Animation Clips and Blending

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On 29/05/2007 at 06:39, xxxxxxxx wrote:

User Information:
Cinema 4D Version:   10.102 
Platform:      Mac OSX  ; 
Language(s) :   C.O.F.F.E.E  ;

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Hi,

I'm trying to create some basic A.I.-driven character animation. For this it is crucial, that I can define some basic animation clips (like walking, jumping, running etc) and that I can blend between those animations. Furthermore it should be possible to trigger those animations by a user command or user variable. To put it another way: not the character is animated, but the envonmental triggers and the character only reacts to that.
For most realtime 3D-engines this is a very basic ability, but I guess it's much to ask from COFFEE.
Does anybody know, if I COFFEE has the power to do things like that? I guess the

BaseTrack

and

BaseSequence

objects might do the trick, but the COFFEE documentation is not exactly detailed, what they can do.

Btw.: In the long run (after I figured out, how to create random characters) this should be the first step to a crowd-animation tool. So if somebody is interested in contributing to the project, I'm all ears!

thanks,
sk.

THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED

On 29/05/2007 at 06:52, xxxxxxxx wrote:

This is currently not possible with COFFEE because since Cinema4D R10 the BaseTrack, BaseSequence and BaseKey classes are broken.

cheers,
Matthias

THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED

On 29/05/2007 at 07:00, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Let's consider those classes are not broken (I hope you fix it in near future). Would it be possible then?

THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED

On 29/05/2007 at 07:07, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Quote: Originally posted by skahlert on 29 May 2007
>
> * * *
>
> Let's consider those classes are not broken (I hope you fix it in near future). Would it be possible then?
>
>
> * * *

I guess so but I don't think these classes will re-appear in this form again since there were some major changes in the timeline. We will have to wait with what the developers come up for future versions of Cinema.

cheers,
Matthias

THE POST BELOW IS MORE THAN 5 YEARS OLD. RELATED SUPPORT INFORMATION MIGHT BE OUTDATED OR DEPRECATED

On 29/05/2007 at 07:17, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Even then, animation isn't COFFEE's strongest area. For instance, you can't yet create keys with it (it has been this way way before R10).

If you want something this complex, you should consider going the C++ SDK route where there is much more control and faster response (i.e.: interpreted vs. compiled). Though you may suffer somewhat in the platform-dependency issue if you want to support both MacOS and Windows.

Real-time 3D-engines (like those for games and simulators) have a completely different purpose. Cinema 4D, like most other 3D 'rendering' apps, is a tool for construction for final images and animation and not built for speedy 'live' interaction like real-time engines. There is crowd simulation capabilities for most of these and may or may not use the available scripting (like MEL for Maya). I wouldn't doubt that even LOTR crowd sims used the Maya C++ SDK.