Crowd Simulation: bird flocks

[Dave Black]

Are you using delegates?

-3DZ

:D

[Martin Andersen]

Yes I am

[Martin Andersen]

Anyone...plz help ???

[Adso]

Do you have a test file you can post? Or perhaps give a better description of what your setup is?

I'm kinda confused why you're using bipeds for a bird setup. Are they ostriches?

Why not check out the CStudio example file cstudio/scenes/motionclips/eagles.max

It's a *big* bunch of birds :)

[Dave Black]

Birds work really well with CS. Look at blizzard's now famous "Raven" scenes. It was all CS with biped. You customize the heck out of the biped, and then use bones for the wings. If you look at the benefits of CS's IK and motion flow and .bip save features, you'l see that it's a more robust solution for creating convincing bird animations.

-3DZ

:D

[Adso]

Very, very true 3DZ - if his birds are behaving as bipedal characters on the ground it's a pretty good way to go. :cool:

By martins post I'm assuming he's trying to achieve a standard "flying flock of birds" type activity. Using biped characters for that could be overkill (though quite a fun exercise :) ). In such a case, you'd probably be better off using a motion synthesis solution with the animation states based on pitch and heading (for up, down, left, right)

Cheers,
Adso

----------------------------
the ole home page (http://www.adamwatkins.com)

[Martin Andersen]

did that, done that.

Doesn't matter if i use biped or morph targets on them... They just keep flying forward...

[Adso]

And what is their goal? Are they following a path or seeking a specific goal object?

[Martin Andersen]

Tryed both follow path and follow a object

[Martin Andersen]

As you see the "birds" cannot be done in morph, because I'll add more biped animation and I want this simple thing to work before I go any further, and set them down, landing and so on... It have to be biped !!!

[Adso]

So NOT a standard "flying flock of birds" type activity then! :)

I checked the file you sent me. The bip clips needed to start at frame 0 and not 20 (easily remedied - just slide the keys over).

Something you need to keep in mind when using bipeds + delegates - Biped motion dictates the delegate motion.

So having a flock of critters swooping gracefully around the scene (as in other crowd examples) will not be possible unless you specifically build the biped motion clips to make that happen.
And having bipeds land on a specific target will be even tougher still...

Looks great so far!

[Reality3D]

Hello Adam!. Great work mayhem is btw

I have several questions: :)

In the Build Character Animations – "Choreographer" section you say that you used crowd's motion clip synthesis. From what I know this method(global clip) is not compatible with hierarchical or biped systems(only works with things like birds,turtles etc with animated modifier parameters). The only method i know to do this is using motion flow(are you referring to this?).

Anyway, you say this is slow, and do a maxscript to handle the results. How did you handle(in general terms) the animation data(choosing manually the diferent animation(.bip clips ?), blending between them etc...) from the state of the delegates?

If you used .bip clips, how did you saved the weapons animation info?

Thanks!

[Adso]

Heya,

Ermm, I'd really like to be able to answer your questions! Unfortunately I don't think I can without giving away a trade secret or two. And I really can't do that since my Mayhem stuff is kinda paying the bills right now.

I hope you understand and I'm really sorry! :blush:

best regards,
Adam

[Reality3D]

Oki, don't worry about that

[Martin Andersen]

Thanks for the crowd help I've got a good step forward in the setup and I've done some
more transition clips and the bats are also using different clips, but 3 strange thing:

- They never fly up/downward !!
- They always fly to the right side... (even when they play a left animation)
- They turn waaayy to sharp...

I really hope some of u can help me, else they will fly very strange in the end :o)


Greetings from
Martin Andersen

[Adso]

I helped Martin with this offline, but here's an update on the issues he posted about.

The "always flying to the right," and "sharp turns" were due to the motion clips just being a wee bit too short. The transitions were occuring in the middle of a clip rather than at either end.

Now issue 1 is a tad more difficult.

I've got a sneaking feeling that in a crowd sim, bipeds are always considered to be interacting with the ground *regardless* of what is being animated in their bip clips. The effect will appear something like the biped birdies keep trying to take off but snap straight back down to the groundplane (z=0) when the next clip is reached.

I didn't have time to explore this further right now, so maybe someone else has experienced this? (doh, I'm sooo sure I've dealt with this before :annoyed: harummph.. )

Cheers,
Ads

[Martin Andersen]

Wiiee... now I got a clue :-)
but no soloution :-/

When you load in a single biped animation through
(Animation panel > Biped panel > Load file..)

You can uncheck the "Set lowest starting foot heigth to Z = 0"

then the biped starts exactly the same place where you animated it last.
AND also it can start other places then on the ground!!!!!

If you do not check this, then the biped "snap/align" down to the ground.

So the problem is that we use the Motion Flow to load in our clips, but here is the "Set lowest starting foot heigth to Z = 0" field grayd and you cannot touch it. This mean that whatever clip you put in they will all snap to the ground when they are finished. :surprised

So how can we uncheck this bastard ??????


- - - - - -
Two files:
www.3d-designer.dk/temp/test_anim_ma.max
www.3d-designer.dk/temp/test_anim_ma.bip

EX 1. )
Load** the "test_anim_ma.bip" with "Set lowest starting fo..." set to OFF

See how it correct plants hands and feets, but also let the body start somewhere else then the ground.


EX 2. )
Load** the "test_anim_ma.bip" with "Set lowest starting fo..." set to ON

Here the Planted keys is in the same place (world space) AND the body starts at Z=0 on the ground which is the problem. Because in Motion Flow mode you cannot turn "Set lowest starting fo..." OFF (as far as I know.... hope I'm wrong :-)


hope u understand else just ask :-)

-----
** Animation panel > Biped panel > Load file..
with "Set lowest starting foot heigth to Z = 0"

[Martin Andersen]

anyone ??? Plz help :thumbsup:

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