Basic crowd sim possibility

Started by Kadri, August 06, 2015, 09:08:02 PM

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Dune

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.

DocCharly65

Absolutely amazing! Cool, Hannes!

My VLC plays it without problems.

Hannes

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.

Hannes

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!

Kadri

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 :)

Kadri


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/

TheBadger

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?
It has been eaten.

Matt

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
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Hannes

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!

Oshyan

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

Hannes

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.

Hannes

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.

Kadri

#177

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

Hetzen

Thoroughly enjoying this thread guys. Awesome work.

bobbystahr

Same here and find it inspiring....thanks guys...
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist