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General => Terragen Animation => Topic started by: Kadri on August 06, 2015, 09:08:02 PM

Title: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 06, 2015, 09:08:02 PM

Just playing.There are so many possibilities. Like objects in water.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 06, 2015, 09:11:02 PM

Especially this possibility is nice. It is just a test so i did not bother to use an object sequence.
But with a walking,running etc. man object sequence this could be used maybe to some degree.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Oshyan on August 06, 2015, 11:23:27 PM
Cool stuff! Definitely could work well on water, at the least.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 07, 2015, 02:30:57 AM
Wow, Kadri, another milestone! Awesome. How did you move the boxes, move the basic object for every frame (repop)?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 07, 2015, 02:52:33 AM
That looks amazing! Ulco's question came into my mind too.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 07, 2015, 05:24:13 AM

Yep it is a basic repopulation with only changing the center values of the population
with lean effect and a basic rotation in time for the scond GIF.

With some additions from Matt and-or with plugins there could be many more things possible.

Hannes for some basic crowd motion tests i would love to see some videos with your bird object sequence :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 07, 2015, 05:38:34 AM
Cool!
I think the birds sequence wouldn't be quite useful, because it is one (or a sequence of one) big object.
It would be fantastic, if we could use a sequence of one object, let's say 25 "frames" and repeat that afterwards, so that we have a loop instead of importing a huge object sequence for the whole animation.
Additionally it should be possible to offset the starting time for each instance of this sequence. Combined with your last try (animating the center of the population) we should be able to create a big crowd of people walking across a terrain without all of them marching in lockstep.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 07, 2015, 05:39:48 AM
You just edited your posting, Kadri, didn't you? ;)
What do you mean by videos of my birds sequence?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: DocCharly65 on August 07, 2015, 05:50:40 AM
Absolute terrific!

I have too many other open projects - otherwhise I'd really like to do some experiments too!  :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 07, 2015, 06:44:10 AM
Yeah, likewise. I'd love to but no time now; just got another commission  ;D >:(

So it's the pop that's moving, not the basic object.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 07, 2015, 07:08:57 AM

Yes the population is moving Ulco.
Just guessing but with the current limitations a single moving object would be hard to animate over the ground (pivot point moving).
But for flying objects or water it could be desirable even.

Hannes, i mean for a test just one object (one bird) sequence would be enough (for a test).
More birds would be nice but for a flocking sequence 3-5 birds could be enough.

And i think it is not so hard as it looks.

Use one bird (you should have it already...just delete the others).
Animate it 10-20 frames. So much you want.
Then when you have say  "bird_001.obj" to bird "bird_010.obj" for example just copy them and rename the order with batch file renaming.Copy and batch offset the names so much you want.
You could have easily 10-20 etc. offset bird sequences in this way just in minutes.
Edit: You could use just images too maybe on card or plane objects.

Your bird object sequence wouldn't be so big in this case even.
If you want you can make same videos of course :D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 07, 2015, 07:26:28 AM
I'll see, what I can do. Long time ago I created this object sequence by using a particle system that allowed me to use preanimated objects (with offset animation), and I used hundreds of instances.
I'd have to create one single bird and export one complete flapping loop. At the moment I don't have an idea how to create a realistic flying motion of this bird inside TG.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 07, 2015, 07:45:29 AM

I am just having fun. Do what you want of course Hannes :)
It will work i am sure with flying things.

We can't play a object sequence or image sequence repeatedly so far i know as you said Hannes?
That would be nice. A sequence of 10-20 images or object sequences would be easier to handle then one to the length of the same scene.
It could be made but too much manual input needed.

Object collision detection would be great of course (did i just hear Matt swearing?) :D
I don't think that is in the list of new features and there are much more important ones.
But repeating of sequences (image or whatever) should be in the animation module if you ask me. Like oscillating etc.

Anyway.I will try a basic different scene with what we have just now. Just curious how it will look.

I edited the previous post ones again a little Hannes :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 07, 2015, 09:34:12 AM
QuoteAt the moment I don't have an idea how to create a realistic flying motion of this bird inside TG.
Crudely, perhaps an image map shader with a plan Y black to white gradient to cover the wings from the bird's back to the tips both sides, animated the same as the bird (in world space, so across terrain), used as mask for a vertical redirect shader in an animated loop, masking the mesh displacer.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 07, 2015, 11:43:01 AM
Made a quick Xoio-crowd test. It's amazing, how the instances follow the terrain. Unfortunately none of them is walking...
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: kaedorg on August 07, 2015, 12:30:25 PM
Between World War Z and Walking Dead  ???

David
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 07, 2015, 12:36:14 PM

Sweet, isn't it :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 07, 2015, 12:48:17 PM
Looks funny with cars. I used a gradient patch size of 1 for the compute terrain.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 07, 2015, 12:52:56 PM

::) ;D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: j meyer on August 07, 2015, 01:45:19 PM
Cool experimenting guys!  8)
Keep going!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 07, 2015, 01:54:00 PM

I was preparing myself an objects sequence but for a test it is too cumbersome.
So i found this :

http://www.sharecg.com/v/34388/view/5/3D-Model/Horse-Gallop-24-frame-OBJ-sequence

It is free.

This is the same box scene but with this horse instead.


Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Nacer Eddine on August 07, 2015, 02:30:41 PM
it will be interesting if the population is some asteroides turn arownd the planet or galaxy
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Oshyan on August 07, 2015, 02:54:19 PM
!

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 07, 2015, 03:14:33 PM
I love this thread!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 08, 2015, 03:17:56 AM
Holy horse, that is amazing. A bit strange to be laughing after reading of Bob's demise, sorry about that, but it's really awesome. Great thread indeed, wish I had more time  :(
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 08, 2015, 08:21:30 AM

Yes very cliche but life goes on  :( It will be the same to all of us.

I have a basic but complicated to make scene in my mind just to test this more Ulco.
But i have to finish that damn animation. I will get back to this later ones more.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 08, 2015, 09:16:42 AM
Holy cow, that looks damn good. When I saw this gif, I remembered that I have this OBJ sequence on my HD for years, but forgot about that.
Did you copy the sequence to get the whole length of the animation? If so, what is the most convenient way of renaming the copied objects?
Now, if we only could offset the starting points for the instances to get a more random look!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 08, 2015, 10:29:23 AM

I use Total Commander since nearly 20 years Hannes.
It does have a batch file renaming command (beside many more things).
I first changed the naming order to have 3 digits.
With that 24 files i copied them to another folder and batch renamed that to begin
with "filename.025.obj" and copied the new files to the original folder.
So i had a series of files that ended with 048.
Then i made anther one series with the same procedure beginning with 049 this time.
Repeat the same so much you want. It gets even faster while copying the 48 files then 96 etc.
There might be other ways but it takes longer to write then doing actually. Very easy.

For offsetting , when you have done the above, copy all of the files and then offset-rename the file numbers.
That is much easier even :)

This is what we could have as a new option in Terragen. Offsetting image sequences and object sequences.
I think Matt could this apply very easily? We could use the same image-object sequence in this way hopefully.
Together with what we talked in the first page (repeating,oscialating etc.) using this kind of scenes would be very easy in Terragen.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 08, 2015, 11:04:55 AM
Irfan View has a batch file renaming/converting feature as well. Maybe it's possible to do the job with it.
I know the principles of doing that, but I didn't know which is the most convenient way.

I remember someone of the planetside crew talking about an animation offsetting feature for individually each instance of the population. I guess it was said that this might be quite difficult to accomplish.
But if it would be possible to create a population of an object sequence of let's say 24 objects and you would be able to loop that sequence and to offset the animation once just for the whole population, you could create several populations of the same (24 instances) object sequence with different offsets and have enough variety. Maybe this wouldn't be as complicated to implement than an individual offset feature for each single instance.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 08, 2015, 11:10:31 AM

Offsetting for each instance might be hard probably,i don't know.
But as a general option the animation module needs those options.
And there is a editing feature for individual instances for some closer editing if needed already.
They would be enough for me as a start at least.
You would have to deal with much less manual work and probably file sizes.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 08, 2015, 12:13:41 PM

Hannes was your bird scene a basic loop like we talked above or a full length animation sequence?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: j meyer on August 08, 2015, 12:46:57 PM
As for the variation: the galloping horse is a loop,right?
Wouldn't copying the 24 frame sequence and then renaming the frames,but starting
from -for example- frame 06 instead of frame 01,be suffient as an offset?
One could make 3 or 4 variations that way and then use those as different populations.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 08, 2015, 01:08:02 PM

That was what i wrote in the previous page Jochen.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 08, 2015, 01:09:59 PM
Kadri, it was a full length animation.

Jochen, of course that would work, but it would be cool to have just a looped 24 frame- or object sequence and to control the performance from within TG, without having to copy identical stuff over and over again.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 08, 2015, 01:16:52 PM
Quote from: Hannes on August 08, 2015, 01:09:59 PM
Kadri, it was a full length animation.
..

Ok.

Quote from: Hannes on August 08, 2015, 01:09:59 PM
...
Jochen, of course that would work, but it would be cool to have just a looped 24 frame- or object sequence and to control the performance from within TG, without having to copy identical stuff over and over agein.

Yep.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: j meyer on August 08, 2015, 01:19:18 PM
Sorry.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 09, 2015, 08:45:11 AM
Quotebut it would be cool to have just a looped 24 frame- or object sequence and to control the performance from within TG, without having to copy identical stuff over and over again.
Indeed, so file it as a feature request!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 13, 2015, 10:33:35 AM

A landslide test. No object sequence. It is only a population with the rock object.

Another animated displaced plane that goes a little along the rocks with another grass or trees etc. population, some dust clouds
and you could get a nice looking landslide probably.

Snow or similar things could be made too. Even water maybe but i would not try to render it  :P  ;D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 13, 2015, 02:41:27 PM
That looks so incredibly cool!!! Some rocks even seem to bounce. How did you manage the rotation?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 13, 2015, 07:31:30 PM
Awesome.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 12:01:26 AM

There is a little rotation in the population setting but the important one is the animated rotation of the rock object itself.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: AP on August 14, 2015, 12:38:47 AM
I had not checked into the thread until today and i have to say there is some far out stuff going on here.   
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 12:55:12 AM

Yeah the animation side of the forum looks like a little forgotten.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: AP on August 14, 2015, 01:06:14 AM
I would try animation myself but all i have is a tiny Ultrabook, the only computer i have.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 01:17:53 AM

Not all animation takes long Chris. You know the classic slow rendering parts in Terragen like water,glass.
You could still do many things.
But in general yes animation is unfortunately harder to do (from a time-pc power aspect).
These tests i do here are from boredom by waiting for the animation renderings to finish :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: AP on August 14, 2015, 01:39:33 AM
The primary reason though is where i am at becomes rather hot. I would hate to destroy my computer before it's time with heat ware.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 01:56:31 AM

I see.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: AP on August 14, 2015, 02:15:44 AM
I am not worried about it. Shoot, i am fascinated enough seeing what others are doing here with animation.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 02:18:01 AM

:)

I am just making a new one. This time a little more abstract. There are so much more possibilities.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 07:57:01 AM

Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 14, 2015, 08:21:12 AM
Looks cool, Kadri! This feature of moving the whole population you discovered is really so useful. It has been there for a long time, but nobody seems to have noticed that. I always thought moving the population area would lead to chaotic instance behavior, but as we can see it can be used to create a lot of new interesting things. Some sort of a (very very simple) particle system.

And yes, the animation area seems to be quite rarely visited.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 08:41:15 AM

Yes Hannes. There are limitations as you know :) but even now many things can be done.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 08:49:02 AM

When i first tried it i had not much hope too and was surprised. I expected chaotic behavior too.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 10:01:29 AM

"Pixels" movie came to my mind :)

Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 14, 2015, 10:49:34 AM
Funny! I did something similar (moved the populations with the torus)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: j meyer on August 14, 2015, 10:49:48 AM
 8)  ;D 
A population on the models(sequence)?
Great stuff,keep going!

Edit: Both are cool!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 14, 2015, 10:55:41 AM
As far as I can tell: yes, some populations (two from the sides, one above and one under the object) on one model (which is turned to invisible with cast shadows off).
No sequence.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 11:14:12 AM

Same approach Hannes  ;D

Mine is obviously a object sequence.

I remember 1-2 years ago that i thought how to make a big moving spaceship army.
I feel now stupid how easy it actually is :)

Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Oshyan on August 14, 2015, 04:04:41 PM
You guys are blowing my mind! Awesome. :)

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 14, 2015, 11:32:09 PM

I will end this test phase with this silly one  ;D

It is made from 2 very...ahem...elaborate objects.


[attachimg=1]


No object sequence.
There are two population in the lower part and another two population over the first ones.
I wanted to see how two of the same populations over the other will act in this kind of case.
Looks like it could be made easily with a dozens more.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 15, 2015, 12:06:02 AM

The sticks were for uniting the gears obviously (that only so so works).
But just after the render finished i found out that i could have made animated ropes (kinda) too.


[attachimg=1]

Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 15, 2015, 06:42:38 AM
Oh my Gob, I wish I could do something. You guys are incredible! But at the moment I am struck down by severe lumbago, and just manage some typin once in while. Keep at it!! By the way, for moving trees in different directions with the T&S only one pop would suffice, I'd say, with several masked T&S's in different directions. Even windgusts traveling acrsoos land can be simulated that way, I'm sure (lots of time to lie down thinking  :( )
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: fleetwood on August 15, 2015, 10:44:51 AM
Cool stuff. Still laughing from the little cars gif (and somehow wishing for tiny clowns to climb out of each one).
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 15, 2015, 03:43:59 PM
Quote from: Dune on August 15, 2015, 06:42:38 AM
...But at the moment I am struck down by severe lumbago, and just manage some typin once in while...

Get well soon Ulco.
Since nearly 1 week i am using my left hand on the computer. The pain in my right hand is better now.
Now my left hand is beginning to hurt :D

We are getting old  ;D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 16, 2015, 04:01:31 AM
 :P
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 05:25:18 AM
Thank god none of my hands or anything else hurts. Get well soon, my old friends! ;)

So I did another test. I created five populations: the body and each wheel as a seperate population. The body's compute terrain has a gradient patch size of 20 and the wheels have a different compute terrain with a patch size of 0.1.
The wheels' rotation is animated (at more or less the correct speed). Unfortunately sometimes the wheels seem to rotate backwards or stand still. But this phenomenon accurs in real life too due to shutter speed or whatever it is. Anyway. it looks a bit weird.
I wanted each wheel to react differently to the terrain.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 05:46:31 AM

Sweet  :D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 05:51:59 AM
Quote from: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 05:25:18 AM
...
I wanted each wheel to react differently to the terrain.

Would one population of 4 wheels look too much different? Curious.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 05:54:37 AM
Thanks Kadri. Yes, I think so. If the terrain is very bumpy the left front wheel might be higher than the right one for example.

Just found out that I connected the wrong compute terrain to the planet. Doing some tests with a seperate compute terrain for the body with a patch size of 100 and "Smooth surface" checked, which is NOT connected to the planet. So the body reacts to an identical but smoother terrain which is not visible. Only the normal terrain, the wheels react to is visible. So I'm hoping I'll get the illusion of a spring loaded (is this the right word?) car.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 06:19:48 AM
Quote from: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 05:54:37 AM
...If the terrain is very bumpy the left front wheel might be higher than the right one for example.
...

But even if separate when the values are the same on all the 4 wheel populations they would react in the same way on the same terrain.
If you ask me you are making it harder then needed.

Quote from: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 05:54:37 AM
...
...Doing some tests with a seperate compute terrain for the body with a patch size of 100 and "Smooth surface" checked, which is NOT connected to the planet. So the body reacts to an identical but smoother terrain which is not visible. Only the normal terrain, the wheels react to is visible. So I'm hoping I'll get the illusion of a spring loaded (is this the right word?) car.

I made a different test with a hidden surface similar (I won't upload it.It is not usable) to yours (from a surface approach).
I think it isn't related for using a hidden-or bypassed?- surface but sometimes some objects in the population are disappearing.
By using less displacement or smaller displacement spike limit they came back mostly.
I tried it with smaller and bigger compute normal settings and smooth normal and much higher Planet displacement tolerance etc.but they weren't much useful then the above settings. It looks related when over higher displacement ground.
Have you encountered anything similar Hannes?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 06:36:48 AM
Quote from: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 06:19:48 AM

But even if separate when the values are the same on all the 4 wheel populations they would react in the same way on the same terrain.
If you ask me you are making it harder then needed.

I made a different test with a hidden surface similar (I won't upload it.It is not usable) to yours (from a surface approach).
I think it isn't related for using a hidden-or bypassed?- surface but sometimes some objects in the population are disappearing.
By using less displacement or smaller displacement spike limit they came back mostly.
I tried it with smaller and bigger compute normal settings and smooth normal and much higher Planet displacement tolerance etc.but they weren't much useful then the above settings. It looks related when over higher displacement ground.
Have you encountered anything similar Hannes?

No, it really makes a difference. You'll see it in the animation I'm rendering at the moment. Each wheel reacts to the position it is in the terrain, which might be quite different for each wheel.

There is no hidden surface in my setup. I just added an additional compute terrain with "Smooth terrain" checked for the cars' bodies, which is not connected to the planet. See attached image.
Luckily the cars' bodies just react smoother than the wheels which was my intention, without having to create another (invisible) terrain.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 06:40:53 AM

I looked at the scene ones again. I think they don't disappear.
They just sunk more in the ground.Much more then they should or it looks from look of the ground displacement.
Hmm...not sure what to do but just in case you see anything similar be prepared :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 06:46:12 AM

Exactly the same setup Hannes thus i said -bypassed-.
There is no second Planet but still a different one...kinda :)

Still not sure about the different wheels (if not different values are used of course). Curious of your test.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 06:47:52 AM
Thanks for the warning! At the moment nothing disappears. The wheels individually react more or less (!) correctly to the visible terrain, and the body moves way smoother. Still rendering.

Here is another screenshot of my setup. The last one didn't show everything.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 06:55:08 AM

Slightly different but same method.

[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 06:57:11 AM

The SS shader was for lowering the ground in some parts.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 07:03:02 AM

my screen cap did not show some parts too :)

[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 07:24:13 AM
I think the main difference is that you put the second compute terrain in the same row like the first one and I used separate ways for them right after the terrain area. Maybe it's the same result in the end, I don't know...
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 07:33:42 AM

Hmm...interesting. I used the SS shader after a big image mask-displacement gave me some stepped displacement problems.
Better to use 16 or higher bit images probably.

But it looks like the problem i have here is because of the SS shader.

Looked closer. Yes it happens because of the SS shader. But it is related to the Edge profile+Smooth step  setting.
When i use smaller values in the "Edge width" the problem goes away.

It looked strange because you expect lower parts but they look really as they are disappearing or whatever.
And it is strongly evident at the edge of the population. At least so much i can see from here.

Problem picture 1:


[attachimg=1]


Problem picture 2:


[attachimg=2]
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 07:34:13 AM
Quote from: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 07:24:13 AM
I think the main difference is that you put the second compute terrain in the same row like the first one and I used separate ways for them right after the terrain area. Maybe it's the same result in the end, I don't know...

So different ways to use those nodes :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 07:45:21 AM

It is Matt's domain, but especially at higher displaced parts of the terrain it looks like together with the SS shader smoothing there are some funky things going on at the edges of the population node.
The flatter ground parts don't look so bad despite that they are in the smooth area too.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 09:12:21 AM
Here is the result. Not perfect, but it shows what I wanted to achieve.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 10:09:24 AM

Still not sold on the population for every wheels part but using a smoother surface for the middle part looks absolutely better Hannes.
Mine are only tests they are perfect as tests, like yours ;)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 11:53:52 AM
If I would use ONE population for all the wheels, how would I make each wheel be in place?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 12:04:32 PM

Make  "Spacing variation in a,b" = zero and use the "Object spacing a,b" the way you need it
together with the object size in the population or in the object node itself Hannes.

I used this for the gears animation together with controlling the size of the population itself.

Edit: Just to be clear i was talking about only one car and its wheels.
        Sometimes my second language handicap kicks too much in :)

        But even with 3 cars or more you could still use one population with a density shader
        for the wheels and another one for the middle parts if they are moving in the same direction.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 03:54:42 PM
I'm not quite sure if a density shader would lead to a similar result.
Actually the population per wheel-solution wasn't that hard: I created one wheel population and copied it three times. I then only had to connect the compute terrain with the terrain inputs and adjust the translate values in the transform tab of each object to place the wheels correctly. A matter of two minutes. The rest was just sit back and watch.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 03:59:45 PM
...and the good thing is: once you have set up the whole thing, you can decide whether you want to have three instances or threehundredthousands (theoretically) of them just by adjusting the area length and/or the object spacing.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 04:05:01 PM

I think this is a classic Terragen status...if it works for you what can i say :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 04:10:32 PM
Yes, it's cool! However it's always helpful to see other ways to solve the same problem. You can decide whether you're happy with your own way or if you want to choose another one.
Thanks Kadri, very much appreciated, really!
Once again, this is your thread, so it still feels a bit strange to post my own stuff here, but as long as it's hopefully inspiring...  :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 04:15:49 PM

Regarding the density shader, it only changes the objects in an "ON", "OFF" way in the population so far i have seen.
So the distance between the rows and columns doesn't change only by adding a basic(powerfractal or SSS) density shader.

And no i always like other posts in my thread. I have absolutely no problem with it.
There should be more going on actually here in the forum all around :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 04:26:10 PM
Yes, that's true, and we seem to be the only busy animators at the time, aren't we? This thread seems to be some sort of a private conversation between the two of us  ;D ;D ;D
Come on, let's rant a bit about the others to see if there are any clandestine spectators!  ;) ;) ;)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 04:34:14 PM

I was really thinking about to post an image with an arrow sign
that had "look at the animation forum too guys" on it into the image sharing section :D

Yeah it is mostly you and me here  :D
But Ulco felt like he was really eager to try too.He might make a late comeback maybe :D

Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Oshyan on August 16, 2015, 04:38:49 PM
I was just talking to Martin (Huisman) recently about how I feel like there's so much untapped animation potential, and you guys are showing much of that here. These things have been possible for years but are only now just being figured out by you smart fellows. I think animation is often thought of as just too time consuming, but I would guess that your tests - at least - have not been tremendously long to render. Making a full, final quality scene out of them would certainly take a lot longer, but one look at what DocCharley65 has been doing and you can see that there is tremendous potential for even a single person with limited resources to do some great animation, even with a restricted amount of time and budget.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 16, 2015, 04:42:17 PM
True indeed! Making some tests in lower resolution usually doesn't take that much time, and it's great fun to see your idea coming to life.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 04:50:18 PM

DocCharley65 will probably show an army of spaceships or similar in no time.
He is absolutely good as there are others too of course...just joking in the previous post obviously :)

My tests took between 1-3 hours with 100 frames mostly.
Final 720P renders would be feasible for most i think.

And yeah it is really fun to do these tests as Hannes said.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 05:15:06 PM

Hannes or to anyone who reads here :)
I think you can do a really great looking Massive (pun intended) scene even with the features that are just now present.
If you think about the price of such a software (for example: http://www.massivesoftware.com/products.html )
i will do the manual parts that you need to do such a scene with joy even :)
I wanted to do such a scene but i just have no time and don't want to go into character modeling-animating (i haven't even done it in a serious way until today) just now.
It should be very easy for a rigger animator that have especially the objects ready.

* Use say 10 characters (men, women,warrior etc.) or so much you want.
* Make an animated sequence of every object.
   Say you want an army of sword fighting warriors.
* Make a population with one of them.
* Then use the exact same population with another character but in the object node rotate the warrior 180 degree  and change its
   position just a little further then the other population (only translate in the object node of the object itself).
   I haven't tried it but now hopefully all the warriors should look as they are fighting each other.
* The other steps are repeating the same with other characters and using masks for the other populations etc. how you like it.
* If you trow running guys,horses,different colors or whatever you want etc. in it should look quite interesting.

I will watch such a scene with joy whoever makes it with Terragen :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 05:56:57 PM

I made just a quick test image to see if it will work in principle:
These are free objects (the warriors sword is floating).
There are two object populations.
The best part is you can change anytime some parts with another population with masks-density shaders.
Even individual parts of an object(different hats,swords etc.) depending how far you want to go.


[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 16, 2015, 06:42:51 PM

Ulco think about your medieval towns with moving peoples,animals all around.
(i hope you got an itch enough to do it :D )
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 17, 2015, 12:06:45 AM
I'll say that one of the things that surprised me was how the wheels bounce. Or rather how they don't stick to the ground at every step.
In hannes' last clip, for example, you can see pretty clearly how the wheels jump over little low areas in the terrain, then landing again on the next raised area. It almost seems like TG has gravity built in. Of course I know it does not.
But it could, couldn't it? At some time in the future. It should. Hmmm, maybe I just mean physics in general.

One of you should do a tut on this. The info on using object sequences is scattered. And then all of this here that you have added to the conversation is well worth compiling and archiving in a tut. There should be much more interest in this thread than is evident. As you have said. But may just be timing. Anyway, I agree with you, this is a bad ass thread!  ;D

I am watching to see how far you guys push this. Curious too where the ceiling is, and what planetside will do to make things better.

Hannes, I was looking for some movement cycles do to my interest in this thread. I found some things that are for Max. Perhaps you can use them
http://animium.com/2014/11/run-cycle-motion-capture
http://animium.com/2014/11/drunkards-walk-motion-capture (zombie?)

Some cool stuff here:
http://jonathansymmonds.com/tutorials-help/downloads Not sure if the cycles include the models or not.


I imagine with a little DOF, you guys could do some shorts with just the stuff you have already covered here! I think you already said that too though.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 17, 2015, 12:23:05 AM
I am also very curious to hear a definitive statement ( ;D ) on what is really permissible in an object sequence, such as it is, obj. Just how much can you cram into a 5 second animation sequence? For example, a building collapsing including particles and debris. Or, something simpler, like two people fist fighting with their clothes/hair moving accordingly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exQ9OjebY-Q OK, not so simple  ;D but still, in theory, bow much is really *possible*

Also, I did not catch any griping about ALEMBIC 1.5 compression, or whatever it is. I thought we were all determined to get that?

QuoteALEMBIC is an open source exchange format that is becoming the industry standard for exchanging animated computer graphics between content creation software packages.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 02:09:15 AM

If you design your characters at the modeling rigging-animating stage accordingly doing fist-sword fight kinda things are very easy to do as a crowd population.
The problem is you have to be an animator. And when you want to look it real with different sizes etc. there will be a limit how close you can get.
But then crowd scenes are for a distance and that will help. You could use some hero object for the foreground.
You could do what game makers do and design different animation stages that go from one another seamlessly and manually put them together.

It will be a very manual process but it is doable to an certain level. The prices for such programs are high for a reason.

But just as a feeling i can say what you can do in Terragen with careful planning is a thousand times higher and more what i expected you can do .
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 03:53:08 AM
Kadri, of course this is possible. See the attached video. I did this in Vue a long time ago. It's quite similar to TG's populations, except that you can use animated objects (without having to use object sequences). What you can see is, that some fighters do exactly the same at exactly the same time, because there is no offset function as well. And some fighters fight against nothing... :)

What bothers me in TG for something like this, is the fact, that you need a tremendous amount of object sequences. As long as we don't have the features I described in my thread ( http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,20363.0.html ) using object sequences for such vast scenes is really a bit tedious.
But I have some ideas for walking people in TG without using object sequences I haven't tested yet.

Michael, yes, the bouncing was not intended, but somehow it looks quite nice.
Thanks for the links! I have a lot of motion capture files on my HD, but you can never have enough.

We'll see, how far we can push this. I guess there's still a lot to discover, and with the help of the Planetside crew  ;) we'll surely push the limits a bit farther.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 04:00:20 AM

There should be much more options that would be really great....wait how many times did we said that Hannes?  ;D

Even with those problems a fast short scene like your example above looks always very nice :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 04:05:41 AM
Quote from: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 03:53:08 AM
...
But I have some ideas for walking people in TG without using object sequences I haven't tested yet.
...

If you think about using separate body parts and moving them there is too much manual input involved.I tried it.
But maybe you have another thing in your mind?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 04:24:07 AM
Quote from: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 03:53:08 AM
...I did this in Vue a long time ago.
It's quite similar to TG's populations, except that you can use animated objects (without having to use object sequences)...

Hannes is there a rigging,bones or whatever feature in Vue by the way?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 04:34:23 AM
That's what I have in mind. I'm sure it'll work somehow, and if the tedious work is done, you can use this over and over. We'll see, if I'll succeed or not....

I'm not quite sure about the actual features in Vue, but at that time you could import animated objects, and somehow the animation was stored inside the object. No idea how... :(
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 05:41:12 AM
Quote from: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 04:34:23 AM
That's what I have in mind. I'm sure it'll work somehow, and if the tedious work is done, you can use this over and over. We'll see, if I'll succeed or not....
...


The part where the objects meets together can look awkward too.
But don't listen to me.I made only a very basic test there might be better ways you find.
That was with only in object mode 1-2 years ago with basic cubes . I haven't tried it in a population.


Quote from: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 04:34:23 AM
...
I'm not quite sure about the actual features in Vue, but at that time you could import animated objects, and somehow the animation was stored inside the object. No idea how... :(


I searched and found that Vue does have a rigging system. You can import animations etc in it.
That makes much a difference of course.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 17, 2015, 05:50:05 AM
I am here alright, and following your private discussion with GREAT interest! Just not in the position to do much atm. I love these kind of experiments to push TG's limits, and you never know what Matt will pick up and use to the advantage of TG(4). I've been thinking about movement in the medieval harbor town (for an animation they proposed), but walking people would be really hard, as they won't follow paths, and get into trouble (walls, water, other people). Wind and water is 'easier' to accomplish.

I was also wondering if you made an object rotate 4x every X frames for 90º and place diferently on the corners of a square, would you be able to make it go in a circle? Or would it walk following the square? I think the latter (so not vector like), so you'd need far more points of rotation.
Also, if you place an object too far from its 0/0/0 origin, you get strange behavior in  population, like pops that only make a circle, or (in older days) would crash TG.

Following your amazing footage daily, guys. Keep at it.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 06:07:24 AM
Quote from: Dune on August 17, 2015, 05:50:05 AM
...I've been thinking about movement in the medieval harbor town (for an animation they proposed), but walking people would be really hard, as they won't follow paths, and get into trouble (walls, water, other people)....

For a basic straight road kind of crowd walking animation, it is very easy to avoid collision of people.
Make a mask-density texture with straight white and black lines for example.
Use one for one population that goes to one side.
Then use another population where the people goes to the other way with the same texture but with a negative one.
You know these things much better and there is so more you can do.

You don't have to overthink all these thing Ulco.
For example if the animation is viewed from a certain distance a rotating population or even 3-5 hand animated-placed object sequences with walking people would look like they are walking the corners if you really need them.

I don't know if you can bend,warp etc. populations without objects going funky. Anyone tried it?
If this is possible there are more we could do.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 17, 2015, 06:12:11 AM
The problem with people walking streets and paths is that they need to be oriented in a specific way (following a road, not facing walls), so I have had to edit the pops. And I don't know what would happen to an edited pop in animation, especially with a mask for their distribution... they might just pop out.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 06:25:05 AM

If you have one walking object sequence all you have to do is to rotate the population in which way you want them to go.
You do it with the other different object too so much you need it.
If there are problems all you have to do is re orienting them in Lightwave (for example) and exporting one again Ulco (as you said).

In my tests the most problem i saw was different sized objects.
Resizing them before use in Terragen to a meaningful similar size avoids some unneeded hassle.

If you don't mean anything different of course Ulco?

A basic way to walk around a corner is animating the object in its object node only and not the population (depends what you want).
Put the start point of the guy where you want it to begin to walk. Then translate it to the point where it will begin to rotate and so on.
When you do this animation in the object node directly your population can stay put (if you will).
You can then use millions of guys walking around a corner like an army that is turning to one side at ones :)

If you have a corner walking guy object sequence that would be nice too of course :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 06:36:24 AM

There could be one problem i think with translating the object in the object node.
When you translate the object to the X side for example it looks like it sees the ground as it was originally.
So it can be over or under the ground.Have no looked more closely although.
But for  roads or so this is not much important at least.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 06:38:51 AM

It is mostly just theoretical of course.Haven't tried if will work :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 06:44:59 AM

Just had a look a little (walking corners). Direct changes in the object node will not work as it looks.
Without offset kind of animation options it looks limited.

Baking the corner walking animation directly as a sequence looks much more meaningful now.

Curious if you can work this out guys.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 07:10:37 AM

When you translate objects in the object node the density shader is translated too.
This might be desired or not. Transform input shader with or without "Use world space (final position)" made no difference.
You have to animate the density shader too if you want to stay it put in the place you want.

Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 17, 2015, 10:09:17 AM
Good thinking, and I hope I can get into this some day, but atm it's no priority. I am more interested in getting a slight windgust movement in trees, and currently testing a setup with 2 T&S and a PF, all animated. Maybe it doesn't work at all.... we'll see.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 10:38:21 AM

This is mostly how far i will go for now too. Hope you, Hannes and others will continue.
I am going to work on the animation. Although the render times might allow to do some test ones again :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 17, 2015, 01:27:38 PM
Hannes,
that fight is pretty cool. I see what you mean about the models fighting the air in some places. Which begs the question, can you edit a population of object sequence as you can a normal population in TG?

Has anyone tried to edit out a instance yet? or move it or anything?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 06:17:53 PM
OK guys, lots of new questions. I have no idea how to move a whole population around a corner. I'd expect, they all walk around the corner at the same time, but not where the actual corner is, but where each of the instances actually is at the moment. Hmm...

Anyway here is a small walk cycle I created by cutting a model into pieces in 3ds Max. Shadows are disabled for testing purposes.
First of all I scaled it!!!!!!!!!!! Did a test export to see if the guy has the right size.
Then I cut off the legs and the arms in Max. I put the pivot of the torso right between where the legs would be if I wouldn't have cut them off. Then the pivots of the limbs were put to the joints where they are usually connected to the body. Important: I had to place all the objects at 1,1,1, otherwise rotation wouldn't have worked for some reason (no idea why... :()

In TG I imported each part into it's own population (one instance for better orientation) and moved the limbs in the object nodes at the correct places. Then I rotated the legs and the arms (X-axis) to their initial state, which is left leg and right arm forwards, the other ones backwards. I changed the positions to the opposite 15 frames later.
Now comes the fun part. I wasn't aware that you can copy keyframes in the animation editor. It was a piece of cake to copy the cycle and paste it. Like that I was able to create a 500 frames walking cycle in less than a minute for all of the limbs.
The walking cycle isn't as good as a motion capture walk of course, but given the fact, that there is no object sequence used, I think it won't look too bad at least from a distance.

AND: creating populations with an offset isn't that hard, if you just copy the whole set of populations, select all the keyframes in the animation editor, move them, let's say 7 frames backwards (for all the populations that belong together), and voilà!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 07:54:07 PM
Quote from: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 06:17:53 PM
OK guys, lots of new questions. I have no idea how to move a whole population around a corner. I'd expect, they all walk around the corner at the same time, but not where the actual corner is, but where each of the instances actually is at the moment. Hmm...
...


I saw that problem too today. As you can see above i thought in theory it should work too :(

After trying it seem quite normal that the instances behave as they are.
It works more like "begin now to rotate" to all the instances.
Without a way to kinda be able to say "begin here to rotate" it doesn't work.
Not sure if there is a way.


Quote from: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 06:17:53 PM
...
Anyway here is a small walk cycle I created by cutting a model into pieces in 3ds Max. Shadows are disabled for testing purposes.
First of all I scaled it!!!!!!!!!!! Did a test export to see if the guy has the right size.
Then I cut off the legs and the arms in Max. I put the pivot of the torso right between where the legs would be if I wouldn't have cut them off. Then the pivots of the limbs were put to the joints where they are usually connected to the body. Important: I had to place all the objects at 1,1,1, otherwise rotation wouldn't have worked for some reason (no idea why... :()

In TG I imported each part into it's own population (one instance for better orientation) and moved the limbs in the object nodes at the correct places. Then I rotated the legs and the arms (X-axis) to their initial state, which is left leg and right arm forwards, the other ones backwards. I changed the positions to the opposite 15 frames later.
...



Nice work. Looks tedious, but the result works much better then i thought it would really :)



Quote from: Hannes on August 17, 2015, 06:17:53 PM
...
Now comes the fun part. I wasn't aware that you can copy keyframes in the animation editor. It was a piece of cake to copy the cycle and paste it. Like that I was able to create a 500 frames walking cycle in less than a minute for all of the limbs.
The walking cycle isn't as good as a motion capture walk of course, but given the fact, that there is no object sequence used, I think it won't look too bad at least from a distance.

AND: creating populations with an offset isn't that hard, if you just copy the whole set of populations, select all the keyframes in the animation editor, move them, let's say 7 frames backwards (for all the populations that belong together), and voilà!


Wow! I wasn't aware too. This makes many things much easier Hannes. Great :)


Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 17, 2015, 08:07:53 PM
Quote from: TheBadger on August 17, 2015, 01:27:38 PM
...
Has anyone tried to edit out a instance yet? or move it or anything?

I just tried it a little. It works,deleting and moving.
Moving looks like translating an object node inside the population as i saw in my earlier test.
The moved instance behaves as it is in its original position.
So can be over -under the ground.But you can fix that too of course.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 18, 2015, 02:34:34 AM
I refined the walking cycle a bit, so that the guy is slightly moving upwards and downwards as well as less gliding. I think it's better now.
Here is a short clip of a whole population set marching in lockstep. It looks a bit jerky, but that's a result of the video compression. The original is a bit smoother.

The model is a freebie named SWAT guy from somewhere in the net. For testing purposes it's OK I think. I'll work on a more irregular animation now with more populations that are not in sync.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 18, 2015, 02:46:33 AM

Too much sliding but that isn't a complain, really much much better then i thought it would be like.Nice :)
Curious of the next one.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 18, 2015, 02:58:43 AM
Super results, I love it!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 18, 2015, 03:45:23 AM
Offsetting the animation is a bit tedious, but easy. In the animation editor you can type in a value at the bottom of the page, then select all the keyframes you want to move and hit the little button with the wheel and choose "Move by frames".
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 18, 2015, 03:55:53 AM

Nice.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 18, 2015, 06:31:13 AM
An animation of twentyfive populations (five populations per character) with offset walking cycles.
It's almost impossible to get rid of some amount of sliding. I did a lot of tests changing the population areas' speed. I think this is the most I get get.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 18, 2015, 06:51:50 AM

Every test is better then the one before Hannes. Great :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 18, 2015, 08:07:35 AM
I used a better model for testing. At the moment it seems a bit like all the guys have crapped their pants  ;D ;D ;D, but the angle of their legs can be adjusted easily.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 18, 2015, 08:14:05 AM
Looks good but it is not an animation GIF?
When i download it it is only 155 726 bytes big.
The file size looks much bigger on the page.

Aaa...now it works :)

Great  ;D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 18, 2015, 08:15:03 AM
I updated the gif. For some reason it didn't animate. Now it does.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 18, 2015, 08:15:56 AM

Yep.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 18, 2015, 08:28:50 AM
Better now. There are visible seams where the legs are attached to the body. I'll have to take care of that.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 18, 2015, 08:53:58 AM

:)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 18, 2015, 08:59:01 AM
Cool, guys!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 18, 2015, 10:43:56 AM
The sliding is less visible when the feet are hidden.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 18, 2015, 10:50:27 AM
Quote from: Hannes on August 18, 2015, 10:43:56 AM
The sliding is less visible when the feet are hidden.

Indeed.Quite a difference.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 18, 2015, 12:00:55 PM
Yeah, great.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: j meyer on August 18, 2015, 01:22:51 PM
 8) !
You could try to separate the feet too,to get a more natural look maybe.
Anyway,keep it up men!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 18, 2015, 09:33:27 PM
Curious if matt has used this stuff in his film work, either him self, or if his clients have used it. Hard to believe he did not know this can be done.

I am just bringing it up because you guys could have done this awhile back, but just discovered it. I think that is kinda a cool story in and of its self. But how could the people who made the program not know?

Just interesting, thats all. :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 19, 2015, 11:03:56 AM
Jochen, maybe this could work, but I think, it would be overkill. All in all this will never be a serious competitor for a real crowd simulation like Massive for example, although I really like the result. I have seen crowd simulations that looked way more unnatural.
But I guess in the film business, they would always rely on dedicated softwares. Our solution is much too limited.

Michael, I'm not sure if Matt didn't know that we can animate a population like that. Anyway I'd like to hear Matt chiming in, to see if there are plans for improving this thing. A sophisticated particle system for example would be fantastic. Or improving the population feature to make things like a better crowd simulation possible.

OK, here is another test. I created a more neutral texture map for the guy, and used separate texture maps (image map shaders plus transform shaders with World Space checked, that are animated to move exactly like the populations) like the one below to add some variation for the clothing.

The head is still the same, but I'm working on it...
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 19, 2015, 11:16:27 AM
Terrific. If you use a girl with adress you would eliminate the leg-breaking issue. But the dress would be very stiff then. It's always something.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 20, 2015, 09:53:30 AM

Oopss! I didn't saw the animation file Hannes. Looks great :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 20, 2015, 10:24:00 AM
Thanks guys. Ulco, first I didn't know what you mean by a girl with "adress" (there's a "d" missing I thought)  ;D ;D ;D.
Funny typo!
Well I think a dress would make things even worse. Very stiff as you said.

OK here is an animation with five different heads (textures). Sorry for the jerky camera movement. I first transformed the image sequence to an uncompressed AVI, which looks perfectly smooth, but after creating an MP4 out of it, it looked like that. I checked the framerate - it's OK.  :( :( :(

I discovered some things: Upscaling the instances in the population's "Scale"-tab works, which I didn't expect. Of course you have to adjust the speed of the population area's movement accordingly.
Rotating works as well. I really had thought that manipulating the scale and the rotation would screw up the walking animation i. e. the connection of the limbs to the body. Well, as I said this is very limited, but from a distance it's OK I think.

Ah yes, and there are some instances overlapping, which of course looks a bit weird...
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 20, 2015, 10:35:45 AM

Indeed it looks like from a certain distance it would work. Nice.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 20, 2015, 11:16:20 AM
The one with all the skinheads was kinda provocative. Someone needs to do one with a large company of stormtroopers  :o
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 20, 2015, 11:23:09 AM
Do you mean the Star Wars stormtroopers or the 70 years old german ones? ;)
Seriously, the Star wars storm troopers shouldn't be too hard to use for this kind of animation, since their limbs aren't that smoothly connected to their bodies due to their armour, and there are lots of good models in the net, and some of them are free as far as I remember. I'll see, what I can find...
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 20, 2015, 12:02:40 PM
Yeah, funny typo indeed. Didn't see it. Great update. I think if you use just a few guys (and a horse) and have them walk along a path in the distance it would really look good!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 20, 2015, 07:03:48 PM
Quote from: Hannes on August 20, 2015, 11:23:09 AM
Do you mean the Star Wars stormtroopers or the 70 years old german ones? ;)
Seriously, the Star wars storm troopers shouldn't be too hard to use for this kind of animation, since their limbs aren't that smoothly connected to their bodies due to their armour, and there are lots of good models in the net, and some of them are free as far as I remember. I'll see, what I can find...

LOL!
Well both would make a instant attention grabber. But indeed I meant star wars troopers... The new movie is coming soon after all, so no reason not to nerd out about it. ;D sigh.

Really looking forward to it Hannes, that would really just be perfect for all the testing you have done. Almost exactly the kind of film application you were after?

If you have the energy please add a star wars ship/aircraft over head too. Go crazy with it if you have the time. Cant imagine a topic that will get you more happy views than star wars... Sigh
;D

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090918154725/starwars/images/7/7d/Grand_army_formation.jpg
or something.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 21, 2015, 12:33:20 AM
Thanks Michael! Still playing with my actual crowd, but stormtroopers would definitely be perfect for this kind of stuff.
No color variation needed! :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 21, 2015, 01:20:26 AM
Or skin and SSS
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 21, 2015, 10:25:15 AM

Robot kind of animated populations would be even easier.
Title: Stormtroopers
Post by: Hannes on August 21, 2015, 11:16:12 AM
Here is the first troopers test. Seems to be working. Some small intersecting parts have to be fixed, but all in all it's OK I think.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 21, 2015, 11:36:04 AM

Very nice :) As it looks i am Star Wars brainwashed. As i watched your video i felt like i hear this melody :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNv5sPu0C1E

:D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 21, 2015, 12:56:50 PM
A WIP scifi animation I was starting before Michael mentioned the stormtroopers. Gonna replace some of the civil guys by troopers I guess.
Sorry again for the jerky movie. Sometimes the conversion from uncompressed AVI to MP4 works perfect and sometimes I get these jerky ones. >:(
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 21, 2015, 01:02:23 PM

Looks great Hannes.
By the way your videos doesn't play jerky.It might be only on your side?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 21, 2015, 01:09:13 PM

Had a look at your last video. The frame rate looks odd; 37.
Maybe related? The one before is normal; 25 for example.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 21, 2015, 01:13:52 PM
37??  ???
That's weird! I'll take a look. Thanks, Kadri!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Oshyan on August 21, 2015, 03:09:36 PM
Your videos don't look jerky to me either. Maybe something wrong with your player? I use Daum Potplayer, works great.

The sci fi test looks very cool, good potential. The storm troopers slide a bit, but fix that and it would fit right in to Star Wars: Episode 2 - The Clone Wars, I'm sure. :D

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 21, 2015, 03:21:34 PM

I use VLC player.
I tried it with Media player classic, Windows media player and the Metro version (i don't know if they are really different).
Only VLC played it without stuttering.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Oshyan on August 21, 2015, 03:30:17 PM
Unsurprising. Windows Media Player pretty well sucks. Same engine in the Metro version I believe. It does sound like the video/encoding settings may be a bit non-standard, which might explain why VLC can handle it better. I like VLC as a playback system/engine, but the UI and controls suck compared to Potplayer.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 21, 2015, 03:38:06 PM

VLC player is like a habit for me now.
Installed Media info.It shows the FPS as 25. VLC showed 37.
That is Odd too. Always a problem here or there.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 21, 2015, 03:43:05 PM
VLC plays dang near anything well. Even plays corrupted files well enough. great free soft.

Hannes,
Looks like this will be a good one when you are done! Already fun to watch it develop.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 22, 2015, 12:54:00 AM
Thanks guys, I'll check that. I usually transform my image sequences to AVI uncompressed in AE, then use Adobe Media Encoder to make an MP4 out of it.
The AVI plays perfectly smooth (Media player), but some (not all) MP4s that I made like I said play back jerky. I hate that!

The sliding feet are really annoying, but since I wasn't aware that you can create some simple crowd simulation in TG at all a few weeks ago, I'm quite happy with it. At the moment I have no idea how to fix that. The legs are simply rotating back and forth and I added some movement in height of the whole set and additionally a subtle back and forth movement. I'd really have to create separate populations for thighs, calfs and feet, but that would mean nine populations per character! And not to forget some more sets of them for offset animations. Overkill!

So, I'm afraid my name won't be in the final credits of the next SW movie  :(

...unless Matt marries J. J. Abrams, and I'm his best man...
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 22, 2015, 01:11:06 AM

For the sliding you have to do what you wrote above and yeah that it is too much manual work.
You can do that i am sure (i mean what you wrote in big fonts) but really except if you have to do it absolutely for work etc.
I like very much what you have done already. Maybe in the next Alpha versions you can try more things?  :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on August 22, 2015, 02:57:31 AM
Cool, Hannes. Sliding is probably very hard to conquer. In fact in every step of the sequence the feet have to move backward a bit, in relation to the forward movement of the object, which is hard to calculate.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: DocCharly65 on August 22, 2015, 07:01:08 AM
Absolutely amazing! Cool, Hannes!

My VLC plays it without problems.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 22, 2015, 11:47:19 AM
Did a test with four sets of populations (each one offset for a few frames). I used a GI cache this time.
Except the sliding feet I'm quite happy with it. Maybe I'll do some more tests some day to get rid of that (a bit tired of it...), but at the moment I want to use the troopers for the scifi animation.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 22, 2015, 11:56:30 AM
Cool! I just downloaded the VLC player. Smooth playback all the time. I really thought the jerkiness was in the clips.
Thanks for the tip!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 22, 2015, 11:58:31 AM
Another animation test where the camera looks at the soldiers but only to their upper side without seeing their feet?
A wide screen shot. Just curious :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 22, 2015, 12:00:53 PM

Have you tried to encode with Handbrake ?
VLC is great but there might be something in the encoding stage.
It is free:

https://handbrake.fr/
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: TheBadger on August 22, 2015, 02:10:20 PM
ITs great playing Hannes.
But probably there is only so much you can do without making your self crazy. Probably easier to use a object sequence?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Matt on August 22, 2015, 04:52:15 PM
Hannes, have you tried a faster translation? I feel that the worst part of the sliding is when you'd expect the foot to be in contact with the ground. Also, when the camera is further away and we can't see the actual contact, our brains might expect a certain magnitude of translation according to how fast the walk cycle is.

Matt
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 23, 2015, 09:19:23 AM
I'll try that for sure in the next days, but I guess I need a little break at the moment. Some times a little pause can be very inspiring. Thanks, Matt!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Oshyan on August 24, 2015, 12:49:48 AM
I agree with Matt, faster translation (later movement) would help with the sliding, at least in this case.

I'm not sure I understand why you have an intermediate AVI format output step. AVI is extremely old and limited as a container format. It's really not recommended anymore. AE should be able to output to MP4 or other better formats on its own. If nothing else I'd suggest an uncompressed intermediate output format.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 24, 2015, 07:16:54 AM
Hi Oshyan, if I understand you (and Matt) right, I already did that to a certain extent, but maybe it's not enough yet. I'll work on that for sure.

Years ago I tried to output directly to MP4 from within AE. The results were awfully bad or had incredibly high file sizes. Some of the guys I'd been working with gave me the tip to first out put to (uncompressed) AVI and then use the Adobe Media Encoder to create an MP4, since for some reason (he explained it to me, but unfortunately I forgot it :() AE doesn't do a good job in creating MP4s.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on August 27, 2015, 07:56:27 AM
Just wanted to let you know, that I spent five days trying to get rid of the f****** sliding. I created a whole new animation from scratch with separate feet.
In the end the sliding was even worse. It's really a pain in the ass!!!

I give up on that for now. The previous walk cycle looks OK from a distance, and given the fact that TG isn't really made for this, I'm quite happy with the result I have.
It's really tough to animate something a little more complex, when you don't see the result immediately in the viewport. You guess what number could work, type it in and hit populate all each time. It's really tedious, but I don't want to complain. I'll use what I have for my planned tiny little cheesy Star Wars fan movie.
Darth Vader is already walking, and I have some ideas I'm looking forward to. I even tried to simulate some cloth animation for Vader's cape. It's far away from perfect, but since it's a simulation of a cloth simulation it's OK I think.

Here's a very early test shot.

Kadri, I know, you don't mind if people add their own stuff to your thread, but I think I was seriously hijacking it, so this is my last posting in this thread. I'm going to create a separate one in the animation area. Thanks for your brilliant ideas that made all this possible.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on August 27, 2015, 08:11:01 AM

It really doesn't bother me you know. Do whatever you want of course Hannes (this thread or your own ) :)

And really there is no need to nitpicking (see what i did ;D ) your own work.
In this state of crowd sim tools(!) or character animating tools(!) in Terragen whatever you do will be über awesome  ;D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hetzen on August 28, 2015, 08:41:18 PM
Thoroughly enjoying this thread guys. Awesome work.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: bobbystahr on October 07, 2015, 04:03:18 PM
Same here and find it inspiring....thanks guys...
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on October 07, 2015, 05:25:16 PM
Here we go again! ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on October 07, 2015, 05:27:39 PM

;D

How much is ready of your animation now Hannes?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on October 07, 2015, 06:05:21 PM
Initially planned as a two (!!!) scene animation, I can say, that at the moment I have the complete Star Wars opening including the Twentieth Century Fox clip (or something like that...) and the crawl (more or less five sequences) and twelve and a half other scenes finished. I think five or six scenes more, and I'm done. Completely done! ;)
There will be sound as well. No idea how to do that yet, but I'm confident.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on October 07, 2015, 06:06:09 PM

Nice :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: bobbystahr on October 07, 2015, 08:17:31 PM
Quote from: Hannes on October 07, 2015, 06:05:21 PM
Initially planned as a two (!!!) scene animation, I can say, that at the moment I have the complete Star Wars opening including the Twentieth Century Fox clip (or something like that...) and the crawl (more or less five sequences) and twelve and a half other scenes finished. I think five or six scenes more, and I'm done. Completely done! ;)
There will be sound as well. No idea how to do that yet, but I'm confident.

impressive....pushing mini feature lenghth
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on March 18, 2016, 02:33:34 PM
...
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: DocCharly65 on March 21, 2016, 07:28:15 AM
Good luck an much patience Hannes! ...and I know what I am speaking about  ;) :)

Just curious; Do you (or did you ever) use pixelplow?
I did more jobs with them this month than ever before and until now I am quite happy with them.
...ok - not happy with the the content of my wallet now but that was my own decision  ;)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on March 21, 2016, 07:48:51 AM

By the way Oshyan i wanted to make my last post a little more clear but accidentally erased it-kinda- (that the reason of the 3 dots above) is the 2 days editing time off ?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Oshyan on March 21, 2016, 04:11:24 PM
Yes Kadri, we decided to disallow editing after a couple hours because of people removing content, "rage quitting", etc.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on March 21, 2016, 04:23:18 PM

Yes i know. What i mean was i could delete-edit this old post.
My own fault of course when you try to do something after 1-2 days without sleep.
But i was surprised that i could edit-delete the content after so long time of the original post.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Oshyan on March 21, 2016, 04:26:42 PM
Hmm, yes that *is* surprising. I'll look into it...

Edit: I guess it's currently set to about 2.5 days, probably due to past complaints. So we're trying to set a balance...

- Oshyan

Quote from: Kadri on March 21, 2016, 04:23:18 PM

Yes i know. What i mean was i could delete-edit this old post.
My own fault of course when you try to do something after 1-2 days without sleep.
But i was surprised that i could edit-delete the content after so long time of the original post.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on March 21, 2016, 04:35:39 PM

I see. Thanks Oshyan.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on April 19, 2016, 09:28:38 PM

Ok this was there all the time(?) and i just did not tried it.
Animated shattering of the rock object together with a population.

This was just a crude test.
Could be many possibilities like Planet exploding, colliding or small scale explosions, water splashes etc.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on April 19, 2016, 09:56:26 PM

This is the same Landslide animation from page 3 just the shattering of the rock object added.
I used the shattering effect too early and it needs 1-2 more populations with different settings but still...
One limitation is the limit of number of shatter planes by 10.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on April 20, 2016, 02:38:50 AM
That's a cool discovery, Kadri! I never realized it as well, right under our noses.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on April 20, 2016, 12:38:34 PM

:)

Another small test with a population of rocks and shattering.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on April 20, 2016, 04:20:29 PM
Amazing, Kadri!! I'm glad you're continuing this thread.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on April 20, 2016, 05:23:28 PM

:)

Doodling with these features is fun you know. Especially if you are waiting for renders to finish.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: inkydigit on April 21, 2016, 06:28:33 AM
 8)
Neat little gif, nice find, not an Easter egg as such, but still! :)
J
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on April 21, 2016, 10:24:26 AM
:)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: luvsmuzik on May 02, 2016, 06:50:06 PM
They do leap off that one little bump tho, don't they. Cool!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on May 03, 2016, 02:25:37 PM

:)

I have a scene in my mind. Curious if it would work for a real project other then some basic GIF's.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on May 26, 2016, 05:19:47 PM

Another test. There are other ways too of course but i was curious if this kind of work could be done with a population animation.
There are 3 objects. A basic cylindrical object (that is very short in the Y axis) for the trunk, a basic leaf object and one square object to anchor the first two ones.


Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: yossam on May 26, 2016, 06:25:15 PM
Cool  8)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Dune on May 27, 2016, 02:19:37 AM
Yeah, very.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: bobbystahr on May 27, 2016, 02:28:48 AM
agree....
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: DocCharly65 on May 27, 2016, 03:33:30 AM
cool developments here!
Great, Kadri!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on May 27, 2016, 07:14:43 AM

Thanks all.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on May 27, 2016, 08:36:52 AM
Kadri, that looks amazing! Could you explain a little more detailed, what you've done, please?
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on May 27, 2016, 10:14:35 AM

I wanted to post the file itself but in some way i must have screwed it up Hannes. That would be easier,sorry.
But the general principle is easier then it might look by reading it below:

*I made two very crude objects like in the image below.

*The scale of these objects are animated from small to big.

*I made another square object for anchoring the first two objects. This plane object stands vertical.
This objects scale is animated in the Y xis from small to big.
This makes the trunk part and leaves grow in the Y axis and is the most important part.
I used big numbers in the "a" spacing of the population to get few trunk parts (two plants in this example).
To get the trunk as a solid i just used a small value in the "b" object spacing (i made ropes, pipes with this approach earlier.)

*To get the displaced look of the trunk and leaves i displaced the square object with a powerfractal that is controlled with a surface layer by altitude (to get only displacement above a certain point of the ground.)

Hope this makes sense Hannes.


Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Hannes on May 27, 2016, 11:24:30 AM
Thanks for your explanation, Kadri. Cool idea!!!!
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on May 27, 2016, 12:18:58 PM
 
:)

A growing tree would be nice Hannes  ;D
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: j meyer on May 27, 2016, 12:42:37 PM
 8) and creative, very nice. :)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on May 27, 2016, 01:14:10 PM

Thanks  :)

I wanted to make a test with bricks coming from above and building a basic house. But too many crashes.
The surface layer restricting for the object is kinda weird too.
Not sure if it is a problem because of me or something related to the object population bug we talked on the other thread.

The last test with the plant growing had many crashes too by the way.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: bobbystahr on January 20, 2017, 02:07:02 PM
Just got here from the KlausK thread...most impressive Kadri. Thanks for revealing this feature.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: bobbystahr on January 20, 2017, 02:10:21 PM
Quote from: Hannes on May 27, 2016, 11:24:30 AM
Thanks for your explanation, Kadri. Cool idea!!!!

Yup, very clear and quite brilliant thinking.
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: Kadri on January 20, 2017, 02:25:23 PM

:)
Title: Re: Basic crowd sim possibility
Post by: luvsmuzik on January 09, 2018, 08:19:05 AM
I should have read this thread completely before I added my walk sequence for Santa Claus. I thought because I was a noobie he was skating because of something I did wrong. I do not quite understand the adjustment part in animation panel, but perhaps I will get back to it. (Or make skates for Santa)  :)