New Intuitive Animation Interface for 2.107

[thyme]

2.107 is ready for download from:

http://www.seamless3d.com/download

The goal for this version has been to make animation more intuitive. The previous way involved using a global FreezeTime control panel to control TimeSensor nodes but this was prone to the user forgetting which TimeSensor was either enabled or under the control of the FreezeTime. These 2 control panels have been replaced by a much simpler and more intuitive Anim node specifically designed for seamless.

The Anim node does not compromise versatility yet it can be related easily to Avatar Studio:



Unlike av studio, a pose is not automatically captured. Each pose has to be recorded by clicking capture. Automatic capture will be added in the future if it is a better way to go.
The Anim node lets us add more programmable steps than av studio's interface making it possible to create Wallace and Gromet type Movies and lets us copy and paste poses too. Also seamless of course is not limited to animating one preset structure of parts.

Soon as I get the chance I will make this window more specialised graphically, like for example, replacing the slider field with a slider bar specifically designed for animation.

To make seamless have less obstacles for beginners just to create an av with some gestures, I have made 2.107 so that there is no need to add an avatar Proto manually or even have to deal with one in the scene tree. Instead all the user has to do is drag a GestureGroup node to the scene node and Seamless will automatically output the wrl containing an Avatar Proto. If an Anim node is moved into the GestureGroup node it will be triggered by contact in multi user mode. The order of the gestures is determined by the same order they are contained in the GroupGesture node. (1st Anim = gesture1, 2nd Anim = gesture2 etc)
If you want an animation not to be triggered by a gesture, leave it outside the GroupGesture node.

The setUpAnimation feature now adds script instead of ROUTEs to connect the animation nodes together because I have for sometime now, not been able to justify why a beginner should learn ROUTEs, when the equivalent script instructions are at least as intuitive. Being familiar with scripts can lead to much more exciting results. ROUTEs will still work the same as before except for when capturing a pose. If this is a problem for anyone who has used the old FreezeTime to do key frame animation, please let me know via the forum or by email. I will be happy to convert any file or perhaps add a feature to convert ROUTEs to script. This will not be a big task for me so please don't hesitate to speak up

I have updated the tutorial:

http://www.seamless3d.com/tut/immediate ... ation.html

As a result of rewriting some of seamless's output code I have broken the output Pov-Ray feature which I hope to fix soon

Many thanks to bumpy for fixing the mouse wheel for zoom control for the 3d window (I have no mouse wheel, he does) and finding and helping me fix a bug (that apparently was a problem in some systems) that made the mouse misbehave when clicking in the 3d window.

[Lilly]

WooooooooooW thyme !!!!


good work !

Congrats !!!

thanks a lot...

Bisouxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Lilly

[griff]

Thyme, that looks like a simpler way to create an animation .. though I have not tried it yet

Is there a way to save *just* the animation and load it ? It would be nice to build a library of animations that could be added to different avs. (You would probably need of course to have same part names.)

griff

[thyme]

Thanks much for your uplifting support dear Lilly I do hope this interface will make animation much more fun for all.

Hi griff thanks for your valuable question. I modified the simple feature from the FreezeTime/TimeSensor way to work with the new Anim way, where you can import any Anim nodes that exist in a smls file, however this has not been tested much and I just found a bug when I tried to import an Anim node to a scene when an Anim already exists.
I will try to get this fixed later today and will explain how to import a gesture then

kind regards

[thyme]

Sorry I have been away from the net for days but I have been busy working on making 2.108 a little better which is now ready for download.

I have fixed some bugs and improved the import feature and written a tutorial showing how to import gestures but I am not sure how reliable this works yet for a lack of time to test it well.

The new tutorial (which will need 2.108) showing how to import gestures is:

http://www.seamless3d.com/tut/importing_gestures

I have fixed at least one occurrence of a bug that would concatenate the names of nodes with themselves. This was not a serious bug as the name did not really change and would go away soon as you clicked on the node but it would have no doubt caused confusion. I am not sure if this bug has been entirely eradicated but I know now the cause of it and know how to fix it if it does appear anywhere else.

In this version I have altered the way the background color for the scene tree behaves. I originally wanted to be able to mark a section of nodes by color, that was independent of the group node they were in. But the typical situation I would experience likes this, was after copying or moving nodes from one area to another, I would then have to change the color to match the new location. Now when you move nodes to a group, they will take on the same background colour of the group node they are moved into. The group node's background colour is changed by simply changing's it's "marker" field. I have only added a marker field to GroupBuild nodes so far because this is all I use this feature for but if you think it would be good to be able to colour other types of Groups, please let me know via this forum. I can easily add a marker field to any node, even standard VRML nodes without causing incompatibilities because I can make seamless not output such a field to a wrl.

I have changed the way collapsing is formatted in a seamless file that is more reliable than before. This change should not be noticed except old files may open with all the nodes expanded but the new way of saving collapsed states will be saved from here on.

[bumpy]

Hi thyme

The new Anim node is a nice improvement

I have some existing avs (e.g robot) made using the old TimeSensor routes. I tried outputting my robot using version 2.108 and i get this error when i open it in blaxxun contact: Unknown field "children" for a TimeSensor node

I tracked the error down to this sort of thing:
DEF ts_zero TimeSensor {
children [
DEF oi_z_pelvis OrientationInterpolator {
key [0 1 ]
keyValue [0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 ]
}
DEF oi_z_l_hip OrientationInterpolator {
key [0 1 ]
keyValue [1 0 0 .015441 1 0 0 .015441 ]
}
]
}

It's no big deal as it's no trouble to fix up in an editor.

I tried to compare the new robot.wrl with one created using an earlier version of seamless3d to see what had changed. The tool I used needs the files to be uncompressed but when I ouput from seamless3d with the outputGZipped option unchecked the .wrl file is still compressed .

bumpy

[thyme]

thanks for letting me know Bumpy it's so helpful to get feedback like this

Yesterday I added a simple feature that will let you convert a TimeSensor to an Anim nodes, it will be in the next version I upload I hope in a few days time. I have made a number of important bug fixes over the last few days but there are still some more to deal with. Quite a few have piled up I will look into the outputGZipped issue today.

thyme