[Korea-chapter] [h-anim] composable behaviors, animations, sequencers

[Joe D Williams]

Hi Myeong,

> I will bring our 10 example H-Anim characters designed by 3ds Max to 
> the Siggraph H-Anim meeting.

Thank you for this. I think it does not matter which tool the author 
uses in design and animation, it is the actual human readable X3D 
HAnim user code that represents each character that is of primary 
importance.

At any point in the process, I think it should be possible to produce 
a text file showing what is happening inside, in the actual user code 
that defines and animates the character.
I haven't discussed this detail specifically in the working group but, 
for example, that is why we are not moving forward now with the 
existing 'diverse models' HAnim change.
We only had one X3D player that demonstrated the very important 
concept and no running prototypes. Some interest, but perhaps more 
interest in just sticking to the simplist way of just drawing 
everything directly in skeleton space instead of providing a 
systematic way to adjust things into skeleton space.

Historically, this is similar to the step between hanim level1 where 
geometry is part of a segment and the level2 deformable skin where the 
'skin' is part of the humanoid with movement controlled by joint 
bindings. This step was practically impossible to prototype (see 
boxman script and bsC protos). It took an interval to get this best 
practice, along with the best practice displacer methods, of skin 
animation running in more than one browser. Yet today deformable skin 
is supported widely.

> because we realized some problems in wrl files.

Maybe we can help. I can't think of a better forum to deal with wrl, 
x3d or general humanoid animation probems than our consortuium so 
please bring these problems forward.

> All the characters can be animated using BVH motion capture files in 
> our motion viewer.

Of course the goal is that we can define a system that can be used in 
every X3D tool. I think understanding of bvh format and best practice 
conversion to native X3D data types is important because it provides 
an interface with consumer devices that are being widely used. We 
recieved this link from an early contributor to h-anim
http://cg.cis.upenn.edu/hms/research/ADAPT/
as another example. I hope you can meet with Norm at the show.

To me it is most important that there is not a rush to define a 
standard but we search for the true best practices by testing several 
working solutions.

> All the animaiton sequences can be stored as an animation file

That goes right along with existing X3D HAnim practice. Either 
generate the data using scripts or interpolators and/or import data as 
a string or a file.

I think another very important part of the motion proposal is the 
detail that the proposal introduces a change from 'realtime' to a 
fixed or variable author specified frames per second mode (fps).
I think this is a way to synchronize the X3D player to some sort of 
capture or rendering device that works at fixed or known frame 
intervals, such as 'video' capture/playback.
As usual, with X3D there are several ways to get this done and please 
keep in mind that we must search for a general solution to this method 
of animation capture/playback in X3D.

I am also hoping you can briefly overview some of the current work of 
evaluation and validation of the existing HAnim model by showing the 
three specification examples we have been working on.

Have fun in California.
Thank You and Best Regards,
Joe

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Myeong Won Lee" <myeongwonlee at gmail.com>
To: "Don Brutzman" <brutzman at nps.edu>
Cc: "Joe D Williams" <joedwil at earthlink.net>; "Myeong Won Lee" 
<mwlee at suwon.ac.kr>; "Human Animation working group" 
<h-anim at web3d.org>; <korea-chapter at web3d.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2013 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Korea-chapter] [h-anim] composable behaviors, 
animations, sequencers


> Dear Don,
>
> I will bring our 10 example H-Anim characters designed by 3ds Max to 
> the
> Siggraph H-Anim meeting.
> We are testing them again if their formats are valid although they
> are similar as I presented several times, because we realized some 
> problems
> in wrl files.
> All the characters can be animated using BVH motion capture files in 
> our
> motion viewer.
> All the animaiton sequences can be stored as an animation file
> (temporarily, "hanim" file extension is used).
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Myeong
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 11:45 PM, Don Brutzman <brutzman at nps.edu> 
> wrote:
>
>> Joe, thanks for your note, makes sense.
>>
>> Based on last night's work, am also thinking that there are a few 
>> broad
>> categories of animation:
>> - composable behaviors that animate the body itself (Walk, 
>> WaveLeftHand,
>> etc.) i.e. your demonstrated set of blendable behaviors
>> - animations that move the body from place to place
>> (WalkDownTwelfthStreet, WalkInCircle, TangoMotionCapture)
>> - sequencers (WalkDownTwelfthStreet, TurnAround, Wait 10s, SitDown 
>> at bus
>> stop, Wait for bus, StandUp)
>>
>> Any other categories or use cases?
>>
>> Myeong Won Lee, the most helpful things we might get from you (and 
>> others)
>> would be example X3D scenes from your work that we might test and 
>> try out.
>>
>> all the best, Don
>> --
>> Don Brutzman  Naval Postgraduate School, Code USW/Br
>> brutzman at nps.edu
>> Watkins 270,  MOVES Institute, Monterey CA 93943-5000 USA 
>> +1.831.656.2149
>> X3D graphics, virtual worlds, navy robotics 
>> http://faculty.nps.edu/**
>> brutzman <http://faculty.nps.edu/brutzman>
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Myeong Won Lee
> College of IT, U. of Suwon
> Hwasung-si, Gyeonggi-do, 445-743 Korea
> Tel) +82-31-220-2313, +82-10-8904-4634
> E-mail) mwlee at suwon.ac.kr
>