Baking Plug-ins?

#61

Haha,

Like you know, I’m a multi core brain.

Ok, lets start with Baking Data to plugins:
why EIAS cant read data from the Hard Disk? Now we have G5s, Pentiums, fast HDs… and Animator will have more memory to work.
Its the same for baked Data, I guess.
If a plug-in does all math, and you dont change anymore any channel… why It dont read the data in the HD?
How Morphing targets work? How animator store each target? or it acess each target in each frame?
If Animator read always 3 frames in the current position of the time in the animation’s Data from the HD it understand always the Motion Blur and the view port preview, correct?
I agree some positions… like Rama need to make the Baked Data Distribution to us in the renderfarm.
I have 30 machines here… its impossible to make it by hand without a mistake.

Thanks
Tom (Dual Core Brain)

#62

Hi, Tomas

Eventual reading data from HD doesn’t reduce their size - Animator will have same amount of memory

We guess you talk about “common caching”. But, unlike other caching applications/usage, it’s not a rational idea to cache all generated geometry at each frame. For example, a caching of a plug-in like Ubershape. For what? Such cache of animation can occupy many gigabytes of disc space and even its reading will be slower than simply to force the plug-in to repeat its analytical model’s building.

Any non-linear transformations (deforms, morphs, plug-ins) are recalculated from scratch if any of their source data is changed (or they have time-sensitive flags). AFAIK that’s same in all apps.

Motion blur requires to know vertex’s position at previous frame, but this position is never read from HD. Each “transformer” is responsible for correct motion data creating (often it needs to repeat all calculations with “minus time delta”)

Hmmm… agree/disagree doesn’t make things faster :slight_smile:

#63

Igors,

What you have in mind to make plug-ins faster to calculate?

Tomas

#64

Hi, Tomas

What we said in #1 of this thread: link a slow (or problematic) plug-in to a “saver” that provides a file cache

#65

You think of a plugin where problematic other plugins can be linked to, to save out one model for each frame? Sounds cool. Wouldn’t this be incomplete without also a “loader” plugin that takes care of the model sequence?

This loader plugin could “check” for the geometry of the last and the next frame and so maybe provide the motion vector for the blur, if API allows for this.

This sound to me like a useful object cycling plugin. The problem is still the distribution of the model sequences. The easiest would be to just write all data to one single fact file, that would store all different “poses” of the mesh, like

sequence // parent effector
group#000 //mesh indexed with frame number
group#001
group#003
…
group#n

Edit: Another question would be, if the saver saves the sequenc with its lokal coordinate system, or in the world coordinate system…

disadvantage of this would be, that with high density meshes the resulting fact would be really large. I absolutely like the idea that the cache data would be editable, since it would simply be a fact file. Also the distribution of a single file sounds easier to me as the distribution of a folder with a fact sequence.

Next problem to solve would be texturing. As long as the models have a UV space it should be easy. The saver plugin could also write the current texture space as UV to the facts, like contortionist does.

To solve the distribution issues maybe this could be coupled with a drag and drop utility in the finder, that let you define Remote Folders and simply copys all data that you drop on it to all asigned slave folders… sounds very unfancy to code, but would solve alot of problems.

Jens

#66

What’s the plug-in? Wouldn’t the objective dictate guidelines of it’s procedure? How can you determine which process is effective without knowing it’s use? Tell me what the plugin is and I can tell what I think about baking during my art creation.

       What concerns me is intuitive use for artist. Intuitive interaction is paramount for creativity. Example, I hear the process of getting baked cloth is so conjunctive I would never consider it. I don't want to save thousand linked files or even right the script. It's a bottleneck, leading a direction away from the task at hand...creating.
       
       Functional, streamlined, workflow is the only thing that makes sense to me nowadays. Most highly-optimized workflows still require iteration upon iteration because of artistic scrutiny. 
       Artist seek to make this laborous refinement process as painless or even pleasant as possible. If you have to manually run a thousand baked files through this slugish process everytime you want to make a changes, then how creative can one be?
    
    The preview mode would have to be dead on...but what if the client wants to preview it? 
    Also, I though blur was a post process on a frame? so it can be on anything.
   
   Actually, I am evalutating Cloth as opposed to Syflex. There's a script that makes Syflex even more interactive called EZ Flex. One has properties to create blue jeans fabric with ten buttons, one has a preset with one button.  I'm picking the Mustang over a mule. I just want to get there. Whichever is fast, looks good and tamed!! (cooperates with what I want to do). Yes I want depth of control, but at my perrogative.
  
  If baking, saving and spitting out a bunch of files were controlled with something like a render wrangler, or auto queue controller like renderama then I guess that would be ok.
#67

I must have missed this too. That’s a no brainer. A solution not a question. Anything that makes it faster and smoother is good.

#68

Sorry I miss understood, “Baking” is kind of confusing to me. To me it means clearing the simulation process within the application to speed up the interface or perform other operations. It seems your talking about about something outside the application to speed up for the renderer only? Or something for interactivity for the interface? In which case it would load back in?

I didn’t edit out my previous post because that’s how I feel about CG now any.

#69

Hi, Alonzo, glad to hear you :slight_smile:

“Baking” is a wide term that, as we understand, means: “pre-calculate, save and then load instead of calculating again”. Can be used for render and preview as well depending from concrete implementation

#70

Here is a very small cloth sample with only a few vertices that I baked. Once I baked it, the vertice are stored in the animation channal and is no longer simulated but is a regular animation based on points. Thus, the animation becomes effecient in preview speed and calculation time. It also has the added benefit to be controlled by animation channels.

[img]http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f190/AVTPro/Bake_cloth17.jpg[/img]

I found it most helpful in the case of a coin dropping with th use of dynamics (Before Rodoe Dynamics stimulator by Ramjac—now coin falling on takes 2 minutes in EIAS with Rodeo). So you can tweak the channels once a suitable simulation have been achieved. 

So I can see this being very helpful with Rodeo which does dynamics. (dont remember if it "bakes" or not already). It does work with Maya dynamics baking into EI via FBX.  I would love to see something like this with FBX for Cloth or some Maya script that could export cloth files or object and  import them into EI. 

So there's my frustration, to get cloth simulation from Maya into EI, each frame must be individually saved manually. Then each object converted into a model format EI can use. 

I would love to see this automated for EI.
#71

Yeah,

its a good addition.
I have a script which export in .OBJ format a cloth animation from Maya… but you need to convert all models in OBJ2FACT or transporter.

Thanksss

Tomas

#72

Tomas,

You never cease to amaze me… Beyond your great art is your great heart.

Thanks. Where can I get the script? I would like to work on making this cloth

process smooth for EI users. With FBX import of character motions, we should have the

functionality to append dynamics simulations.

Once again Tomas, you have my utmost gratitude, thanks for leading the way and setting

the standard how to raise the bar (by helping each other).

BTW, Nice photo, iPhoto will get the red out better than Visine. Just two clicks :slight_smile:

#73

Maybe you can just send the script E-mail. athreet@adelphia.net.

Then I can find something to load the models automatically as a 'replacement" animation object. Hopefully with out a huge database or crazy project file. :}

#74

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