> What would be a typical scenario for this? The point count is adjustable (at 
the expense of detail),
> but the topology will aways be a mess unless properly retopo-ed, wouldn't it?

That is what I meant to suggest when I wrote:

"It is at hand that the more complex, raw 3D point cloud data will need new and 
abstracted ways
of handling and manipulation, filtering options and adaptive control layers for 
approximated data"

Basically, a rigged lower density mesh and a displacement trying to capture 
small detail
while at the same time loosing control over how that detail will actually 
react, that´s
sort of the established standard for working with high detail. Reduce detail 
until you
can handle it and hope nobody will notice. Depending on personality, wave away 
concerns.

The reason why I suggest to go and skin/rig/wheight a raw 3D scan mesh directly 
to bones:

That is the data you want to animate, everything else is already yet another 
degraded derrivate.
Going and trying it will show the limitations of current toolsets. Then do some 
cloth sim ontop
and fix interpenetration issues. Or first of all wait for collision simulation 
to finish.


Like using *.jpg´s with lossy compression as the input for color grading, then 
re-compressing again
as a lossy *.jpg and wondering why there´s block artifacts.

Cheers,

tim






On 09.01.2014 14:34, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
go and skin/rig/wheight a raw 3D scan mesh directly to bones.


What would be a typical scenario for this? The point count is adjustable (at 
the expense of detail),
but the topology will aways be a mess unless properly retopo-ed, wouldn't it?

I agree to the rigging paradigm needing some rethinking. I grew up with black 
box systems like Character Studio and CAT. Creating a rig based on those takes 
only minutes to hours,
not days, but they lack customizability. Yet, results were good enough that I 
was constantly asking myself as to why anyone could possible want to use 
anything else for 90% of the
work you see being produced anywhere. It's such a huge cost factor, both in 
terms of time it takes to create the rig and time it takes to trouble shoot and 
maintain it if it breaks
(which the black box systems next to never do) or needs extensions. Autoriggers 
(Gear etc) reduce the creation time factor at the expense of flexibility, yet 
the maintenance aspect
stays to a certain degree. What I also miss in them is the ability to have a mesh 
enveloped to joints and just "put the rig on top", allowing to test 
deformations directly by
posing the envelope rig without having to create a control rig - a given with 
the black box systems because the control rig _is_ the envelope rig. The only 
thing I know that works
in a similar way is Motion Builder, in that you import your enveloped mesh and 
joints and apply rigging solvers to it, again at the expense of flexibility - 
it only supports
humanoid and 4-legged creatures.
Fabric/Osirirs looks like it could deliver such a paradigm change - a modular 
rigging system where the building blocks are encapsulated and the asset that 
the user interacts with
in the scene is light-weight, fast and easy to manipulate, and hard to break. 
I'm really looking forward to that, even though flexibility beyond a certain 
point will probably need
to be paid for with programming knowledge and -time again.

Look at what comes in terms of animation and skeleton recognition
in the xbox kinect sdk and the xbox one.

Cheers,

tim




On 09.01.2014 13:09, Guillaume Laforge wrote:
I didn't read every posts so maybe my understanding is wrong but based in last 
replies from Luc-Eric and Tim Leydecker, it sounds like point cloud scanning is 
a rigging feature.
It is not, so lets return to the subject please :).

That illustrate well that it is much more easy to put money on new techs (like 
point cloud scanning, web based applications, etc...) than to think about how 
to improve/re-design an
existing workflow like character rigging ! We saw some new systems in modeling 
(ZBrush etc...) and rendering (Katana) some years ago, but still nothing in the 
rigging area. It make
sense as rigging is really a different culture. You need to be a good character 
rigger to understand and build a good rigging system. But being a good 
character rigger means spend
a lot of time on existing tools like Maya or XSI. At the end you think only 
through the proposed tools of your app. If you are a developer interested in 
designing a rigging system,
it is the opposite problem, you can have a fresh new vision but you can miss 
important concepts of character rigging in your tool.

Interesting subject, if you forget about Maya and XSI :)

Cheers,

Guillaume Laforge





On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 4:18 AM, Tim Leydecker <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

    Autodesk is doing a lot of development in the area of 3D scan data handling.

    If you look into what is going on in the area of topology data aquisition 
for
    architecture, engineering and the military, there is a shift towards 3D 
pointcloud
    data which imho is compareable to what 2D tracking as a concept brought us 
in the 90s.

    (Facial recognition and finally image based modeling and camera positional 
data)

    It is at hand that the more complex, raw 3D point cloud data will need new 
and abstracted ways
    of handling and manipulation, filtering options and adaptive control layers 
for approximated data.

    The implication such data for 3D animation brings is that the concept of 
wheighting a fixed number
    of vertices to a bone may have to be extended beyond a fixed number of 
polygons.

    Unfortunately, taking fall-off based volume wheighting as in it´s current 
level of finesse
    may give worse results than before, especially if your shape options for 
the influence volume
    are limited to capsules, boxes or spheres.

    I am a bit worried that the process of rigging&wheighting an organic 
character will become even
    more frustrating and stiff or at least will need even more steps, like 
creating an extra controlsurface
    with a fixed number of points and wrapping it around the high-density data.

    Such a wrap-deformer takes away control. It´s always the rims and little 
caveats that need extra care.

    Cheers,

    tim









    On 09.01.2014 02:13, Guillaume Laforge wrote:

        On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 7:55 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:

             In the new future  ( not talking about autodesk here)  I think
             workflows will standards will be Gator-like tools to deal with topo
             changes (point clouds tools as necessary also ptex-based workflows)
             and katana-like proceduralism for render passes-like workflow.


        I'm still wondering if a company ( not talking about Autodesk here ) 
will do anything new like that for our little world. Money for such large dev 
projects is just not
in the
        animation/vfx world anymore. I'm not sarcastic, just realist. So lets 
embrace old techs like Maya or XSI. They won't evolve too much but won't 
disappear before many (many)
        years.

        Btw, Katana is not the futur, it is now :).




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