A few free figures
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Thank you.
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Thanks Alan
BTW, when are you going to devise some method whereby these models could be walking around within SU scenes? If I remember correctly I came across some new app that might be a starting point for this. I think I posted it here.
Mike
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The application I was trying to think of was http://www.mixamo.com/ It looks to be an interesting idea.
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Nice ones Alan although that last one looks like she is lost, maybe looking for her skirt?
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Eric, no...she's looking for someone to give her a good home.
Mike, I've looked at that...and other online services like Avatara, but the unit price is just too prohibitive, so I'll probably end-up just animating them myself. I've got a decent library of animation files which are Max compatible. I won't be doing it in Max, though; it's just too long-winded. I have a small proggy called Lightray3D (which, although still online, seems to have ceased development now). Nevertheless, rigging and animating in it is pretty straightforward. That'll be a while off yet, as I still have a mass of static figures to contend with...including updating all my original CD figures with better versions. I'm only half-way through that process yet...still got about another 70 to go.
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Alan,
Its good to hear that you have something in mind. However that last guy! I would not like to meet him walking against me on a dark night. Think I would be crossing over to the other footpath
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Me neither. It's not one of mine...with his rigid shoulders and Frankenstein boots. It's just that I haven't rigged any of mine yet, so I used a default zombie...at least I hope he's supposed to be a zombie.
Better?
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@Alan: Your models are great, as always
How would you get rigged/animated people to animate/work inside SU?
BTW, I bought Messiah a few months ago for $40 while they were running their massive campaign, but I haven't even looked at it yet - just installed it. -
Hi Bjørn,
I hadn't come across Messiah before...it looks very interesting (especially the bit about rigging figures easily in a few minutes).
As far as I know, there is no way to support animated figures in SU at the moment. Maybe it's possible with Ruby, but it would be better if Google could build it into the core program. My intention is to eventually produce figures that can simply be imported into applications like Max, pointed in the right direction...and let loose.
All the main formats that SU deals with...like 3ds, fbx and dae all support animation, so it would be rather nice if SU was able to make use of that. -
Are you looking for crowd animations then? Or with some intelligence built-in - like Massive?
There's a fun crowd tutorial here: http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/24hours_training.php (search for crowd in the text - it's an ftp link (ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/Crowd.mov)to a 12 min tutorial). Very, very simple to set up, but very convincing at a distance - and quite Frankensteinish closer up
Here are some other animations done with HDinstance, an instancing plugin for LightWave that lets you instance thousands of animated characters, vehicles, forests full of million-poly trees etc: http://www.happy-digital.com/instance_videoClips.php?videoClips=0
I'm sure there are similar tools for Max too?
I don't use Max, but I thought that it included automated rigging/animation tools, like BiPed?It would be nice to have some better animation tools in SU, as well as importing animated objects, but at the same time I'm a bit ambivalent about it. It could easily ruin the nice and simple GUI, and at the same it will always have some limitations that other "full" 3D programs, like Max, Maya, Lightwave, Blender etc don't have, mainly the lack of ability to handle millions of polys, and powerful animation. I'm surprised that most users here apparently are rendering externally via SU plugins, instead of in external programs, because then you are still limited by SU memory/poly limits, and you don't get the benefits from external programs animation capabilities neither. It sure is convenient using Twilight etc, but although it renders very nice images it is really not a full substitute for programs like Lightwave etc.
But that was a digression I'm afraidBTW, Messiah users are a generally very satisfied and happy user group, which I believe means that the program is as great as they say it is?
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Speaking of animated figures in sketchup, TIG has produced some interesting plugins along these lines which could be applied to a series of pics of a person walking / moving... at least in 2d...
See these threads:
Image animator
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=33310GIF extractor
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=33359It might be worth something to you guys wanting to develop this...
Cheers
Dave
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