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  #1  
Old 10-12-2006, 04:10 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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Avatar Head Error

Custom Avatar heads have started freezing my computer and I'm not sure what I could have changed to bring that about. With any custom head (via PeopleMaker) the world loads fine, but whenever the head is about the come into view the computer freezes. Sometimes I can force-quite vizard when the world freezes in time and the rest of the computer is uneffected, but the right eye of my headmount (stereoscopic) remains frozen on the vizard scene. I baffled.

Here's the little world I'm working on: http://www.yousendit.com/download/Qmx8cXASp3k%3D
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  #2  
Old 10-12-2006, 09:18 AM
farshizzo farshizzo is offline
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Which version of Vizard are you running? I just tested out the script on 2.5 and 3.0 and it runs fine. Does this crash occur in PeopleMaker as well? Have you tried it on any of the vzf files that come with Vizard ( biohead_talk.vzf, biohead_eyes.vzf) ?
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  #3  
Old 10-13-2006, 06:13 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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Extremely strange

I'm running Vizard 2.5 and the models work fine in PeopleMaker. Although loading the default male and female avatars works fine I hadn't tried adding a new head that came with vizard, so I just tried sticking morph_head.vzf onto it, with very odd results. I loaded the world without any kind of trackers running and while the head shows up fine, it doesn't stay on the avatar's shoulders. The head actually moves depnding on where you're viewing it from. If I look at the avatar from a few feet away it looks fine, but if I move towards it then the head slides to the left and slides the opposite direction if I move backwards.
Also, although the image was fine on the screen, the image in the headmount was very strange. The image for the left eye worked fine, but the image for the right eye didn't contain the head at all and the image was jumping around (it looked like maybe it was switching between the left and right eye views, but I can't be sure). I then noticed that this headmount problem only occurred if I turned my head to the left to see the head. If I brought it into view from any other angle there were no problems. So I then switched te head to villain.vzf if there was a similar condition o the freezing, but alas the computer froze as soon as the head was about to come into view, although I was turning my head to the right to see it.

Is it possible that the Z800 HMD is causing the problem? I know it's a somewhat non-standard piece of equipment. For some of these trials I disabled it through Windows though.
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  #4  
Old 10-14-2006, 12:59 AM
mspusch mspusch is offline
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please make sure that your are testing this with the latest version of 2.5xx which you can download at www.worldviz.com/download .
I think it's 2.53g.
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  #5  
Old 10-16-2006, 03:50 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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I uninstalled the previous version and installed the newest, but all of the strange effects are stil there. Also, I've noticed that the morph head, as well as sliding back and forth, is smaller than it should be.

If it's working on your machine does that imply perhaps a problem with my graphics card or drivers? It seems likely only because of the strange effect with the headmount where after I forcequit Vizard the right eye remains frozen.
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  #6  
Old 10-16-2006, 10:59 AM
Gladsomebeast Gladsomebeast is offline
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It would be helpful to reduce the number of varables in this problem.

Open and run the Vizard25\tutorial\avatarhead\tutorial_speech.py file. Without using the HMD does it work (dont worry about the speach stuff)? Then try swaping in your villian.vzf head. Finaly try the script with the HMD.
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  #7  
Old 10-17-2006, 02:27 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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Ok, I've used that tutorial with and without the HMD and using the male and female bodies with the default head, villain, and a custom female head. In every instance there are no display problems, no freezes, and the head doesn't slide depending on viewpoint, but all the heads appeared smaller than they should be. I'd say probably about 2/3 of the correct size.


[edit] I've talked to the technicians here and it seems that there might be a problem with how the NVidia drivers are dealing with stereo viewing. I'm going to turn stereo off and see if the problem persists, but I'm not going to be able to do that until tomorrow.

Last edited by Plymouth; 10-17-2006 at 06:14 AM.
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  #8  
Old 10-20-2006, 03:39 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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another update

So there seems to be a few different problems. I turned off the Stereo setting in NVidia's settings and that stops nearly all the problems. The head no longer slides and the no heads cause crashes. But the problem still remains that all the male heads are displaying as too small. So I'm wondering what might be behind the head-size problem. And if you have any idea what I might be able to do to fix the stereo problem let me know. I'm fairly sure all the drivers are current, but I'll check that again and make sure the settings are all correct.
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  #9  
Old 10-20-2006, 10:52 AM
farshizzo farshizzo is offline
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Does resizing the heads in PeopleMaker and re-exporting make any difference?
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  #10  
Old 10-25-2006, 01:44 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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Sadly, no. I just tried that with my custom heads and with biohead_talk. If I use resize-to-ideal in PeopleMaker it doesn't change them and once re-exported they have the same problem in Vizard. I'd be tempted to reinstall everything except I already did that when I upgraded to the latest version last week.
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  #11  
Old 10-27-2006, 12:32 AM
mspusch mspusch is offline
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hi, I wonder if someone asked this before but which nVidia card are your using? we have seen artifacts for active stereo before for some lower end and/or older nVidia cards. also, have you tried updating your nVidia driver to the latest version? sometimes this helps.

we have several installations now where the GeForce 7800 series works very well with the active stereo for the eMagin HMD unit.
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  #12  
Old 10-27-2006, 07:33 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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We're using a Quadro FX 4350/4000 SDI and I should probably update those drivers.
We finally transferred all the extension wires over from the old PC/SVGA HMD to the new Z800, including the InertiaCube. The HMD is working fine, but trying to use the InertiaCube causes Vizard to abort loading the world. I suspect this has something to do with the z800 headtracking software. With all these strange little problems I'm considering just wiping the entire machine on Monday and starting from scratch now that all the right hardware is in place. Hopefully that will fix the Inertiacube problem and the small heads problem.
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  #13  
Old 10-29-2006, 01:51 PM
mspusch mspusch is offline
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definitely try updating the drivers first before you try anything else.
we know from multiple installations that the emagin works well with Vizard in active stereo, and from above conversation it sounds a lot like it could be a hardware configuration problem (like nVidia driver settings for active stereo, etc.).
if there is a way to reset all the setings to factory default for the nVidia driver, definitely try this also, but updating the nVidia driver to the 'latest greatest' is key.

RE IntertiaCube2 causing Vizard to crash, this is a problem of the new Intersense API which now scans both, serial (COM) and USB ports. If there is a device connected to the USB ports, sometimes this gets picked as 'Intersense' and then makes the Intersense driver crash. we are working with Intersense to fix this.

For now (and in general), the best option is to specify the port the Intersense is connected to. Under your windows system's device manager, identify the port which the Intersense is on (like COM3, COM5, etc.).

then, before loading the Intersense plugin in Vizard, specify:

PORT_INTERSENSE = 4
# if the InertiaCube is connected to COM4 for example

intersense = viz.add('intersense.dls')
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  #14  
Old 10-31-2006, 06:20 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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Specifying the port fixed the Intersense problem I'm very happy to have that working again.

I've updated the nVidia drivers and I'm currently working on making sure all the settings are where they're supposed to be. I've had to turn stereo off for now, but I'll post again if I have problems after all the settings are where they're supposed to be.
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  #15  
Old 02-21-2007, 06:45 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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I'm making another big push to get this problem solved as it has stubbornly defied all previous attempts. Right now I'm testing it with all tracking off to keep things simple. I've come up with some very strange results and I'm wondering not only if people can fix the problem, but also if they can replicate what I'm seeing. I've updated my drivers, but I still suspect this may somehow be an issue unique to my computer. You can download the world I'm running here (minus the music to keep the size down):
http://www.yousendit.com/download/T2...cTJ3TGg1VEE9PQ

Ignore for a moment that I'm a doofus and the 'w' and 'b' keys overlap the avatar head instead of replacing it. Althouh if people could let me in on how to fix that I'd appreciate it.
The main problem: Custom heads (including ones that come with Vizard) cause Vizard to become jumpy whenever the head is in the field of view.
Additional strangeness: I've discovered that if you are looking at the default avatar and then change the head to black and then change the head to black (resulting in a weird overlay) then suddenly things stop being jumpy, although they become jumpy again if you look away from the head and then back at the head. I have no idea what that means, but I'm hoping that it might suggest something to someone else.
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  #16  
Old 02-21-2007, 10:27 AM
farshizzo farshizzo is offline
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The vzf files you included contain about 20,000 polygons. This is most likely dropping your framerate and causing Vizard to be jumpy. You should consider using a lower resolution head.

Also, every time you hit the 'w' or 'b' key, you are loading a new face, instead of reusing an existing one. This will definitely kill your frame rate after a while. I posted a new version of your script that pre-loads the faces and only displays one at a time. It also fixes the problem with the heads overlaying each other.
Code:
import viz
viz.go(viz.FULLSCREEN)

#viz.collision(viz.ON)

#ALL TRACKER INITIALIZATION
#PORT_INTERSENSE = 3
#myTracker = viz.add('intersense.dls')
#PORT_PPT = 1
#ppt1 = viz.add('vizppt.dls')
#viz.tracker()
#myTracker.reset()  # Reset the tracker

music = viz.add('Soundtrack6.mp3')
#music.play()
music.loop(viz.ON)

target = viz.add('male.cfg')
target.translate(-2,0,0)
target.rotate(0,1,0, 90)
target.state(1)
#target.face('Stephen.vzf')
#target.face('biohead_talk.vzf')

whiteHead = viz.add('VRwhitemale.vzf')
blackHead = viz.add('VRblackmale.vzf')
whiteHead.visible(0)
blackHead.visible(0)

def ChangeMusic(next):
	global music
	music.stop()
	music = viz.add(next)
	music.play()

def StopTheMusic():
	global music
	music.stop()

def mykey(key): 
	if key == '1':
		ChangeMusic('Soundtrack1.mp3')
	elif key == '2':
		ChangeMusic('Soundtrack2.mp3')
	elif key == '3':
		ChangeMusic('Soundtrack3.mp3')
	elif key == '4':
		ChangeMusic('Soundtrack4.mp3')
	elif key == '5':
		ChangeMusic('Soundtrack5.mp3')
	elif key == '6':
		ChangeMusic('Soundtrack6.mp3')
	elif key == ' ':
		StopTheMusic()
	elif key == 'w':
		target.face(whiteHead)
		whiteHead.visible(1)
		blackHead.visible(0)
	elif key == 'b':
		target.face(blackHead)
		blackHead.visible(1)
		whiteHead.visible(0)

#viz.eyeheight(1.5)

viz.callback(viz.KEYBOARD_EVENT,mykey)
The solution to the jumpiness is to either upgrade your computer/graphics card or use a lower poly version of the head.
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  #17  
Old 02-23-2007, 05:30 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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How do I create a lower-resolution head?
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  #18  
Old 02-23-2007, 08:55 AM
Gladsomebeast Gladsomebeast is offline
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To make a lower poly head, use the software that was used to create the head, such as 3dMeNow or 3ds Max.
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  #19  
Old 02-28-2007, 06:43 AM
Plymouth Plymouth is offline
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I feel foolish, but I can't find anything that controls resolution in 3DMeNow. Vizard 3 is having the same problem with the heads as 2.5, but to a lesser extent which makes me think that 3.0 is just more efficient and that high resolution is indeed what's killing it.
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  #20  
Old 02-28-2007, 08:42 AM
Gladsomebeast Gladsomebeast is offline
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The resolution is the number of verticies in the head mesh. When you are exported the head from 3DMeNow there is an option to set the Subdivision iterations in the geometry tab. Set this to 0 to produce the least number of verticies.
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