Processing 1.0 - Processing Discourse - how to create a 3d character/person

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Index › Programming Questions & Help › Programs › how to create a 3d character/person

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how to create a 3d character/person (Read 4450 times)

blueice89

how to create a 3d character/person
Feb 2^nd, 2007, 9:56pm

I want to create a 3d character. It doesn't need to necesarily walk at this point. It can just be stationary. I am a pretty good programmer but I don't know a lot about art, 3d, or where to even start to create a character. I am working on a program in my affective computing class that will serve as inteligent tutoring system. So for now I am working on creating the tutor.
The tutor will just show up on the screen.

How can I create a virtual character with 3d attributes. Where would I start exactly??

movax

Re: how to create a 3d character/person
Reply #1 - Feb 2^nd, 2007, 10:25pm

I hope I don't get flamed but... Processing *might* not be the best tool for this.

Creating a 3D character with processing code will either get you :
1. Very simple character
2. Very complicated coding

Another option is to create the character in a 3D modeling program, and render out different Quicktime movies. Then use processing to trigger the different movies to play as you need them.

Thats what I would do.

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blueice89 YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 2	Re: how to create a 3d character/person Reply #2 - Feb 3^rd, 2007, 5:25pm Does any1 else have something to say about starting a 3d character/person? Do I start at drawing a sprite? Or where exactly do I start about creating a virtual like character? If processing is no good, do you recommend like C++ or something like that? I also saw Microsoft has something called Microsoft Agent too.

st33d

Re: how to create a 3d character/person
Reply #3 - Feb 3^rd, 2007, 6:09pm

Processing is very strong for algorithmic creations, not so hot at non-math generated content. Unless you're using a library. Elsewhere you might want to look at game engines if you want to work in 3D.

Blender is a good free package that is tricky to get into but you can program Python in it and make basic games as well as complex 3D.

My Blender references:

http://selectparks.net/~julian/share/blender/blender-resources/

http://mediawiki.blender.org/

http://www.libsdl.org/index.php

Blender has OSC capability (can communicate with Flash, Processing, Pure Data, etc.).

There's other game engines that could be used. Here's a link to notes Julian Oliver's talk in Prague

http://selectparks.net/~julian/share/art_game_overview-2006/artistic-games_1.html

Oh, and there's Second Life as well. You can program the objects in it. It's a bit weird though. Makes you feel like you should be getting some real work done.

ddf

Re: how to create a 3d character/person
Reply #4 - Feb 4^th, 2007, 1:26am

Gonna throw in with the recommendation that Processing is not a good tool for creating 3D characters. You want to use an application that has been explicitly built for creating 3D models to do that. Processing also isn't the optimal environment for displaying 3D models, though there is a library for loading and drawing .obj files, which you should be able to create with any major modeling software, including Blender. 3D models sometimes have animations attached to them, which, correct me if I'm wrong people, are basically instructions on how to deform the 3D mesh over time. Processing does not support playing these animations, though other 3D engines, such as Ogre3D (a C++ engine), do.

http://www.compartmental.net

Stephen Williams

Re: how to create a 3d character/person
Reply #5 - Feb 6^th, 2007, 9:27am

I have recently completed a project in which I interactively animated a 3d character. I used http://www.xj3d.org/ (developed by http://web3d.org/) which is a framework that loads either a X3D or a VRML file and then renders it in either Java3D, JOGL or a software renderer. You can then access the scene graph (using SAI scene access interface) and rotate joints, change material and add new nodes.

You could use this or even better you could write a processing renderer for XJ3D which would mean that you could just load a x3d file into processing, have it rendered and write processing code to animate it.

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jaylfk Senior Member Offline Posts: 253	Re: how to create a 3d character/person Reply #6 - May 12^th, 2007, 4:00am Hi Stephen, Do you have a P5 sketch example on how to use this framework ? It would be nice to see how to load vrml object/scene in P5. Thank you

Stephen Williams

Re: how to create a 3d character/person
Reply #7 - May 14^th, 2007, 9:53am

Unfortunatly using it with processing is not easy since the rendering is all done automaticly with the xj3d renderer. What you nead to use though is the SAI (scene access interface).

Tutorial: http://www.xj3d.org/tutorials/general_sai.html

Example: http://www.xj3d.org/tutorials/examples/sai/FieldAccessDemo.java

The example sets a color value but you could just as easily set a rotation value of a joint.

Another options is...
http://www.cybergarage.org/vrml/cx3d/cx3djava/index.html

which might be easier to integrate with processing. I have not used it myself though so I can say for sure.

good luck!

FLUID FORMS ~ Your Unique Design
http://www.fluid-forms.com
http://twitter.com/onato

aleppax

Re: how to create a 3d character/person
Reply #8 - May 20^th, 2007, 11:45pm

I've used the obj loader module to test its performance with a huge mesh (more than 10000 tris). The openGL method is good for such applications. the applet is here:
http://www.aleppax.it/processing/mesh/
The missing faces appear only if the maeh has quads; in another test I converted quads to tris and solved this little problem.
The mesh comes from Makehuman (www.makehuman.org), an open source 3d application similar to Poser. (I currently contribute to makehuman's development).

Stephen Williams

Re: how to create a 3d character/person
Reply #9 - May 21^st, 2007, 9:14am

The OBJ file format support faces with 3...n vertex points but the obj loader only supports triangles.

lines like this one in you .obj are four sided faces.

f 679/767 678/766 696/784 697/785

You can either write a script to turn it into...

f 679/767 678/766 696/784
f 679/767 696/784 697/785

... or you can try to fix the problem in the objloader source...

http://users.design.ucla.edu/%7Etatsuyas/tools/objloader/index.htm

cheers,
Stephen

FLUID FORMS ~ Your Unique Design
http://www.fluid-forms.com
http://twitter.com/onato

gazy YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 49	Re: how to create a 3d character/person Reply #10 - Jul 1^st, 2008, 10:38pm Is it possible to animate .objs? Ive got them going using the excellent objloader but Id like a fish to "swim" for instance, or is it all static just now?
	Custom visuals creation: http://www.lapseadazical.com/

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