Jo Plaete

XSI External Script Editor

April 29, 2008

Some people asked me about using an external script editor when writing python scripts for xsi since it’s very annoying that the internal script editor has no syntax highlighting and limited general script editing functions.

A solution for this which I’m personally quite happy with is having a little script in the internal script editor loading in external script files and execute them. So you can write your script in your desired text/script editor and when it comes to run it in xsi just run the little load and execute script.

For Python:
## Python Read and Execute File
## Path to the file
filePath = “C:/myScript.pys“
## Read in and execute
openfile = open(filePath, ‘r’)
exec(openfile.read())

Or(with control over the scripting language, only xsi):
## Python Read and Execute File
## Path to the file
filePath = “C:/myScript.pys”
## Scripting Language: “Python” – “VBScript” – “JScript”
Language = “Python”
## Read in and execute
Application.ExecuteScript(filePath, Language)

So just load this into you internal script editor, change the filePath and run.. (Of course don’t forget to save your file in your external editor before you run)

Note: the script you try to run should not end indented as that will give an error on executing.

An editor I quite like which has python syntax highlighting: notepad++

Posted in TD, XSI, scripting | 2 Comments »

Path To War on VFXWORLD.com front page!

April 10, 2008

The Path To War project was just released on the front page of the well-known visual effects online magazine VFXWORLD.com! It’s part of an article concerning massive an it’s upcoming educational programme.

http://vfxworld.com/?atype=articles&id=3602&page=2

Since I had to learn the massive crowd software and it’s integration in our pipeline in a very short time, this is a nice reward for all the hard work! It’s great massive software made the effort making their software available to some universities around the world and provided some educational material with it. Me, our team and our university are very proud to export one of the first student projects using massive crowd simulation software!

The movie also got hosted on the animation world network tv website: http://www.awntv.com/videos/bournemouth-university-massive-battle-sim/

And NCCA frontpage:
http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/news/?sub=68

I uploaded a better quality version of the movie to my webserver: http://www.plaete.com/ptw/ptw_web.mov (right click > save as)

Cgtalk thread:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=154&t=618593

Posted in Massive | Leave a Comment »

Path To War

March 18, 2008

After 8 weeks of hard work, this is the result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx6PJdjO5_g

hi res: http://www.plaete.com/ptw/ptw_web.mov

I was responsible for:
- All crowd simulation using Massive Prime
- The crowd rendering using pixar Renderman
- The creation, lighting and rendering of the natural environments
- The general pipeline setup for getting assets flowing inbetween software
- The overal direction on the project

Software used:
Softimage XSI, Massive Prime, Autodesk Maya,
Pixar Renderman, Pixologic ZBrush, Apple Shake,
Adobe After Effects, e-on Vue, Adobe Photoshop.

People on the project and their roles:
Jo Plaete
- general direction, pipeline, crowds, environments, prman rendering
Nic Groot Bluemink
- modeling, rigging, animation
Lee Baskerville
- modeling, texturing, concept design
Pedram Eatebarzadeh
- modeling, texturing, animation, concept design
Alkis Karaolis
- modeling, xsi rendering, cloth, animation
Inci Vatansever
- animation
Lars van der Bijl
- visual effects, compositing
Christopher Hoare
- visual effects, compositing
Brian Gair(music composer), Jon Mann(sound designer), Angel Perez Grandi(foley artist)

I’ll be writing a more in depth post on this later but I have some other projects to tackle first.

Posted in 3D, Massive, Maya, TD, XSI, after effects, animation, matte painting, scripting, simulation, vfx, vue | 1 Comment »

Battle Field Crowd Project (in Progress)

February 8, 2008

Hello there,

Sorry for not posting for a while but I’m extremely busy at the moment on my 3D animation course. Besides some essays and research projects, I’m working on our term 2 group project in which we do an attempt to create a full cg battle scene (in 8 weeks). At the beginning of this term we all had to pitch some ideas to form groups around. Since I’m very interested in crowd simulations I pitched the idea of a medieval epic battle, which would give me the opportunity to dig a little deeper into this subject. After my pitch some people seemed interested and we formed an 8 people group around the project.

My role on the project is mainly technical direction, up until now I’ve been learning Massive Software to try solve the crowd simulation on a high level. Massive was written at WETA digital for generating the crowds of the Lord Of The Rings feature films and has been used on a lot of films after that. It is a great tool for what it does in terms of crowd simulations but it’s not the easiest tool to integrate in a pipeline (definitely not if you’re new to it). Getting rig/animation data in there from xsi for example is not an easy task. On the other hand the fuzzy logic it uses to form agents individual (artificial intelligent) brains and let them make decisions using various inputs, is very clever. The crowd pass shading and rendering out of massive will be done using pixar’s renderer prman on our renderfarm. Another thing to get familiar with but very interesting of course..

In addition to the crowd, I’ve been doing some pipeline setup for the project, getting geometry, cameras, rigs, animation data, etc.. transfered in between various 3D packages; some cloth simulation using maya nCloth for flags and clothes; terrain texturing; and a bit of general management over the project together with my colleagues.

Yesterday we also did a 5 hours motion capture session in the access mocap studio of our university which I directed together with some other team members. Great to have those facilities at hand (Bournemouth NCCA!). This will provide me with animation data to fill up the massive crowd motion tree and give our animators some good reference data/backup.

In total, we are 8 people doing this project. We have 3 character artists/animators, 1 fulltime animator, 1 rigger, 2 compositors/effect artists and 1 Technical Director(me). It’s superb working with all such talented people on this kind of project. Even though it’s a ‘massive’ project to pull off in 8 weeks (and we are learning a hell of a lot at the same time), it is a great exercise and let’s hope we can get a decent result out of it.

I can’t give more info about it at the moment but I can share a terrain test we did with. The terrain is modeled by Alkis Karaolis and I textured, vegetated, lit and rendered it myself. And a first very simple massive test with agents following a terrain and bump into each other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f37GOd3jPag

So, I hope this gave you a little update about what I’m doing at the moment and be sure to check for more in the future.
14th of March is the deadline, if we pulled it off quiet well;) I will (of course) post the final version here and maybe try to write a little bit about how we did things.

Regards

Posted in 3D, 3dsmax, Massive, Maya, TD, XSI, animation, matte painting, simulation, vfx, visual fx | Leave a Comment »

Crowd Simulation

December 20, 2007

A crowd simulation script for XSI. An export script made it easy for the animators to export their animations in the point oven format to a general database. The crowd simulation script then generates the crowd using the various animation. Some testrenders:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-fJd5DGYbM

Posted in 3D, XSI, after effects, animation, scripting, simulation | 2 Comments »

Animation

December 20, 2007

A short animation piece I did for my animation course. The brief was to make an emotional animation. All is done in Softimage XSI and Adobe After Effects. I wrote the music myself too for this piece.