haha, not for drunk people yet, would be fun to give it a go though, a formula for drunkeness!

Yeah staying in Manchester, should be fun! What about you going anywhere or having a quiet one?

Steve

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"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

as always great to see a new update! this is looking very cool.

what was the group project - anything interesting?

ha ha - an algorithm for drunkenness... i think you're on to something there...

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arran3D

arran3D blog

yeah a drunken forumula would rule the world - how many animation applications/tools have that? Just set a series of parameters:
amount drunk
types of drink (including mixing)
personality type
flexibility
etc
and it generates a crowd of drunken people that can simulate post nightclub sessions. You could make tons of money selling it to the police/bouncers as a simulator!


Arran - cheers
The group project was one to create a brand and a product to be run on the big screen in leeds:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bigscreens/

We had a team of ten and created a full branding package with video identities for the Leeds screen and also a teaser trailer for the product. The product was called 'beat music' and involved you standing in the square (with a camera pointing at you so you could see yourself and other people on the big screen) and random blobs would appear that you could smack and get different tunes/effects playing.
We got a couple of local bands involved as well to push the idea of promoting the local area.
In the end it was good but the product just needed some more testing and bugfixing. As it was a course project it never got played on the big screen, just on a local laptop but it would have been fun running around the square being silly
The team consisted of about 4 2D/3D guys, a mocap guy, an animator (for the character stuff), a programmer, a couple of audio guys and myself who ended up managing it all (as well as doing branding and some 3D work). Those guys who didnt have too much to do (or did what they needed to do real fast) got involved in research and other important stuff and also dabbled in the areas where they wanted to.

Here's some of the earlier ident video ideas that one of the compositor guys played about with. The finished parts including the game are too big to put up.
https://www.youtube.com/profile_video...urefx24&page=1
(excuse the crap youtube quality and jerkiness on the vids)

Steve - Yeah I'm hanging around home for xmas and then doing the in-laws before new year. no plans to see the new year in yet though, might have a quiet one. Sounds like you'll be getting tanked up

Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

Hey there Si,

that group project thing loks realy good. We have a similar group project which we need to do this year, it doesn't need to be finished until may though so it can wait until I've finished my individual project!

Your traffic system is looking very impressive, good luck with getting everything done for ther end of Feb.

Take it easy,

Mat.

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Click here to visit my site

cheers matt

I'm still toying around with how much to put into the traffic tool for my project. It could end up taking all my time and not leave me with much to do for the animation which is good in one way but not in another. I think having a certain amount complete and then demoing it in an animation would be a better way of showing it off.

Good luck with the group project. Will it be a scheduled project where you can all meet up in uni and work in situ? Ours rarely had that chance as various people couldn't make scheduled times or were working and doing the course part time. It'll be an interesting but steep learning curve if it goes like ours
Sounds like you've got a lot of time for your individual project (but reality it'll fly)
Good luck

Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

hey simon - i checked out some of the videos - the beat music project looks really cool and is a nice idea. It's a shame you didn't get to test it out for real. that would of been a lot of fun.

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arran3D

arran3D blog

Cheers arran, if I can get a demo vid of the game then I'll post a link

Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

ah the first new year bit of work on this baby

This version now has opposing road generation so you can set up a motorway/freeway quickly and easily. You can also change the lane widths and specify a separation value between the opposing roads.
It's using the same particle emitter to fuel each road but it will later let you set the weighting of how busy each is.

Next up is the generation of a quad poly tiled road and median (central reservation) that you can easily apply a repeating texture to. The parts viewable in the video will be hidden and the road applied in its place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plotUhn9898

Once v1 is finished I might toy about with converting it to blender (as its python based) and might even have a go with 3ds max but am not too sure about what its ability for particle based systems is (plugins?)

Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

Astounding Si,

I've said it enough times for everyone to know that I have no programming skills at all so to see someone make such a useful tool from scratch is brilliant.

Are you looking at taking this project to market or are you keeping it strictly academic?

Take it easy,

Mat.

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Click here to visit my site

looking cool si -

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arran3D

arran3D blog

cheers guys - that one had a bug in whereby each vehicle looked at the traffic on the other road and didnt move past if it was 'virtually' blocked. All fixed now though

Mat - not sure as yet, it'd be nice to sell it as a little plugin for different 3D programs to generate a little cash on the side but I also like the idea of open source projects where you let other people dive in and generate their own version or improve it for the whole.... tough call. I guess it'll depend on if I get a job straight after uni or not. If not then I'll have time to take it a lot further and maybe charge a small fee to stay alive
It'd be interesting to see how much it could be used and in what areas. I envision that small companies creating 3D shorts might have a use for it to fill in backgrounds etc and maybe visualisation studios could find it useful for video presentations - maybe modifying the flocking system and converting it to a pedestrian simulator which would be linked into the traffic one...
If anyone has any ideas where else it could be used then let me know

As a side note if I get time after uni then I might get the super cheapo version of houdini and play about with recreating it in there too.
A friend showed me some stuff in realflow and I'm guessing with a bit of playing it could be converted over to that too (although the price of the software could be a bit limiting)
eee, dynamics are the way forward

Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

Very cool mate!

Looking good!


Edit - as I remember saying when I saw you, evacuation of buildings would be a good application

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"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

cheers Steve

yeah, if I get back to the boid flocking thing then looking into exanding that for routefinding/evacuation would be good. I've already collected some good url's on mathematical route finding processes which are often used in games.

On a side note I contacted the guys who make massive to ask them about their new lane based traffic system and they gave me some good ideas to look into fuzzy logic and how it could be applied. Constructing a 'brain' for each particle which then controls the relevant physics to move the 'body' and acting upon 'fuzzy' logic allows them an enormous amount of control as seen in their products.

Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

fuzzy logic is cool! Think that matlab has it in one of its modules, my supervisor had done some nural nets using it, and I think he used matlab, you can operate it as an exe or get the code so you should in theory be able to make a plug in for maya.

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"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

hehe, yeah it does sound cool I was reading about it before xmas and it appears to be quite a conflicting area with some people saying its great and others saying that its just simplified probability but neither could fully prove/disprove the other!

Running it as a standalone exe would be great to keep things separate and not get too bogged down in Maya programming. I might look into that further at some point
Cheers Steve

How did your plug in work go or are you still on with it/on a backburner?

Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net