PaceMaker Demo
Community Forums/Showcase/PaceMaker Demo
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| Still a bit rough round the edges -Your Feedback & suggestions( even rude ones )appreciated - Demo available from: http://www.goddysey.com/pacemaker.htm Now imports .3ds , .X and .b3d |
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| mnnn... WELL I NEVER..... used it yet :p downloading now. |
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| Ooo goodie :) Downloading now. Jason. |
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| On it, like white on rice, like stink on...well, you know. Doggie (member #2) |
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| Good Grief Man! This is looking the mutts knuts! I have seen a couple of pictures a while ago but to see it in action is great! When do you think this will be available as a fully fledged version 1.0 tool? Brilliant! This forum never ceases to amaze me. The talent which is available it's a wonder we are not all making millions! Best regards, IPete2. |
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| Downloading.... canny wait :) |
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| I only checked the page, sounds very good. Are you planing to release a light version for free? So there would be at least ONE free Animation tool for blitz. You could limit some functions, such as the max. number of bones or vertices, or turn off the b3d import feature. Or add a minute delay with "buy me"-banner before each export? |
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| Man, i'd glady pay for this. It's feckin good! Very easy to use as well. CharacterFx...good bye!! |
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| Any chance of a small tutorial on how to assign bone weights? Jason. |
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| Thanks for your kind comments - Yes my plan is to release a 'Lite' version for Blitz3d users - just trying to find the best balance without crippling its functionality and still making it worthwhile to purchase a full version - a maximun poly count may be a good idea - what would be a reasonable limit - say 2000 polys ? I will be posting a whole series of tutorials on boning, vertex assignment, and basic animation routines as soon as possible. In the meantime here's a quick run down on vertex assignment : Vertex Assignment To assign vertex click on the vertex Tab. Increase the vertex and joint size as required using the sliders. To select vertex there are 4 methods. - A single MB1 click on a vertex will toggle its selection. - LEFT SHIFT key and MB1 to drag and select Multiple vertices EXCLUSIVE (normal) - L CTRL and MB1 to drag and select Multiple vertices in ADDITIVE mode (selected vertices are added to selection) - L ALT and MB1 to drag and remove vertices from selection. The is a Back Facing checkbox. Uncheck this to only select vertices facing the camera. To select a Primary joint use MB2 ( or select in TreeView). To select an additional joint ( up to 3 additional joints may be selected) use MB3. This acts as a toggle. With your vertices and your joint(s) selected click on ASSIGN SELECTED. This will assign the selected vertices to the selected joint(s). Vertex weighting will be applied automatically. The weighting values are calculated depending on each individual vertex's distance from each joint. You can tweak the auto calculated values using the Primary Joint Bias slider - this boosts the amount of influence the Primary Joint has over the selection whilst maintaining a 'per-vertex' assignment. To assign weighting values manually for the whole selection click on the WEIGHTS button to open the weights panel. Adjust the weights using the sliders as required and click the ASSIGN button. This will assign the vertices to the selected joints using the values set - all vertices will get the same weighting values. You can modify the value as many times as you like and reassign. You can also use the (automatic) ASSIGN SELECTED first and then open the weights panel to see what weighting values were assigned ( to the last vertex in the selection). You can then modify this value and ASSIGN manually if you wish. Switch to the ANIM tab at any time to test out your vertex assignment by rotating joints. Important : You can also select joints directly from the TreeView but make sure you disable the 'Auto Select' checkbox when assigning vertices. If not when you click on a joint in the treeview your selection will be superceded (sp?) There should be an HTML document in the zip file that explains each option in more detail. Post any questions you may have - I will be happy to answer them. |
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| Updated the exe - fixed a couple of presentation issues. |
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| This looks really nice Smiff :) It's very easy to assign vertices to bones. |
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| Thanks Chris - BlitzUI rocks. Will use FUI for the next one ! I spent a lot of time on the actual vertex assignment mainly because for me this is the most difficult part of rigging. I came up with all sorts of weird schemes using envelopes and other geometrical concoctions. In the end I settled for a highly manouverable camera and the good old box drag method. The different selection modes and the single vertex toggle work quite well. Selection is persistant too so you can switch to anim mode, try it out come back to vertex mode and modify if required. My favourite is the 'Assign to Nearest' option. This performs a default Rigid assignment. If you add in a few dummy bones this does a remarkably good job leaving you to make a few adjustments only. |
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| must try this out tomorrow, looks cool. |
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| Very nice work. Any chance of an undo ctrl+z? I lost my mesh trying to animate and had to reload it. I also noticed on my boned mesh a couple of vertices on the fingers didn't get attached to the bone. It animates fine in blitz but something missed it and on the same hand one of the finger bones is attached to the end of another finger bone rather than to the hand bone. |
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| This would be perfect with some good tuturials, explaing how to add animation frames and stuff. Maybe a help button on each panel too :) A def character FX replacement. |
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| Wow, great that you plan the Lite Version. But 2000 Tris is a big lot, maybe some people would never need more. I'd say 1000 Tris, or even 800, so this will limit the usage to very low poly chars as seen in HL1, Q2 etc. As soon as somebody want to make something up to date, he needs to purchase. |
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| I think that 2000 would be a good limit. Reason being, all my games characters are 1500-1800 :) I'd gladly buy the program anyway :) |
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| see? that's what I meant :) |
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| I think 500 wuld be a good limit. All my meshes are lower then that! :) Special po version? |
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| Great! I've been trying to keep an eye open for this since I saw some screenshots a couple of months back. Damn impressive!. I've only 'sneak peaked' yet (I'm at work and at least have to pretend to be working), but judging from what I've seen so far I'd definitely like to make Pacemaker a part of my toolbox. As a replacement/ addition for the somewhat shoddy Character FX. Any ideas regarding price yet? I've only glanced at it briefly yet, but (as mentioned above) I also really like the vertex assignment. It seems to built (and improved) around the same concept as Character FXs', but with the important exception that it actually works! (I've always regarded vertex assignment as one of CFXs' weakest spots.) One comment about some mousedown issues: I think you need to trap where a mousedown originates, on a menu/toolbox or in the 3D view, Right now you have some issues when moving toolboxes or navigating menus. If the cursor 'escapes' into the 3D-view you will start rotating the view, which probably isn't what you want. If you trap within what context (e.g. Menu) the mousedown starts, you can easily cancel it if the context is changed (e.g. 3D view). I will be back with more comments after I've tried it out for real tonight Again, great work! //PetBom |
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| Many Thanks - Feedback is very appreciated . I'll sort out the mousedown issues along with other presentation issues. There are a few camera 'glitches' as well that need sorting. There will be a fully functional free version limited to models with not more than 1000 polys. I haven't decided on a price for the full version yet - probably round about £15. At some point in the future I will be changing the GUI to use FUI - a 3d accelerated Gui - this will speed the whole thing up by removing a lot of the 2d on 3d stuff. |
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| Prolly buy it then. 1000 polys ain't enough :) But, it looks to be well worth a mere £15 :D |
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| Found a nasty bug in Keyframer editing existing animation if you only have the base frames - now updated ! Here's the updated EXE. This requires the resources in the Main zip file to function correctly. http://webzoom.freewebs.com/smiff/pacemaker091exe.zip |
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| You can now convert your DarkMatter models to .b3d and bone 'em. Vertex assignment is a little trickier than normal because the original model is made from seperate meshes. PaceMaker converts to a single mesh with multiple surfaces. Here's the DarkMatter Babe I boned earlier ! ;)  @arbitrage - Undo options will be included in full version. Because PaceMaker is so 'visual' I have discovered many anomolies in models that are not visible in other apps. Errors in vertex assignment show up very clearly. Sometimes there are isolated vertices which are assigned to joints and are invisible when loaded in Blitz or viewed in other apps. The hierarchy of joints should always be correct - if you have noticed any wierdness send me the model - I'll look at it for you find out what the problem is and then delete the model from my hard drive (promise !) |
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| £15 sounds like a very reasonable price. I'd definitely buy it. I messed around with it a little more last night and here are a few impressions: - I really like the general GUI disposition. I intuitively find everything pretty much where i expect find it. I know this is hard so I guess you've done a lot of thinking. - I think you should let the user define the sensitivity of the mouse on move/rotate actions of the joints. I'd like the rotate action to be more responsive (greater rotation/mouse x distance) and the move action to be less so. But I realize this probably is an individual preference for each user, so to meet different needs i think you should let users define this. The easiest way would be to add a multiplier to distance value and let users configure the multiplier. (Nothing fancy, I'd be quite happy to do this in a config file) - Numerical input! This would be a great help when adding keys. I.e. to be able to set pitch/yaw/roll and x/y/z in an input field instead (or rather as a complement to) of mouse input. I find that I often need to set an exact value, and if you know the value it is so much easier using the keyboard than by fiddling with mouse. This is one of the features I would like to see most of all. Ok?! Hope this is helpful to you //PetBom |
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| Very helpful - Numerical Input will be implemented in the next release. Good idea re user-defined joint rotation/movement sensitivity - will implement this as well. Once again many thanks for your feedback ! |
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| No probs! I'm enjoying this. Lots of fun. I'm going to rig/animate one of my own models tonight. This sucker is the appointed victim: I'll give some more feedback after that. (Hmmm...maybe it won't be tonight...It's a beautiful spring day in Gothenburg and there's this girl I've been meaning to ask out for quite some time...I mean, you got to have your prioreties right... :) ) //PetBom |
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| Nice Model ! Is he wearing lipstick ? :) - you could do some great vertex weighting on that midriff section Updated zip with new exe - various bug fixes - annoying camera glitch fixed. if you already have the original zip file you just need the exe Download Complete zip from: http://www.goddysey.com/pacemaker.htm Download latest executable: http://webzoom.freewebs.com/smiff/pacemaker091exe.zip |
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| What I can't understand it when I click your DL Link I get a small window saying "YOUR SECURITY SETTINGS DO NOT ALLOW THIS FILE TO BE DOWNLOADED" and when I recheck my SS they allow downloads... All is OK in Hustletown... I even tried Save Target as... IE6SP2 / Athlon64 3200+ 1024ram 60gig ATi9000 |
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| Should have been fine up till today - Files removed today pending new release. |
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| PaceMaker development has slowed down considerably over the last few days as I have suffered a multiple fracture of the right wrist and am currently in Plaster for the next 3 weeks ! Learning to handle the mouse left-handed now. I will release the free lite version as soon as poss - meanwhile the above links will give you a 404 ! I did it falling UP the stairs - quite a feat ! |
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| Hey Smiff, Ironic huh! You're making a bones gizmo for the digital world and in the real world fate has seen fit to fracture a couple of yours! It's almost synchronicity in action - but not quite. Hope your wrist gets better very soon, this is one hell of an exciting project! Good luck! IPete2. |
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