In this demo we go through our new Project Handlers, expose newly upgraded Perforce Integration and go through our r9File class object for all TDs out there wanting an easy life.
This is a hugely important concept for anybody running ProPack, especially within a large studio environment, if you’ve got a demo build of ProPack please ensure you watch at least the first 5 minutes of this video as its a CRUCIAL concept within the pipeline!
The Project Handlers manage all aspects of our systems, anything that requires a variable, a path, a class binding or a settings file they all inspect this system, allowing dependencies to be dynamically changed by simply switching the project mount.
More importantly the system now has deep Perforce integration, managing both server and workspace connection per project. Perforce is also exposed within the Red9 Browser, allowing you to seamlessly browser through your full P4 repository directly within Maya with options to checkout, revert, sync, add etc ..
Finally we go through the r9File handler, a high level file object that binds all of the project systems together, exposing both P4 handling and base OS management in a really simple python object for all TDs to use.
Please connect us for more details
Red9 ProPack : Dynamic Timecode management within Maya for Cloud Imperium Games
/2 Comments/in Facial, MetaData, News, Red9 ProPack, Timecode, Tools /by gingerComplex Production Timecode Tamed!
Ever wondered how a massive production like Cloud Imperium Game’s Squadron 42 deals with the physical amount of performance capture data. How do you manage the sync of separate animation and audio files over multiple shoots, syncing data of headcam footage with audio trimmed and edited into smaller game clips? This demo goes through live assets from CIG and demonstrates the new Dynamic timecode support within the ProPack itself. This is a massive integration of all of our timecode management and syncing systems, expanding on our previous work to produce a very flexible new way of working. This is very relevant to anybody dealing with mass facial performance data.
CIG wanted to track facial performance capture, on-mass, from a master video edit and EDL, cut offline from all the Headcam footage from an entire days performance shoot. The issue was that they then ended up with a single headcam video sequence, containing multiple non-consistent timecodes, yet still needed to be able to sync all the edited audio clips back to the data tracked from this single video.
The tools allowed them to do just that in a simple workflow that not only auto-synced the audio back to the data, but also setup all the export ranges, names and events as well as creating individual r9Anim files of each clip, allowing them to be later loaded back against the body data. Note that the export ranges in the demo were actually extracted directly from the original offline EDL file itself.
Massive thanks to Cloud Imperium Games for letting us show this internal demo.
Bridging the gap, wiring any rigs directly to the Red9 Puppet back-end
/0 Comments/in Facial, MetaData, MetaData API, PuppetRig, Red9 ProPack, Tools /by gingerThis is the final missing link from ProPack, a system to enable you to bind ANY rig, both BODY and FACIAL, to our Red9 ProMetaData systems. This shows you how easy it is to marker up your rig to behave as a native PuppetRig as far as the tools are concerned, exposing the full power of the ProPack to your productions. We’d obviously like everybody to use our Red9 PuppetRig but have to be realistic, so this new UI bridges the gap.
We’ve exposed 2 new nodes designed to mimic the native Red9 Puppet setup and our Facial system, but these have been expanded to be a little more flexible. By simply wiring your rig to these nodes the rest of ProPack will assume it’s running a correctly formatted rig, exposing the full power of the pipeline without any of the work. The wiring is a simple abstract layer that all the tools communicate through, all backed up by our powerful MetaData API.
If you’re running full performance capture then this also exposes all the hooks to our timecode syncing and management systems!
Red9 PuppetRig – Auto Solvers and Trackers, resolving complex data
/0 Comments/in PuppetRig, Red9 ProPack /by gingerThis is a very quick demo to show just how far the solvers inside the Red9 PuppetRig can be pushed with some insane MoCap data. PuppetRig includes auto-solvers for pole-vector tracking, auto-clavicle solving as well as softIK systems and this video shows just how well they deal with even the most complex data.
As you’d expect all these solvers run not only on BiPed data but also on our Quadruoped leg systems and are fully blendable as we’re more than aware that animators often want complete control, however as a solution within the rigging system they make hand key extremely fast. Best thing is that all the solvers can be quickly baked back to simple translate data on their respective controllers.
For more info feel free to contact us..
Red9 ProPack : Project and Perforce Handlers
/0 Comments/in Browser, Health, Project, Red9 ProPack /by gingerIn this demo we go through our new Project Handlers, expose newly upgraded Perforce Integration and go through our r9File class object for all TDs out there wanting an easy life.
This is a hugely important concept for anybody running ProPack, especially within a large studio environment, if you’ve got a demo build of ProPack please ensure you watch at least the first 5 minutes of this video as its a CRUCIAL concept within the pipeline!
The Project Handlers manage all aspects of our systems, anything that requires a variable, a path, a class binding or a settings file they all inspect this system, allowing dependencies to be dynamically changed by simply switching the project mount.
More importantly the system now has deep Perforce integration, managing both server and workspace connection per project. Perforce is also exposed within the Red9 Browser, allowing you to seamlessly browser through your full P4 repository directly within Maya with options to checkout, revert, sync, add etc ..
Finally we go through the r9File handler, a high level file object that binds all of the project systems together, exposing both P4 handling and base OS management in a really simple python object for all TDs to use.
Please connect us for more details
Red9 ProPack: Massive updates to our IKFK handlers
/0 Comments/in PuppetRig, Red9 ProPack, Tools /by gingerThis is a huge update to the way that our Red9 ProPack deals with IKFK matching in rig systems. Big new features including :
Red9 ProPack – Health Manager API
/0 Comments/in Health, Red9 ProPack, Tools /by gingerThe Health Manager concept is a massive part of the Red9 ProPack Pipeline, designed to allow TD’s to sanity check files in a neat, clear API with full UI support. Write your own simple compounds either using our default tests or write your own from the ground up and use those to validate your files before pushing them out to production.
I can’t stress enough just how much this has saved our lives over the last few years, allowing us to ensure all our assets are solid before we send them out to clients. This demo first goes through the initial concepts and UI, then we cover some of the more complex tests. Finally we go through how to write your own tests and Validation classes.
Note: if you’re running blendshapes and having fbx index issues watch on!!
Please contact us for more information or for a test drive of ProPack!
Red9 ProPack : SkinTools
/0 Comments/in Red9 ProPack, Tools /by gingerThe Red9 ProPack SkinTools are designed to manage skinning data and allow users to quickly save, load and debug skin data for their characters. This also allows you to remap joints, quickly moving skinWeight info between joints in the cluster. In production we tend to pass r9Skn files around routinely when iterating on characters and it’s now a crucial part of our internal workflows so it made sense to expose it to ProPack users!
Working with Red9 : Part2 : Managing Animation Deliveries
/0 Comments/in Anim Binding, Anim Re-Director, Browser, Red9 ProPack /by gingerIn this second video in the series we show you just how easy it is to map animation data over to the Red9 Puppet Rig, on-mass, using the Red9 Browser and the “Pro:To_BND” functionality. This hopefully gives you some insight to the power of the Browser when used with the in-built Extensions Manager to add custom functionality, allowing TD’s to expose functions directly to the Animators.
We go through the AnimBinder setup itself, a file that accompanies all Red9 Puppet deliveries. This is ideal for layering fast modifications to any initial character remapping, something only exposed to clients running the Puppet. The Pro Binder setup also natively supports HIK under the hood, allowing you to remap data from any fbx source, including files from MotionBuilder.
Finally we show some of the tricks unique to ProPack to deal with that initial stage of animation clean-up, filtering and re-directing.
With these tools in place you never need to worry about those unforeseen issues when working with MoCap data.
Contact us for more information about either the PuppetRig, ProPack or our Facial rigging services
Working with Red9 : PuppetRig and support systems
/0 Comments/in PuppetRig, Red9 ProPack /by gingerThis new series of videos are designed to give you a wider overview of the Red9 ProPack and what it’s like to work with us on a professional level to help streamline and speed-up your workflows.
This first video goes through our Red9 PuppetRig solution, the new DagMenu system and dynamic CharacterPicker. Crucially it also shows we use an abstract layer to communicate with all the tools and the API, meaning that none of our systems are tied directly to the rig solution itself.
Whilst we’d love everybody to use the Puppet Rig we’re more than aware that this is an impracticality for many studios who have invested time into their own rigging systems, this is a neat way to simply add a layer of MetaNodes to fool our systems into thinking they’re dealing with a native Puppet Rig.
Red9 ProPack – Butterworth Filter – Animation Re-Sampling on Steroids!
/5 Comments/in News, Red9 ProPack, Tools /by gingerNow available in Red9 ProPack!
This is a huge new feature for any animators dealing with dense baked data…. the Red9 StudioPack already has an interactive curve filter to deal with re-sampling animation curves but soon the ProPack will be getting an all new Butterworth algorithm, one of the main filter methods from MotionBuilder for cleaning up noisy data.
The Butterworth filter is actually derived from an audio filter so is superb at taking noise out and re-sampling animation data, we’ve taken this method and wrapped it into a neat, interactive tool inside Maya.
This will save anybody dealing with MoCap or facial data a massive amount of production time!!
This second video is as a result of a request from a number of clients who are dealing with budget moCap setups and needing solutions to help clean-up up some of the low frequency noise inherent in the data …. a perfect case for the Butterworth algorithm. In this case it’s data from Perception Neuron system.