAT/CS would take .FBX as an import. I guess you could take HumanIK rig into Motionbuilder, have the endorphin .FBX stuntguy meet it in Motionbuilder, map the Endorphin rig to a Motionbuilder ACtor, and have that actor drive the animation for the HumanIK rig.

In fact, that's what one could do. Map all your Endorphin-baked stuntguys to Motionbuilder Actors and save them as presets. Then they can drive any character brought into Motionbuilder.
** MotionBuilder is WAY BETTER tool to test/blend motions/mocap than Max mixer tool. Unless you are using mixer tool with a Maxscript to automate variation... Realtime is the way.... I was able to render out tests at 720x480 - 30,000+ frames in 5 hours!

Also... would be cool to have the CAT Quadruped go through MotionBuilder (to get .fbx) and run it through Endorphin for that awesome fall!

Just some ideas....
:)

mm@fxtutorials.com

[TIMTHESORCERER]

another idea for u, make units have "courage" like in the lotor battles where there is fleeing. also have speed by damage (hurt charecter slower). and make "seige units" in adition to current chars. make a "wizard" option (raises hands above head and kills someone). give units morale which can be boosted or lowered. give units "inteligenge" and make that affect target choice, like conservative and trigger-happy units. give units 2 or more weopons, eg daggers and swords. give archers a limited number of shots, then they use an alternative weapon. sheilds. PLEASE make this freeware!!!!!!

[TIMTHESORCERER]

ideas for morale variables:
-outnumber 2-1 +1
-outnumber 3-1 +2
-outnumbered 1-2 -1
-outnumbered 1-3 -3
-see a wizard or comander +2
etc.

[ravivjkumar]

hi,

amazing work , like to congratulate for your great effort in getting crowd to life, waiting for the release of the same ,


ravi

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