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View Full Version : Surface animation and bone motion


Dave
09-13-2007, 06:29 AM
Hi - a couple of questions. Is there any way within Vizard to simulate waves on a surface - controlling the height and direction with external variables. I have looked at some things - e.g. dlr files but would like to be able to directly control the surface if this is possible.

Also - if animating an avatar with bone.seteuler is there any way of making the action happen over a period of time instead of instantly other than looping a lot of smaller movements?

Finally - in version 3 -when I add the biohead it seems not to replace the existing head - you just end up with 2 heads. Removing (renaming) the head mesh file solves this but I just wondered if this was intended?

farshizzo
09-13-2007, 04:06 PM
1) I would recommend using a vertex shader to animate the surface. Vizard as built-in shader support and all the calculations would be done on the GPU, which means your simulation will run very fast. Assuming you are familiar with writing shaders, it shouldn't take too long to accomplish this.

2) You will have to manually animate the bone, there are on built-in bone animation actions.

3) Did you define the head_mesh variable in your avatars cfg file? Example:head_mesh = head.cmf

Dave
09-21-2007, 01:36 AM
Thanks Farshizzo - no, not done vertex shading but will learn or find someone that has. No problem animating bones for actions not built in and biohead ok. But another biohead question/problem. We are running quite a large model (of a church) with a talking figure in front on a dual 2.66 processor with a GEForce 7600. The model is split into several sections (eg gable, nave, aisle). When we run with just the church model or the church with a non talking avatar the CPU load is around 5-30%. When we just have the talking head avatar with no church - again around 10%. However, as soon as we put the two together the CPU load shoots up - with just the gable and avatar - 60%, gable+Nave+avatar - 80%, gable+nave+aisle+avatar - 90%+. Any extra church components and the CPU goes to 100%. That it is the biohead seems clear - if we move the viewpoint, as soon as the biohead disappears from the field of view (the body and legs can still be in) the CPU load drops to around 10% again. Is there a reason why having the biohead in conjunction with the models causes such a CPU load (maybe calculating what is hidden by the biohead and shouldn't be rendered) and is there a solution (apart from a faster processor). Thanks.

farshizzo
09-21-2007, 09:58 AM
What resolution did you export the biohead face at? The higher resolution faces can contain a lot of polygons, which can drop performance. Have you tried exporting a lower res version of the face?

Dave
09-25-2007, 03:59 AM
Hi Farshizzo - the biohead is just the one that comes with Vizard - how complex is that one - looking at the biohead_talk.vzf file it looks pretty large? When using the biohead_eyes.vzf which is smaller the cpu load drops to about 60%. Is there any way to easily reduce the size/complexity of the biohead - e.g. the talk file contains a lot of morphs that I do not use - cheeks, frown etc (in fact looks the same as biohead_all_morph.vzf). Can I just delete these from the biohead_talk.vzf to reduce the complexity or will I need to produce my own biohead?

farshizzo
09-26-2007, 02:52 PM
If you just view the biohead, how much does the CPU usage increase by? I just tested out the 'biohead_talk.vzf' file here and my CPU usage only increases by 2% when it it in view.