sibarrick Posted May 4, 2005 Share Posted May 4, 2005 (edited) Well thanks to some handy hints from the resident A.I construct (Edward) and some major hoop jumping I've re-engineered my flex system so that it can tap into the power of the deform sop. It doesn't have all the refinement and finesse of the original flex system but once captured the cook speed of a deforming mesh is just as quick as the built in deform sop (That's cos it is the built in deform sop) So if you want a cut down but fast capture system check out the attached. At the moment it will only work with H7.2 which I don't think is released as an Apprentice version yet (sorry) If there is interest then I think I can back port it. One limitation at the moment is that you can only use 30 curves, this is easily extendable but I don't need more than this. Flex_fast.zip NOTE Due to some changes in H8 this is slightly broken now. One change is that attribtransfer doesn't use * anymore so it needs changing to a blank default. Secondly it doesn't seem to like frame 0 as a capture frame. Don't know why yet. Edited February 27, 2006 by sibarrick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted May 14, 2005 Author Share Posted May 14, 2005 (edited) If anyone is interested here is a fully commercial version of the hip file, still H7.2. Unfortunately there are several functions I use which don't appear to be in H7 and there doesn't seem to be any easy way around it. So it will have to stay H7.2. Hopefully they will apprentice it soon. There seems to be something wrong with this file, when you open it there's nothing in it. I'll have to look into this later. ok, try this one instead, I think the last one got corrupted. fast_flex.zip NOTESame problem with this one in H8 it is broken, when I work out how to fix it I'll repost. Edited February 27, 2006 by sibarrick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted May 14, 2005 Share Posted May 14, 2005 Hey Simon, I've been playing with the Flex setup a little bit whenever I get the chance but I must admit the there are a couple of things about the workflow that don't quite click. I'd have no real idea on how to set up a flex'ed character from scratch. Can I suggest you start a Wiki page or two dedicated to Flex and explain the system and maybe a small tutorial for it? Thanks for the file! Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted May 14, 2005 Author Share Posted May 14, 2005 (edited) Sure. I wasn't hearing much feedback, so I kinda assumed there wasn't that much interest. Maybe a few people were picking up the odd tip but I didn't really think there was a lot of take up on the idea. I basically now have three different spin-offs, if you think there would be an interest in a step by step of how to set things up from scratch I'll give it a go. I've had people here (at Primal) using it and it only takes about 10 minutes to pick up the basics. I have this example file with some simple setups in it, that might help for starters. This uses the original flex system and runs in H7 fine. It basically shows rigging for individual muscles rather than a whole character, so maybe that will make it a little more obvious. It uses the very minimum amount of changes from the default setup and there are a few comments scattered around which should help too. enjoy. Flex_examples1024.zip Edited May 16, 2005 by sibarrick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted May 14, 2005 Share Posted May 14, 2005 This is great, thank you. Having an entire hand (or body!) is a little overwhelming when you're trying to glean the concept. Simpler examples with a comparison against regular bone deformation would help people see the value in this, I think. I'll check out the examples today sometime.. thanks again! Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatrixNAN Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 Hey Simon, Actually I am very interested in it. I just have no idea how to really use it for the most part or how it was built and really works. Very Cool though. I mean I was very excited when I saw the play back and that it worked. This is a real solution to Houdini's Weight Map painting. Much much better. I was wondering if the poping in the pinky was in the animation or an artifact or the Flex system towards the end of the hand animation? Cheers, Nate Nesler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mario Marengo Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 Hey Simon, You know.... it's really easy to take all your many wonderful contributions for granted, but I for one am *deeply* appreciative of your willingness to share all your hard work and innovative ideas -- you practically *own* the exchange, dude!! Lately my "play time" seems to have evaporated, thanks to a string of back-to-back jobs, but your "Flex system" (should patent that thing! ) is high up in my list of things to study and learn from. Having you around is an incredible boon to the whole community! A big truck-load of "Thank You"'s going your way from all of us here at Axyz!! P.S: I quickly downloaded and opened you latest file in this thread and noticed that a lot of file sops are referencing geometry in a "Data" subdirectory of "$HIP"... was that posted elsewhere and I missed it? Cheers, and please keep it coming -- I'll be pestering you with questions once I get a chance to study it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deecue Posted May 16, 2005 Share Posted May 16, 2005 Having you around is an incredible boon to the whole community! Hear! Hear! I've learned a ton from your replies to both myself and everyone else on these forums.. I feel like I should be sending you checks instead of mailing them to my school loans.. I'm unfortunately guilty of not spending much time with your flex system but it was always on my list of things to accomplish.. If it were a perfect world where I could get paid to experiment with these awesome things all day, now that would be a different story.. but alas, that's just not how it is.. keep up the rockin' stuff.. i definitely think an odwiki supplement with it would be really nice to have.. i know i could use a good explanation myself (sometimes you don't feel as dumb asking for help with those types of things once you know that other people are asking the same ) thanks simon.. :notworthy: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted May 16, 2005 Author Share Posted May 16, 2005 Thankyou all for the the feedback. Don't worry I wasn't feeling unapprieciated I just thought maybe everyone was pretty happy with the current capture system and everyone was just thinking "why are you messing with it, it works fine as it is " So anyway I'll try and address a couple of things here. First, please find attached a tutorial for the fast_flex thing, let me know if any of the files are missing. It's easy to forget that vital stuff is reading off a network drive somewhere and doesn't get included. Also please let me know if it makes any more sense when and if you read it. Bare in mind all of this is one momental hack just to prove a point. I'd love to see proper procedural capture tools in H9 and I just want to highlight a few ways of doing it. I'll try and do a tutorial for the normal flex stuff too, I've found some video tutorial software I like so I might give that a go, we'll see. There's loads more to cover in that system and so I don't fancy writing one by hand. hips.zip flex_tut.zip Second I think this is the data you need for the other example file, sorry. I'll update the original download too. Data.zip It's very useful to run these things by other people, nothing worse than working in a vaccuum and I just hate it when people say "Houdini can't do that" but if I ever get a job with one of those nasty non-disclosure contracts you won't see much more of this.... But in the meantime it beats doing crosswords or going fishing.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted May 18, 2005 Author Share Posted May 18, 2005 Apparently the paths were wrong in the html tutorial file, sorry for that it was autogenerated and I assumed ( wrongly ) that it wrote relative paths, thanks to Leo for spotting and fixing it. I've reposted it in the above post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted May 18, 2005 Author Share Posted May 18, 2005 CAT muscle system Seems I'm not the only one thinking along these lines... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted May 31, 2005 Author Share Posted May 31, 2005 I finally tracked down the bug which stopped the original flex stuff from cooking on the first frame, and I also discovered in the example file I posted I'd left the performance monitor turned on which slowed it down rather a lot.... doh! Flex_examples.zip Flex.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eloop Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 It seems the images that go with the .htm file are missing ? -Drew Apparently the paths were wrong in the html tutorial file, sorry for that it was autogenerated and I assumed ( wrongly ) that it wrote relative paths, thanks to Leo for spotting and fixing it. I've reposted it in the above post. 18284[/snapback] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted June 1, 2005 Author Share Posted June 1, 2005 (edited) It seems the images that go with the .htm file are missing ?-Drew 18517[/snapback] Shouldn't be. They were all in the zip file. I'll double check though. That's bizarre, they were definately all in there..... well I've reposted it again, perhaps this time it will work. Edited June 1, 2005 by sibarrick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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