Zabaware Support Forums
Zabaware Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: sofort99 on July 22, 2005, 08:41:20 pm
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I was thinking about this, and thought some of you might be interested...
I was part of the origional group that bought the source code for Blender3D and then released it open source.
With Blender, everything is available. You can model characters, texture them, animate them... everything.
Here is an picture I did years ago based on my wife. This was done when Blenderer's renderer was still very primative...
(http://216.77.188.54/coDataImages/p/Groups/63/63240/folders/32484/197252Ddee1.jpg)
The big advantage to using Blender though is that it also has a game engine with a very small footprint. That means not only could you build your own characters... you could build worlds for them to live in. Not only could Sandie have a chair in her room, she could sit down on it. Or get mad and kick it across the floor. The Blender game engine supports physics, collisions (so your character can't stick her hand through herself, or walk through furniture), etc. With the game engine, you could give your hal an AI dog to play with while you were not there. Your imagination, proc speed, and HD would be your limit.
Like I said... it is completely open source. Would somebody that understands the Hal api like to check it out?
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O.K. Tell me where I can download it along with some instructions.
I would like to check it out.
Bill819
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I would like to check it out to see if its feesible to add support for it in Hal 6.0.
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The API (and about everything else) for Blender is Python.
Here is a good bit of blender links and info:
http://people.brandeis.edu/~dong/cs207/blender3d_index.html
I'll send some more when I get home from work.
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sofort99,
Interesting possibilties! Well worth a look.
=vonsmith=
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Looks like hackers have hit Blender3D.org. Might take a little while for them to get back up.
Most of the info and help is available at the user site:
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/index.php
I am going to tell the "game" about this and see what they say about making this work.
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I have never worked with Blender, but if it can provide a real time viewer for characters with HAL, then I will work very hard to make it replace Haptek over time. I know Roger will really be pleased as well.
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Sofort99,
Hope you don't mind, I did a putty face of Dee? [ i think]
Neil.
Insert Image: (http://www.zabaware.com/forum/uploaded/NIGE/20057235241_Dee.jpg)
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Nice!
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I'm over the moon, i thought I was doomed to be in a one man band regarding blender. The game engine enjoys less developement than the main rendering program I read but it should be able to link with Hal. The new blender also has things that can give material softness, which would be good for clothes as well as wigs and things.
I've got a head and body in development at the moment, it would be cool if a few more people want to do this kind of thing too.
I have a lot of Blender links, info and know it fairly well, but don't consider myself an expert at all!
Thanks for pointing this out.[:D]
Yep, I found the mainsite was down yesterday, today it's running ok:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Home.2.0.html
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Documentation site with the Blender reference and the python game API ref, game logic, etc.
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Documentation.628.0.html
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quote:
Originally posted by Bill819
O.K. Tell me where I can download it along with some instructions.
I would like to check it out.
Bill819
The download is at:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Download.13.0.html
Documentation is at:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Documentation.628.0.html
Also, just google blender3d tutorials. The cool thing about open source is that most of the good people using it make tutorials, answer helps at the various forums, etc.
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Thank you. Can I just say that no one should be put off by the infamous interface, once you've used it a bit, it all makes sense!
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One other thing.
Blender3D depends on Python. The latest version only works with python 2.3 ( 2.3.5 is the version you want to get )
To make using Blender easy on your self, download and install Python...
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Install Python in the root of your C. i.e. C:Python20
Go to your start button, go up to My Computer and Right click it and go to properties.
Click on the Advanced tab, click on Environment Variables button at the bottom.
Below the System Variables box, (the second box), hit New.
In the Variable Name box, type PYTHONPATH
In the Variable Value box, type this exactly:
C:PYTHON23;C:PYTHON23DLLS;C:PYTHON23LIB;C:PYTHON23LIBLIB-TK
You can copy and paste that.
Hit OK repeatedly.
Reboot.
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Fixed enviromental path and back slashes per freddy888's catch. :)
( That is directly from a post on the elYsiun website. :) )
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One last one, because I have read people working on this here... :)
quote:
Herman Bruyninckx
Biography
Herman Bruyninckx is Associate Professor at K.U.Leuven (BE), with a research and education focus on robotics (kinematics, dynamics, sensor-based control) and real time control software engineering. He started the free software project Orocos (Open RObot COntrol Software) in 2001.
Paper: Blender for robotics and robotics for Blender
Computer animation and robotics have most of their mathematical foundations in common, so, Blender is a natural (but still undiscovered) GUI candidate for robotics applications. The free software project Orocos (Open Robot Control Software) is working towards the very ambitious goal to model and control all possible robotics devices. The robotics research community lacks an advanced graphical tool such as Blender, but, on the other hand, it has more advanced and efficient algorithms than Blender for the physically realistic simulation of armatures; for example, the inverse kinematics of humanoid structures, taking into account their dynamics, and with a generic approach for the automatic generation of natural motions. In this paper, he will make concrete suggestions about additions to the Blender code base, in order to support these complex armatures and "IPO"s. His suggestions touch the following parts of Blender: "moto" (Motion Toolkit), "game engine", and (especially) "iksolver". He will also talk briefly about how to connect Blender to external programs via CORBA middleware.
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Herman_Bruyninckx.448.0.html
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quote:
Originally posted by Medeksza
I would like to check it out to see if its feesible to add support for it in Hal 6.0.
Blender3D is GPL licensed... so most coding changes done to it would have to be free released.
If I was doing it, I think I would write a script so when you choose a Blender charactor, it turns off the haptec stuff, fires up the chosen characters game exe, and writes the data the actor needs (lip sync info, emotional state, etc... ) to a blender file. Then people can write the Blender actors as a third person game executable that reads from the blender file. That should firewall your code from the open source code.
Also, it takes the actor animation coding work off of you, and puts it onto the people here that would feel like pursuing something like this. :)
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Thanks once more!
btw, you'll find this forum doesn't output single backslashes (\) for some reason, so if any of the above code had these in then I'm afraid they have been evicted.
I received a tipfrom Doc that you can use doubles \\ and that way one gets through alive.
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Thanks, freddy888!
I made an edit to fix my post :)
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Nice try, Freddy
[8D]
[;)]
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Can a poser character be used in altra hal. IT would be great if they could.
Rick
(http://www.zabaware.com/forum/uploaded/cadmar/2005724193535_Poser.jpg)
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Cadmar,
Not directly but I've used Poser to make a few of my own MSAgents (which Hal does use.)
Download Microsoft Agent Character Editor directly from Microsoft. You can import your animations and the learning curve isn't that tough.
Hope this helps.
Mik
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quote:
Originally posted by sofort99
One other thing.
Blender3D depends on Python. The latest version only works with python 2.3 ( 2.3.5 is the version you want to get )
To make using Blender easy on your self, download and install Python...
--------------------------------------------------------------
Install Python in the root of your C. i.e. C://Python20//
Go to your start button, go up to My Computer and Right click it and go to properties.
Click on the Advanced tab, click on Environment Variables button at the bottom.
Below the System Variables box, (the second box), hit New.
In the Variable Name box, type PYTHONPATH
In the Variable Value box, type this exactly:
C://PYTHON20;C://PYTHON20DLLS;C://PYTHON20LIB;C://PYTHON20LIBLIB-TK
You can copy and paste that.
Hit OK repeatedly.
Reboot.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Replace double backslashes with single backslashes
( That is directly from a post on the elYsiun website. :) )
Just to clarify on setting the Python Path so that Python scripts can be used by Blender as we got a few wayward backslashes there (Also if you're using the new version you need to reference Python23 folder instead as below:
C:\PYTHON23;C:\PYTHON23\DLLS;C:\PYTHON23\LIB;C:\PYTHON23\LIB\LIB-TK
Alternative Method:
You can also add the path to the Autoexec.bat file on the root C drive. Just use a text editor to open Autoexe.bat add the text below (exactly) to the end of it, then replace the old file. When you reboot the path will be set:)
SET PYTHONPATH=C:\PYTHON23;C:\PYTHON23\DLLS;C:\PYTHON23\LIB;C:\PYTHON23\LIB\LIB-TK
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Thanks! I don't know what the heck I was thinking! :)
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no problem, it's those darn backslashes!
I found this info on that same forum, I was never sure about Python until I found it.[:)]
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I think Robert should try at least to incorporate blender files into HAL 6. Or at least maybe HAL 7 if it doesn't make it to 6.
Blender is for both Windows and Linux.
Blender is also free. :)
I have tried it before a long time ago but the system I had then wasn't working well with the program. I hope to try it again some day. Judging by the posts here, it looks like it can do some amazing stuff!