Softimage 2013 - CrowdFX

[Adrian Lopez]

Am I crazy or is CrowdFX already showing more flexibility than Massive.  Its only the first release, and we've never worked with Massive, but we have worked with Massive artists before - and it seemed as though as powerful as Massive was, there were some basic things that were (apparently) quite difficult to do - like getting crowds to form specific shapes and skeletal control of crowd members..

Chinny just seems to blowing through it all....

Am I just suffering from new release intoxication?

--
Adrian Lopez

CEO.Producer.Director

Liquid Light Digital

www.liquidlightdigital.com

[Raffaele Fragapane]

Massive is rather narrow scoped, so in terms of sheer flexibility, yes, crowdFX might very well be given that you have an open scene approach, all of ICE around it and so on.

Massive remains better at some of the things a very specialised system does better, and the fact it's an isolated software is as much of a benefit at times as it's a hinderance at other times.

Massive is also, in many regards, not what people blinded by the hype and the big shop usage might think it is.
For being a narrow scoped ex propietary software it's actually quite a pain in the arse to pipeline and isn't exactly bombproof. And true to its propietary software origins it's clunky, unfinished, undocumented, and rams down the user's throat a strict set of rules that might make perfect sense in weta but don't necessarily quite fit everywhere else.

Sure is that SOME crowds will definitely be better in crowdFX, and it's yet another brink in the ICE house that encourage backward feedback into various parts of ICE that without this set of tools would probably not have been polished or touched for a while. House's getting pretty solid now :)

--
Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!

[Guillaume Laforge]

I agree with Raff, please don't compare it to Massive, that is an application 100% dedicated to crowd simulation since lot of years!

But for lot of scenarios, CrowdFX should be nice ;). The system is (almost) entirely done using the SDK or standard ICE nodes. Getting characters in the Crowd is done using a simple python API, driving the skeletons on each agents is done using public ICE compounds. So any studios can add its own feature (ragdoll dynamics come to my mind, or advanced blending between transition animations or custom constraints, etc...). Only the collision solver is a built in node (but you can access various data computed by this node like the resolved speed, the risk of collision, the rotation angle, etc..). 

I put a couple of videos on my vimeo page : http://vimeo.com/user2168309/videos

They were not done for demo purpose (except for the logo one), they are just tests to validate things while I was working on the little beast.

So it doesn't show every aspects (like the ability to control feet deformers to lock then in turns, or to recompute the IK on legs when the ground is bumpy etc...).

Finally, a nice "free thing" with CrowdFX is that you can generate the crowd as a polygon mesh and so you can use any standard tool on it (like hairs, cloth etc...) and it can interact easily with other effects. No need to learn a new way, a crowd mesh is just like an other mesh after all (just a little bit bigger :).

Cheers,

Guillaume

[J. Jones]

Is CrowdFX adaptable to "characters" with wheels? Or mechanical critters (as opposed to enveloped meshes)?

Thanks,

Jim

[Sandy Sutherland]

I should imagine so - it looks like it is quite versatile!

S.

_____________________________
Sandy Sutherland
Technical Supervisor
sandy.su...@triggerfish.co.za
_____________________________

---

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of J. Jones [jgjon...@gmail.com]
Sent: 29 March 2012 06:30
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Softimage 2013 - CrowdFX

[Guillaume Laforge]

Every particles in the simulation bring its own deformers (basically an array of transforms). CrowdFX is using this big "skeleton" to deform every source meshes. So for rigid objects, you can just envelope your source vehicles using "hard envelope weights" (each points weighted at 100% with a specific deformer). This way the workflow is the same. Or you could try to instantiate and constrain every rigid parts to its specific animated transform. I never try the last solution but sounds possible too. Finally for wheel rotations and dynamics you can drive specific transforms using your own ICE compound to do this job. 

G.

[Paul Griswold]

Actually the first thing that came to my mind was using CrowdFX for motion graphics.  Why does it need to be a character walking at all?

It looks like it's opening up some really cool possibilities.

-Paul

P.S. Autodesk's marketing for Softimage still pisses me off.  See the page you get when clicking on "See the 2013 product releases":  http://usa.autodesk.com/products/   I also got an email about the new 2013 product line that took me to this page:  http://usa.autodesk.com/autodesk-entertainment-creation-suite/  - other than the Soft logo, please find Softimage stand-alone easily there.

[Olivier Jeannel]

I had the same discussion with Ahmidou the other day. Seems the limitation we previously had with time Instance Animation is solved.

[Chris Marshall]

Indeed, particles moving around trying to avoid one another could potentially give some nice fluid type movement for motion graphics effects.

[Juan Brockhaus]

emflock anyone?
;)

On 29/03/12 15:15, Chris Marshall wrote:
> Indeed, particles moving around trying to avoid one another could
> potentially give some nice fluid type movement for motion graphics effects.
>
>
>
> On 29 March 2012 12:02, Paul Griswold
> <pgri...@fusiondigitalproductions.com

[Guillaume Laforge]

Eric's emFlock would be much more suited for such task ;).

My collision avoidance solver is really designed for pedestrian like motion.

But who knows, maybe it could give nice pattern for motion graphic too like in this very early test (I think it was CrowdFX beta1) : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5533643/Crowd/15000Actors.mov

G.

[Thomas Helzle]

Other than basic avoidance, is there any kind of AI available in Crowd FX? Or is this for the artist to develop in ICE himself?

Cheers,

Tom

[Chris Marshall]

Yes I'm sure emFlock would be better (if you happen to have a copy installed) but particles moving around trying to avoid each other, accelerating and decelerating, avoiding obstructions and moving towards goals, should give some very interesting possibilities indeed.

[Guillaume Laforge]

Other than basic avoidance, is there any kind of AI available in Crowd FX? 

"basic avoidance" as you said is not really AI, and Collision Avoidance is really not a basic thing (at least from my point of view). 

For the logics in the crowd, you use ICE. There is a preset for locomotion scenario and sample scenes for other logic.

[Francois Lord]

Ha! this reminds me of a test I did with the opposite: I used emFlock to do a crowd.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/399522/OT_FLORD_Crowd_01c__Beauty.mp4
Yeah, they look pretty dumb behaving like a fish school. :)

[Adrian Lopez]

Exactly, EmFlock already does avoidance...if you need that for motion graphics - Eric gave us that almost 2 years ago.

For me, the strength of CrowdFX is being able to control instance animation.  Guillame has intimated that control of animation is built-in, but I'm curious how smoothly we can blend different animation cycles.  All the examples I've seen so far show switching happening - say from walking to standing idle.. but its literally like flipping a switch..

Adrian

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 9:32 AM, Juan Brockhaus <ju...@the-mill.com> wrote:

emflock anyone?
;)

On 29/03/12 15:15, Chris Marshall wrote:

Indeed, particles moving around trying to avoid one another could
potentially give some nice fluid type movement for motion graphics effects.



On 29 March 2012 12:02, Paul Griswold

<pgriswold@fusiondigitalproductions.com

<mailto:pgriswold@fusiondigitalproductions.com>> wrote:

   Actually the first thing that came to my mind was using CrowdFX for
   motion graphics.  Why does it need to be a character walking at all?

   It looks like it's opening up some really cool possibilities.

   -Paul

[Olivier Jeannel]

Hello guys,
I might buy a new computer.
I think I'd go for another HP Z600. But I found
http://www.boxxtech.com/index.asp

I was wondering if someone here worked on those ? They seem to offer
more power (8core procs) than the HPs.
Any input ? are they noisy ? nicely built ?

Thanks,

Olivier

[Fabricio Chamon]

I think this is pretty much like massive, there's no magic behind it, you have to rely on good transitions to have a fluid animation. 

You have to plan it beforehand, have good matching start/end blend poses, only then you can think about the ice logic.

now what I can see as a bright future for crowd systems is mocap/keyframe animations integrated to a procedural behavior solver (endorphin) that would let transition animations to be calculated solely by the machine. This would make things easier and animations pop-free.

for now I'm very excited about CrowdFX, hoping to see more videos in the next days.

[way...@waylonwinn.com]

I normally build my own systems but I purchased a Boxx about four years
ago and it is probably the best computer I have ever used. It was
expensive, but I am still using it to this day as my main computer.

Mine is not noisy at all and the construction is very nice and it is easy
to keep clean. I really don't have anything bad to say about the computer
I got from them.

Waylon

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Generally speaking, they are way more expensive compared to anyone else for the power.  But at the top end, they tend to edge out everyone else. 

The fit and finish I feel are pretty damn nice if you open the machine.  Everything from the HD mounts to zip tying cables to allow for maximum airflow has been thought of.  Any time I had a problem with mine, I would call them and the parts would be in my mailbox the next day for free most of the time. 

I bought one after working on them at one place and worked on them here at the Mill.  They are usually the more stable machines.  Owning one is rather worry free but that comes at a cost.  I've built my own, bought from Apple, and also from Boxx.  Gotta say I really enjoyed owning my Boxx.  Still runs as a solid media server after 7 years. 

-Lu

[Guillaume Laforge]

Here are some info related to character animation and CrowdFX :

Storing animations :

The first thing to do is to import some Softimage action sources into the crowd.

But an action source doesn't store enough information to get the original motion of the character, as most of the time the values describe local transformations only. So the import process will bake all those transformation in global space into some ICE attributes. The import also store the parent child relations (that you can edit) as it is needed for any local change in the "crowd rig". As CrowdFX got only deformers data (and not controllers) you can build your character rig as you want. The default sample character is using a motion builder rig, but there is really no limitations. I imported characters animated using Gear without problems.

For info, the baking process is done via a python plugin calling a new SDK method that let you create an ICEAttribute and set its values.

There is also a new node called "Get Action Source At Frame", to access a value(s) at any time(s) from an action source. 

Using this node, you don't need to bake the original action source into ICEAttributes. But this node is more used to get a specific parameter value at a specific time. For a whole character, you would need to create a very big graph to get all the sources parameters (and compute the hierarchy at each frame...), so the baking way is much more efficient.

Reading  Animations :

So once those animations are stored in CrowdFX, we can read any animations from any deformers at any time :).

The blending between animations is very easy to do (and some default compounds provide various option on the control of this blending).

Editing Animations :

As we are in ICE, it is also very easy to override specific part of the source animation. Or if you are interested, you can generate a completely procedural animation (ragdoll for example). There are also several constraints compounds to do things like "look at", "Feet corrections on ground collision", random scaling of specific deformers etc...

The parent child relation of the deformers for every actors can be changed (there is a proxy rig view per imported actor to edit those relations). This way, you can constrain one element and CrowdFX will compute the needed transformation for all the children.

You can also control the shape keys per agents in the crowd, adding randomization as you want using standard randomize ICE compounds (very useful for any crowd work).

Hope it helps getting a the picture !

Cheers,

Guillaume

[Stefan Kubicek]

Looking forward to that! It's also nice to see parts of the higher level functionality developed in Python these days, it's mostly been VB until now.
Thanks for the info.

> "SDK method that let you create an ICEAttribute and set its values."

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Stefan Kubicek Co-founder
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Wehrgasse 9 - Grï¿œner Hof
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Phone: +43/699/12614231
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--confidential and for the recipient only--

[Alan Fregtman]

Another nice thing is the SDK enhancements required to make that happen more easily.

For example you can now, from scripting, inject arrays of ICE attributes (with data) into objects. You couldn't before.

On 3/29/2012 12:57 PM, Adrian Lopez wrote:

Exactly, EmFlock already does avoidance...if you need that for motion graphics - Eric gave us that almost 2 years ago.

For me, the strength of CrowdFX is being able to control instance animation.  Guillame has intimated that control of animation is built-in, but I'm curious how smoothly we can blend different animation cycles.  All the examples I've seen so far show switching happening - say from walking to standing idle.. but its literally like flipping a switch..

Adrian

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 9:32 AM, Juan Brockhaus <ju...@the-mill.com> wrote:

emflock anyone?
;)

On 29/03/12 15:15, Chris Marshall wrote:

Indeed, particles moving around trying to avoid one another could
potentially give some nice fluid type movement for motion graphics effects.



On 29 March 2012 12:02, Paul Griswold

<pgri...@fusiondigitalproductions.com

<mailto:pgri...@fusiondigitalproductions.com>> wrote:

   Actually the first thing that came to my mind was using CrowdFX for
   motion graphics.  Why does it need to be a character walking at all?

   It looks like it's opening up some really cool possibilities.

   -Paul

[Steven Caron]

i haven't tested it yet but i am hoping a custom tool (paint brush or some other manipulator) could call this new method to inject the data. the only issue i see is that if you are actively using that data (GetData on Self.MyCustomData) then you can overwrite the data.

s

[Eric Thivierge]

Huge fan of Boxx myself. Bought my workstation around 3 years ago and its still running great. Had a few issue with RAM but their tech support (that is amazing and in the US) helped a ton and spent as much time on the phone with me as needed to find the bad DIMM. Once I found it with their help, They overnighted me a new one to replace it at no cost. Their machines usually come with a 2-3 year warranty with the overnight shipping for free. The same person who helped me on the phone was the same guy who boxed up the new RAM and sent it to me. The machines are more expensive but very high quality and last forever. Their support is outstanding as well. Can't recommend them enough.

--------------------------------------------
Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com

[Raffaele Fragapane]

For the record, in massive you don't get much out of blending either. All animation cycles tend to be done with 3 cycles for an in and out blend, and then all combinations of cycles tend to have an additional blend, so that anything can within the next cycle blend from one to the other.
The idea of blending animation procedurally is great, but seldom works without glitches or without an excessive CPU load, so more shops than not tend to get the procedural results once all key cycles are approved and then fix/tweak them into static entries.
Same goes for slop adaptation.

The only bit of procedural animation commonly used is ground contact/adaptation and simple IK pushes, and even then you tend to have to work on the rigs a fair bit before they comply with massive requirements.

It is possible to blend, in both ICE and Massive, but expect to have to help them along the way with a smart setup of your library.

[Sandy Sutherland]

I should imagine like Massive, you get as good as you put in.  In Massive if you spend a good amount of time working on the motion before it goes into Massive, then in Massive making sure the cycles are 100% and all releative curves are working 100% then you get good stuff - it takes a good amount of time setting up a good agent in Massive, but once you have done so - then it works awesomely! 

S.

_____________________________
Sandy Sutherland
Technical Supervisor
sandy.su...@triggerfish.co.za
_____________________________

---

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Raffaele Fragapane [raffsx...@googlemail.com]
Sent: 02 April 2012 04:33

To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Softimage 2013 - CrowdFX