Creating Realistic Turns in Vizard using walkTo

[mikeb]

I'm working on a project where Vizard is being is being used to visualize various everyday walking scenarios.

A camera is linked to an avatar which is being set through these scenarios.

Initially a path was created for the avatar to follow, however the avatar and camera glitch out when turning the corner. Additionally creating a path seems to have issues with climbing non-level terrain such as slopes.

As a result <vizact>.walkTo was implemented which so far has been working perfectly for slopes. The issue with using walkTo seems to be it's difficult to simulate turns using this command.

Is there a method for creating turns using walkTo that doesn't look choppy and creates a relatively clean curve? If not is there a better way to simulate a curve in Vizard?

Currently our code looks like this for the turn
b = range(1,91,10)

print(b)
def right_turn_fcn(initX,initZ,radius):
theta=float(0)
for theta in ((b)):
print theta
Z_new=initZ+(radius*math.cos(theta/(180.0)*(3.14)))-radius

X_new=initX+(radius*math.sin(theta/(180.0)*(3.14)))
print(X_new,Z_new)
avatar.addAction(vizact.walkTo([X_new,ground,Z_new],walkSpeed=speed,turnSpeed = (theta*speed/(2*radius*math.sin(theta/(2.0))))))
right_turn_fcn(-27,17.5,5)


We have tried playing with the parameter turnSpeed, but so far have not been able to achieve a smooth looking curve. Any direction would be greatly appreciated for mimicking a smooth turn.

Thanks,
Mike

[Jeff]

Try linking the avatar to an animation path. If you are using 3ds Max, you can quickly create complex paths that are exported with the model:

http://docs.worldviz.com/vizard5/#max_animation_paths.htm

You can also create animation paths in Vizard by specifying a series of points:

http://docs.worldviz.com/vizard5/#Animation_paths.htm