Design 950 Spring 2004 with Brian Stone

A list of things I worked on this quarter:

• I worked on cleaning Cranial Cruciate Ligament Rupture mocap files in MotionBuilder 5.5. Links to movies of the 3 files are below. The third file of the stair climbing was extremely difficult. There were many missing segments of marker data. In one case, all three markers of the foot disappeared at once and I had to hand keyframe them. See the following files to view examples of the missing segments (yellow line on gray background represents the missing marker data that Motion Builder has interpolated inaccurately): Cody's LPSA marker, Cody's LFPW marker.

Cody's Stair climbing file still has some markers I couldn't get exactly into a good postion. You may see one drag behind the others in the movie file. I am hoping I can add and alter animation keys within Maya in order to correct the problem markers.

• Tutti - Walking (flash .swf embedded in html)
• Tutti - Trotting (flash .swf embedded in html)
• Cody - Stair Climbing (flash .swf embedded in html)
  

• I repeated the muscle rigging tutorial from Maya Feature Creature Creations by Todd Palamar that I couldn't get to work last quarter. After the 2nd attempt at following his directions to the letter, I began re-doing the tutorial with alterations on the option settings for spline ik and cluster handles within Maya. On my 4th attempt, I figured out which instructions were incorrect in his book. For the Spline IK setting, "Root on Axis" is supposed to be on, and "Parent Curve" should be off. When creating Cluster handles on the spline ik curve, "Relative" should be off. When I moved the wrist ik handle around in the Maya scene, it appeared to be working though there is limited range of motion in which the rig works. See the bicep .mov
  
  
• I rigged the 3-D bones to the animation skeleton and got it to follow the mocap markers. I was unhappy with the spinal column. Originally, I created two bones within the spine - one for the entire rib cage, and another for the lumbar vertebrae. The neck was one bone for all the cervical vertebrae. It was at the junctions of these bones that the spine bent off at unnatural angles, like a broken twig. See picture. So, I decided to experiment with the rigging again. I decided to add Spline Iks to the back and neck, then create Cluster handles on the Spline IK curve that would be point constrained to the motion capture markers. I tried many different binding and bone setups. When I added a bone for each vertebrae, the ribs separated from the sternum when it moved. I went with a file that had two-three vertebrae per bone and had to paint weights for hours on the geometry to get it to look mostly right. I finally got the Normal Trot cycle looking pretty good from overhead (See Trot Overhead .mov), but the walk cycle rigging looked as if the dog had scoleosis of the spine ( See Overhead Walk Picture ).
  
  
• I worked on setting up frontal, posterior, side, and overhead cameras on the files rigged in Maya. I had to set up lighting from all directions. I parented the cameras and lights to the T12 marker on the dog in order to have the cameras and lights stay the same distance from the dog. I then rendered from the different cameras to produce the .tga files that would become my final movies. I brought the .tga files into Premiere, edited for looping, rendered out as uncompressed .mov files. The .mov files were run through Sorenson Squeeze to produce .flv files that would then be imported into Flash. I'm not sure but it looks as if the 15 frames per second versions of the normal speeds look a little fast. From Maya, they were rendered for 30 fps. I exported some of them as 15 fps in Premiere and then kept the 15 fps setting in Sorenson Squeeze. Others, I rendered as 30 fps from Premiere and then converted to 15 fps in Squeeze. I may have to tweak the .fla files to get the speed to look right.
  
  See Screen Captures (jpegs) of files with creation dates for proof of how many files I worked with this quarter:
  
  Normal Trot Stiff 3-Bone Spine - Maya Files
  Normal Trot Spline IK on Spine Experiment - Maya Files
  Normal Walk - Bone model and stick figure - Maya Files
  Premiere Project Files
  Premiere Uncompressed Renders
  Squeeze Compressed .mov and .flv files
  
  
  
• In Flash, each movie is its own independent .swf file with my custom made movie control buttons to stop, play, jump to next frame, jump to previous frame, and return to start. Each movie contains the embedded .flv files, so a preloader was added to the beginning of these files in case someone experiences slow download. The individual movie files are then targeted into and empty movie clip symbol within each of my Flash scenes within a main movie. Not all the movies are created yet. I have all of the normal trotting movies rendered (all camera angles) for both 1x and 1/4x speed. These are movies of the rigged 3-D bones. For normal walking, I rigged the 3-D bones with my spline ik. However, the dog's spine looked like it had scoleosis, so I re-rigged the walk with simple cylinders for a stick figure.
  
  Below are links to the individual .swf files:
  
  Normal Trot Side 1x , Normal Trot Side 1/4x
  Normal Trot Frontal 1x, Normal Trot Frontal 1/4x
  Normal Trot Posterior 1x, Normal Trot Posterior 1/4x
  Normal Trot Overhead 1x, Normal Trot Overhead 1/4x
  
  Normal Walk Side 1x, Normal Walk Side 1/4x
  Normal Walk Frontal 1x, Normal Walk Frontal 1/4x
  Normal Walk Posterior 1x, Normal Walk Posterior 1/4x
  Normal Walk Overhead 1x, Normal Walk Overhead 1/4x
  
  
• I went over to the student computer lab at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital and tested some of the media files I created on their imacs. A support specialist loaded Cortona VRML viewer onto the computer for me to test my VRML files. See the details in Word file. Basically, the imacs handled the media files fine for about 1 hour, then started texturing VRML objects with screen captures from Explorer. The support specialist said there is a problem with the power supply to all the computers which causes them to lock up every now and then. One person abandoned a web ct quiz - left it open with the circular color wheel cursor just spinning on the screen. Not a good sign.
  
  
• I also started remodeling on the pelvis of the 3-D dog skeleton because someone who has taught anatomy many times told me the pubic symphasis was lower and the pelvis should be more V shaped from behind. The obturator foramen should have been visible from the side view and it wasn't in my original pelvis. I haven't incorporated it into the already rigged files. See rotational .mov of the pelvis.
  
• I installed another hard drive in my computer and have been making backups every night.

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