[x3d-public] [x3dom-users] both X3DOM and X_ITE.

Tue May 29 18:18:44 PDT 2018

If it is not in the standard, can we identify what’s in JoeKick and BoxMan that Joe wants to see in X3DOM and X_ITE? Is it the same as Leonard’s proposal?

Thanks for you hard work.  Sorry I’m managing.

John

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Andreas Plesch
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2018 5:06 PM
To: Leonard Daly
Cc: X3D Graphics public mailing list
Subject: Re: [x3d-public] [x3dom-users] both X3DOM and X_ITE.

Yes, it is unclear why morphing and skinning should be restricted to
humanoids (which sounds a little like androids but more scary :) ).

I would just target the hierarchy nodes, eg. the simple
Transform/Grouping style nodes as they already work after (scriptless)
expanding/templating. This should be hopefully not too much work, and
only contribute a little more to xdom's already too large code size.

I do not have good idea how to do the vertex animation efficiently,
eg. in the shader, other than a lot of effort.

Cheers,

-Andreas

On Tue, May 29, 2018 at 4:21 PM, Leonard Daly <Leonard.Daly at realism.com> wrote:
> Andreas,
>
> I have made the suggestions that X3D V4 include a "skin & bones" animation
> node that is not H-Anim. This would be a basic skin animation based on
> movement of bones, independent of any H-Anim body structure or naming
> conventions. It is needed when animating flexible material such as cables,
> hoses, material, etc. This node could form the basics of H-Anim skin
> animation. I do not have a formal written proposal at this time.
>
> Leonard Daly
>
>
>
> The Nancy prototypes example does not have scripts and was therefore
> easier to adapt. It turns out the included HUD was the only obstacle
> for have it work with x3dom and the protoexpander:
>
> https://x-ite-nancy-protos.glitch.me/index.xhtml
> uses
> https://x-ite-nancy-protos.glitch.me/NancyPrototypesNoHUD.json
>
> The HUD reorientation routing is disabled here but the animation buttons
> work.
>
> So this should make this example a good target for basic, native hanim.
>
> http://www.web3d.org/documents/specifications/19774-1/V2.0/HAnim/ObjectInterfaces.html
> http://www.web3d.org/documents/specifications/19775-1/V3.3/Part01/components/hanim.html
>
> are the specifications to go by ?
>
> Are Protos in
> http://www.web3d.org/documents/specifications/19774-1/V2.0/HAnim/BodyDimensionsAndLOAs.html#LOA0ExampleSourceInVRML
>
> the same as  the Nancy protos ?
>
> -Andreas
>
> On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 11:20 PM, Andreas Plesch
> <andreasplesch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ok, I will try to take out the scripts and make the example work with
> x3dom and John's expander, maybe further simplify. The next step would
> be to take a stab at blindly porting the proto's to x3dom and thereby
> discover potential problems.
>
> On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 7:26 PM, Joseph D Williams
> <joedwil at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Real fine, Andreas. Nancy is a ‘simple’ humanoid where simple means that
> geometry is child of segment which gets driven by joint. When the joint
> moves a segment, then the geometry moves as expected. Simple means the basic
> hierarchy but no continuous-mesh skin.
>
> Simple or Basic humanoid may be good target target then. Perhaps Basic
> is in a Profile ? I should look at the new spec.
>
> As you can see from the protos, nothing special about x3d is required
> because x3d is already so special – that is unless you wanna get some real
> skin in the game.
>
> Yes, there is no script required to do that ‘simple’ character, and the
> protos do not require any scripting.
>
> ok.
>
> The Nancy scripts are derived from the protos given in HAnim Part 1 Annex A
> examples (VRML at this moment, but easy to figure out). So for a basic
> humanoid there is nothing really new except the names of the various
> humanoid skeleton and skin objects. Even the animations are completely
> standard interpolators. Again, the only tough part is getting the skin to
> work.
>
> Also please notice in the spec where it is possible to create the
> continuous-mesh skin from selected vertices of geometry that is part of a
> segment. That is a possible way to leverage from geometries of the segments
> to a full continuous-mesh surface.
>
> Sounds like something you really need a authoring system for.
>
> -Andreas
>
> A collection is here:
>
> http://hypermultimedia.com/x3d/hanim/HAnimCollection20130818/0MainStageScene0818.x3dv
>
> http://hypermultimedia.com/x3d/hanim/HAnimCollection20130818/HAnimCollection20130818.zip
>
> http://www.hypermultimedia.com/x3d/JoeX3D/JoeX3D.htm
>
> some other pieces:
>
> Thanks and Best,
>
> Joe
>
> http://hypermultimedia.com/acontents.htm
>
> From: Andreas Plesch
> Sent: Monday, May 28, 2018 3:28 PM
> To: Joseph D Williams
> Cc: John Carlson; x3dom mlist; X3D Graphics public mailing list
> Subject: Re: both X3DOM and X_ITE.
>
>
>
> A quick follow up:
>
>
>
> http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Basic/HumanoidAnimation/NancyDivingProtoInstancesIndex.html
>
>
>
> seems to be a good example for proto-based HAnim.
>
>
>
> It works in x_ite and perhaps is expandable.
>
>
>
> The scripts do not seem to part of the proto's ? If not, perhaps it is
>
> possible to simplify and take those out ?
>
>
>
> -Andreas
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 6:09 PM, Andreas Plesch <andreasplesch at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 4:24 PM, Joseph D Williams
>
> <joedwil at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> From: Andreas Plesch
>
> There just does not seem a lot of demand or requests by users or
>
> customers. Of course, this may be a chicken and egg problem.
>
> And, that if you hae soething that works, like contact and instant, maybe
>
> you don’t need to complain.
>
> Or on the web look for other,widely available technologies.
>
> Contributions to x3dom or x_ite are always welcome, in any case.
>
> Great a contribution to either is a contribution to X3D.
>
> Well said.
>
> For x3dom, my interest would be probably the glTF angle. glTF has
>
> character animation. Here is an example:
>
> https://www.donmccurdy.com/2017/11/06/creating-animated-gltf-characters-with-mixamo-and-blender/>
>
> Great, I will look. The basic x3d hanim skeleton, bindings, animations,
> and
>
> geometries can be stored in gltf. I hope I can look back in the hanim
>
> archives to see a comparison I did. No doubt gltf can transport the good
>
> stuff with the only problem that gltf uses unit quats instead of
> axis-angle.
>
> x3dom uses quats internally anyways, I think rotation field values are
>
> immediately converted at parsing.
>
> The best explanation, apart from studying glTF loaders, is apparently
>
> in this figure, sorry about that:
>
> https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/master/specification/2.0/figures/gltfOverview-2.0.0a.png
>
> OK, I will look for more recent info, but I don’t think anything in this
> has
>
> changed. Structure and data – names may be different but the data and its
>
> application is the same. Now I know there may be some new tech but for
> the
>
> basics stuf, not much has changed in the last 20 years since hanim was
>
> specified.
>
> The glTF spec. itself, I think, refers to the figure to explain meaning.
>
> translation of a simple glTF character to an HAnim humanoid would be a
>
> good first step.
>
> A better first step would be to transcode an HAnim humanoid into gltf and
>
> back again. From what I saw it would work. After all, it is all the same
>
> structure and same data. I was going to work on the Boxman and the
> JoeKick
>
> models in the x3d hanim example archives.
>
> Well, these are two steps. The simplest rigged skining glTF example seems
> to be:
>
> https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-Sample-Models/tree/master/2.0/RiggedSimple
>
> A functional, minimal subset of HAnim of nodes and/or a Proto-based
>
> implementation of the nodes would also help implementers.
>
> Of course we have the proto-based nodes for HAnim where the geometries
> are
>
> children of Segments (bones) and we animate the skeleton. A prototype for
>
> seamless skin animation is Boxman in x3d hanim archives - it needs a
> fancy
>
> script to move skin. Since there are no other features of x3d that
>
> approximate the way skin is animated, there are no scriptless prototypes.
>
> Ok: Here is the link:
>
> http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Basic/HumanoidAnimation/HAnimPrototypesIndex.html
>
> But I do not see scripts ?
>
> Will there be an proto update for the new version of HAnim ?
>
> A main challenge will be probably the requirement to have vertex
>
> geometry manipulation in a shader on the GPU. This is done only for
>
> displacement textures of a CommonSurfaceShader node currently in
>
> x3dom.
>
> Yes, we need to control individual ‘skin’ vertices according to a simple
>
> weighting algorithm depending upon rotation of one or more joints. That
> has
>
> been a problem, yet it is so basic, that and morph shape, that we should
>
> have both features outside the Humanoid container.
>
> Yes, morphing seems generally useful. I think glTF may use weighted
>
> matrices but not sure.
>
> If anyone wants to learn character animation, anything you learn about
> x3d
>
> hanim will not be a waste of time. X3d hanim still documents an industry
>
> standard approach where inputs were taken from all major toolmakers
> because
>
> strangely, even back in the late 1990’s there was great input from users
> to
>
> the biggies that they had to allow data to be exported and transported
>
> between applications. Only the names were changed to prevent favoritism
> and
>
> preserve innocence – ooh, and to bring the secretive data structures and
>
> bindings out into the open.
>
> Ok. I will say that the HAnim prototypes which do not need scripts
>
> should be possible, even straightforward to port to x3dom and probably
>
> x_ite native nodes. John's protoexpander probably already could deal
>
> with those. So the main challenge probably really is the GPU based
>
> vertex displacing.
>
> Is there any use in having the Grouping/Transform type HAnim nodes only ?
>
> Best, -Andreas
>
> On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 10:42 AM, Joseph D Williams
>
> <joedwil at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> both X3DOM and X_ITE …
>
> The discussions about both X3DOM and X_ITE are, to me, missing a very
>
> important feature. Neither of these tools can do HAnim skeleton
> controlled
>
> deformable skin. This is a very important feature, lending itself to
> many
>
> important applications in addition to HAnim. There have been several
>
> discussions about the hanim joint(s) to deformable skin bindings and as
>
> far
>
> as I have seen, there is no doubt that the way x3d specifies the basic,
>
> most
>
> simple, and most transportable technique to achieve the result. So, as
> the
>
> HAnim standard takes the next step, why not move a bit toward
> implementing
>
> this important capability in your browsers. BSContact does it, I think
>
> Instant does it mostly but x3dom and x_ite don’t.
>
> Thanks and Best,
>
> Joe
>
>
>
>
> --
> Leonard Daly
> 3D Systems & Cloud Consultant
> LA ACM SIGGRAPH Past Chair
> President, Daly Realism - Creating the Future

-- 
Andreas Plesch
Waltham, MA 02453

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