Halloween Specia: The evil Graveyard

[DFaber]

Here are some Screenshots of my upcoming "Halloween Special". It features the Jeep with an improved animated Walker. Additionally there is a haunted Graveyard to explore.

Now available, Download and Instructions here:

http://cms.flightgear-de.net/index.php/scenery/91-hwspecialen

"Welcome Stranger, follow me to the evil Graveyard. If you dare."


Approaching the evil Graveyard


"Shall I proceed?"

[Thorsten]

Brilliant...

[Hooray]

true art, and a very creative way to use FlightGear!
Please add your screen shots to the Halloween edition of the newsletter!

[Michat]

That's scares me, is gothic.

Thanks for sharing it.

[radi]

LOL, that's a nice one!

[Thorsten]

I was actually wondering - is the walker something that could be added to an aircraft easily? Like having the option to step out of a helicopter somewhere and walk around, or explore the aircraft carrier on foot, or... would be a really cool addition.

[DFaber]

I was actually wondering - is the walker something that could be added to an aircraft easily? Like having the option to step out of a helicopter somewhere and walk around, or explore the aircraft carrier on foot, or... would be a really cool addition.

I'm working towards that. The animated Walker is part of the Bluebird by Stewart Andreason (http://www.seahorsecorral.org) He created the animation system and I made the Walker Model and Skeleton.
I now began to detach it from the Bluebird. When I'm done it is easy yto add the Walker by including some nasal files and -set.xml files to any Model. Furthermore Pilot Figures can be posed in any Cockpit, the pose saved in an XML file.

Greetings

[AndersG]

Nice work.

When extending Stewart's walker you could consider using the constraint classes in Aircraft/Generic/WalkView/walkview.nas for describing the walkable areas inside the aircraft. The version of Stewart's walker I looked at (years ago) didn't have a good way to describe where you could walk inside the aircraft.

See
Aircraft/Nordstern/Systems/walk-views.nas
and
Aircraft/Short_Empire/Systems/walk-views.nas
for examples of how to configure constraints.

Let me know if you need more constraint types.

Cheers,

Anders

[DFaber]

When extending Stewart's walker you could consider using the constraint classes in Aircraft/Generic/WalkView/walkview.nas for describing the walkable areas inside the aircraft. The version of Stewart's walker I looked at (years ago) didn't have a good way to describe where you could walk inside the aircraft.

Thanks Anders, I was really impressed how you did the inside Walker in the Short Empire. And Yes, Stewarts internal Walker has a hardwired Map specific to the Bliuebird. Back then with the Albatross internal Walker I had a configurable Nasal Map made of square sectors. However the far goal is to have the Walker enter any AI or MP Aircraft. Therefor I need to load an aircraft specific Map, ideally from an XML File.
Another big Problem is the transition from "inside" to "outside". The internal Walker moves within the Aircrafts Coordinate System, while outside he moves in Real World coordinates. there are Functions to convert from world to local and vice-versa, but they are not flawless and seen not to work currently.

But that's way ahead. Right now I'm concentrating on making the Walker Model poseable for Use as Pilot/Co-Pilot/Passenger Use.

Greetings

[AndersG]

Thanks Anders, I was really impressed how you did the inside Walker in the Short Empire. And Yes, Stewarts internal Walker has a hardwired Map specific to the Bliuebird. Back then with the Albatross internal Walker I had a configurable Nasal Map made of square sectors. However the far goal is to have the Walker enter any AI or MP Aircraft. Therefor I need to load an aircraft specific Map, ideally from an XML File.

For internal views the walkview-walker can easily be switched between different constraints (it is done in Nordstern when climbing the ladder).
That could be used to manage the interior of different vehicles - but currently there is no support for moving the base coordinate system (since it is an internal view). For me defining the layout by using (well structured) Nasal components is as easy as doing it in XML, but I know that is not the case for everybody.
One possibility could be to define a XML hierarchy that can be parsed to a hierarchy of Nasal components (the walker mechanism itself will probably be in Nasal, anyway).

Another big Problem is the transition from "inside" to "outside". The internal Walker moves within the Aircrafts Coordinate System, while outside he moves in Real World coordinates. there are Functions to convert from world to local and vice-versa, but they are not flawless and seen not to work currently.

But that's way ahead. Right now I'm concentrating on making the Walker Model poseable for Use as Pilot/Co-Pilot/Passenger Use.

That will be a very nice thing to have. I suspect it will be really tricky to get the animations we have to perform well for this. It might be good to try to get better 3d model formats into FG to support this. I wonder if OSG has any inverse kinematics module (which computes joint angles given the position of e.g. a hand and the model skeleton) available?

Cheers,

Anders

[DFaber]

I suspect it will be really tricky to get the animations we have to perform well for this. It might be good to try to get better 3d model formats into FG to support this. I wonder if OSG has any inverse kinematics module (which computes joint angles given the position of e.g. a hand and the model skeleton) available?

There was a project porting the Cal3d Character Animation Library (http://gna.org/projects/cal3d/) to OSG:

http://osgcal.sourceforge.net/

That would be great to have since Blender can export Cal3d directly. Unfortunately it seems inactive since 2007.

OSG can load and display the Quake2 Format mdl. However mdl doesn't do IK, only Morphing animations. An mdl file contains a set of animations for different sequences (walking, jumping, etc). which get called by the application. These are visible in FG, but all animations are played sequentially.

The nice thing about the current Animation System is that it can be done completely in FlightGear. I have created an Anim8tor "Aircraft" in which the Model can be loaded for Posing duties.

Greetings

[AndersG]

The nice thing about the current Animation System is that it can be done completely in FlightGear. I have created an Anim8tor "Aircraft" in which the Model can be loaded for Posing duties.

That is good work. However, we don't necessarily need to consider FGs capabilities as constant - given a good use case (which I certainly think we have in this case) it might be more desirable to extend the FG core capabilities than reimplementing functionality that could have been included from OSG (but I don't know for sure if there are suitable things to include for this). For example, giving FG control over the mdl sequencing shouldn't be very hard.

However, I know doing things your own way is sometimes a (personal) goal in itself, and for voluntary contributed work it is hard fault that. I'm certainly guilty as charged on that point.. :)

Cheers,

Anders

[Hooray]

Cal3D is considered dead/unmaintained, but smartBody is also OSS (LGPL) and pretty active: http://smartbody.ict.usc.edu/

SmartBody is a character animation platform originally developed at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. SmartBody provides locomotion, steering, object manipulation, lip syncing, gazing, nonverbal behavior and retargeting in real time.

SmartBody is written in C++ and can be incorporated into most game and simulation engines. SmartBody is a Behavioral Markup Language (BML) realization engine that transforms BML behavior descriptions into realtime animations. SmartBody runs on Windows, Linux, OSx as well as the iPhone and Android devices.

SmartBody provides the following capabilities in real time:

Locomotion (walk, jog, run, turn, strafe, jump, etc.)
Steering – avoiding obstacles and moving objects
Object manipulation – reach, grasp, touch , pick up objects
Lip Syncing – characters can speak with simultaneous lip-sync using text-to-speech or prerecorded audio
Gazing – robust gazing behavior that incorporates various parts of the body
Nonverbal behavior – gesturing, head nodding and shaking, eye saccades
Character physics – ragdolls, pose-based tracking, motion perturbations

The only caveat being that they don't explicitly support OSG at the moment, even though a bunch of other 3D frameworks have interfaces already.

[DFaber]

the Download is here:

http://cms.flightgear-de.net/index.php/scenery/91-hwspecialen

or see first post.

Enjoy!

[DFaber]

UPDATE:
The Graveyard is now adapted to the new Scenery. the Jeep is no longer necessary, since the generic Walker can now be made available in every Aircraft.
See this Page for Details and Download:

http://cms.flightgear-de.net/index.php/engoben/90-scenen

Greetings