bTraffic - multiple vehicle type selector...

I've finally got back to working on bTraffic, my traffic animation tool. The latest update includes the addition of vehicle types. What this means is that you can easily add multiple vehicles to the animation, such as models of trucks, cars, bikes etc just with a simple click of a button. Next up is to allow a weighting to the traffic so that you can have some simulations heavily laden with trucks whereas other simulations might be sparsely populated with traffic and only consist of cars.
Plenty more to do...

Here's an example of the generation of a road and the assignment of 3 different vehicles to the simulation:

virtually free virtual reality...

I've recently got back into some games I played a few years ago - Live for Speed 'LFS' for short (racing game) and IL2 Sturmovik (WW2 Flying). Each are great games and LFS even lets you play the demo online where there are hundreds of other demo players all wanting to race.
Anyways while getting back into IL2 I found that the hat view method of looking around the screen while flying was a bit restrictive and started searching for other methods. Two that I found were TrackIR and Freetrack. Both use the same idea of using infra-red or leds attached to your head (e.g, on a cap) and tracking the positions using standard webcam technology. From the captured information algorithms are run to determine whereabouts your head position is in 3D space and then this is transferred to the game that you are playing (if it supports it).
TrackIR is a commercial product including everything you need to start out of the box - an infra-red webcam, software and head markers but will set you back a fair amount of money. Seeing as I didnt want to fork out too much money I decided to have a go at Freetrack - the free one.
Freetrack is the actual software that takes your webcam information and figures out your current head position.
If going with Freetrack you will need the software, a webcam, a cap, some leds, some resistors, a bit of wire, a battery pack and some batteries and an old metal coathanger to make the framework that the leds sit on. It's probably advisable to get a switch as well so you dont have to keep taking the batteries out when you're not using it. So for the cost of a webcam (£20) and the other bits (a few pounds) I have a virtual reality type system :o)

Here's an in game example of someone using Freetrack in IL2:


and here's an example of using it in LFS

research paper...

Thought I'd post up a recent research paper I wrote for my Masters course. It's entitled 'Group Behavioural Animation Tools' and looks into using existing and modifications of existing theories to create tools specifically for computer animators.
Have a read and let me know what you think ;)
Group Behavioural Animation Tools - Simon Mann

space navigator annoyance...

I've been using a space navigator for a while now and really like how you can move around the viewport in Maya or 3ds Max without having to use the mouse.
The only problem in Maya is that whenever you install or update the latest drivers it defaults your current Maya shelf to be the 3dconnexion tool shelf - very annoying.
To get around this you need to hunt down and edit a file called MagellanStartup.mel that is located where ever you installed Maya (e.g, C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya\scripts\startup). Once you have found it search for the following line in the file 'C3DxShelfTab();' (without quotes) and comment it out by putting two forward slashes just before it like so: '// C3DxShelfTab();' (again without quotes). Now start Maya again and you should be presented with your old shelf preferences as before.

2D illustrations...

I've just updated my 2D section with a few older illustrations that coincide with the 'warcones' game I made a while back. The idea was to make a few different themed posters and resulted in a war, horror and family oriented style for each. I also made a science fiction one but that was a combination of 2D and 3D so it was added a while ago to the 3D section.
Have a great bonfire night :o)

maxscripting...

I had a go at Maxscript for the first time today. A group project at Uni required some automation of .obj importing and exporting so I sat down and started learning the language. The help in Max is pretty similar to Maya and so it was quite easy to pick up and do the necessaries. Here is the simple script for anyone who is interested import export .obj script
One or two interesting things to note is that running multi-line code in the Maxscript listener doesnt work. It took a while to figure that out and so I moved it all into an actual Maxscript and things started working fine. Another is the use of normal brackets () for loop statements and enclosing functions, a little strange when you've been using curly braces {} for years (PHP etc) and have just started learning not to use them as with Python.
All in all it looks a pretty goof thing to learn alongside Mel/Python and should be of value in the future :o)

bTraffic progress

I'm currently working on a particle based Maya animation tool called bTraffic.
What this allows an animator to do is to draw a series of lines in Maya and auto-generate traffic that drive along the lanes.
Further updates will add in extra functionality such as inner lane changing, exit road options, density controls and replacement of cubes with custom models.
Click the image to see some demo videos.

barcamp leeds...

Thought I'd do a little bit of advertising for barcamp leeds here seeing as I'll be going along and having a look at what 'barcamp' events are all about. It looks like an interesting lineup and has some people there that I used to work with back in the days of hardcore web programming. It's also at the Old Broadcasting House in Leeds which has facilities available for our current Masters group project (more about that when it is complete). It's a rather swanky place, nicely laid out and kitted out with some cool equipment.
Should be fun :)

you tube updates to the site...

Just a little note to say that I've uploaded my 3D videos onto you tube and linked them straight to these pages so people wont have to download movies before seeing what they are.
I've also split the 3D section into relevant categories so that it is easier to follow.
Finally all the videos that I have uploaded can be accessed from the following you tube page: My videos

An example can be seen below:

Boids and flocking...

Currently I'm working on creating a tool called bFlocking in Maya to simulate artifical flocking. This system called 'Boids' was originally created by Craig Reynolds.
My first tests were conducted in Flash using Actionscript 2 and I have now progressed onto writing the system within Maya 8.5 using Python.
If you want to look into what boids are then the best place is to start is at Craig Reynolds website at http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/
To see my experiments and to download and test the current version of the tool go to my tools section at: http://www.flash-fx.net/3D/tools/bFlocking/

dvd drive disappeared?...

Well this was an interesting one. Today I was about to do some DVD backups of my system only to find that my DVD drive had strangely disappeared from the system. I've also got an external DVD drive which I bought when my laptop DVD drive packed in and plugging this in even came up with the same error - that windows could not use the drive.
After some digging around it appears that this can happen occasionally on XP machines (XP 64 in my case) and even on Vista machines...
To fix the problem you need to:

1. Click on the start menu.
2. In the search box type in 'regedit' without the quotation marks.
3. Maximize the HKLM and then go ahead and browse until you reach the key listed HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11­CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
4. In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of 'UpperFilter' and 'LowerFilter' or maybe either one or the other - you want to click on each of these keys and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
5. Restart Windows.
This seemed to give me back my original DVD drive and also let me access the external DVD drive. A bit wierd but all in a day's work using Windows ;)

Si

prototype game...

Well today I can reveal a prototype game I've been developing for Uni. Its done in Virtools, a game development system that makes things a little bit easier than jumping into all that crazy coding you hear about in games (although you can still do that).
The game is called Warcones and the instructions in the game tell you what its about and what to do ;)
You first need to have the virtools life player browser plugin installed and then once thats on you can go to play the game.
It's only basic and is a prototype so dont expect rocket science but I hope you enjoy it.

Si

futuristic city scene...

Here is a completed version of the futuristic city I've been making recently. While doing it I've learned about render layers which is basically rendering all the different elements of the scene into different layers so that you have a lot more control in modifying it later. I've also touched on matte painting - digitally painting over source material (photos, 3D renders etc) to create a final image, and it is good fun to attempt.

update needed...

Well I've not updated for a while (thanks for reminding me warren ;) so straight to it:

First up I've posted a panoramic quicktime VR of the Botannical Gardens in Sheffield. It was created by taking about 18 shots around a central point on a hand digital camera. These were then cleaned up in photoshop by altering the lighting and levels and finally stitched together and imported into VRWorx where the quicktime movie was created.

Next up is a couple of HDR images that I have created for use. They are basically around 10 or 12 different exposure shots of a spherical object (the back of a dented ladle in my case) which are then imported into HDRshop and the HDR image generated. Download the first and second HDR images if you want to test them out in a 3D program.

Third up are some test renders of a bathroom scene I created especially to play with basic external single point lighting through a window. They were rendered using mental ray and after a lot of playing about with settings things started to make sense. Check them out (and the other bits) in the 3D section.

Next up is a test futuristic city scene I'm creating for a poster. For the first time I'm using render layers which basically mean you render different elements of the 3D scene out into layers such as a shadow layer, colour layer, specular layer etc. This means that you dont have to keep rendering the whole scene out every time you make a change, just the layer where changes have occurred. It also means you can import the layers into photoshop and play about with them to get a better effect than from the full render. Finally it means you can paint over areas in photoshop with new elements from photos or just hand painted things and this can give you a good final piece. Thanks to Jay and Steve from SimplyMaya for explaning and showing what render layers are about and how they can be used :)

I've got a few more things on the go but they can wait for another posting soon ;)

particles and dynamics...

Well I'm on the course at Leeds Met doing what I wanted. Got a few weeks to catch up on but its going ok so far. We've had lots of cool things to look into so far, panoramic VR scenes (which I should have some stuff to post on soon) and looking into particles and dynamic effects as extra work. I've just updated the 3D section with some example tests I've been playing with recently.
I've also been playing with Mudbox 3D, a new scuplting tool a bit like the sculpting parts of ZBrush but apparently a lot easier to get into. Again check out the 3D section for the first try with it on my Emperor Hadrian mesh and a second try as a freeform experiment.

no more course...

Well the specific course I was about to start this wednesday is not running. I got a phone call last week saying that it wasnt running due to lack of numbers and that they had screwed up as all the students should have been informed in December but were not. Not good when you leave a full time job ready for the course!
Anyways I'm still deciding whether to go for the 'alternative' course or whether to go back to work (maybe part-time) and enroll on a course at Animation Mentor (AM). I've spent quite a bit of time over the last few days reading AM student blogs and haven't found anything bad yet about the course or the way it is taught.

On a side note, dont buy a standard SapphireTech x1950 Pro card. The problems in one of my previous posts amounted to something on the card going pop and giving off that lovely metallic burning smell you sometimes get in PC's. Needless to say it was returned and I decided to risk going for the SapphireTech Ultimate x1950 Pro which has a Zalman top class fan and completely revised heatsink and the card is running like a dream - BF2142 and Call of Duty 2 fly along great.