SCANable helped bring the Google Spotlight Stories fourth animated film to life by capturing all of the sets, locations, actors and vehicles in 3D for recreation of each item as photorealistic 3D digital assets. These assets were used by the VFX teams to create the final version of the film.
Google Spotlight Stories, a mobile app featuring immersive, 360-degree animated films originally developed by Motorola, has now made its way to iOS devices.
When viewers watch the movie, entitled “HELP” they can look anywhere, set the pace and frame the shot by moving their mobile device. Previously Spotlight Stories was only supported by Android but is now available to users of iOS 8.0 or higher.
The app itself is intended for entertainment purposes, as it offers stories built using 3D and 2D animations, 360-degree spherical “cinema-quality” video, sound sphere audio and “sensor fusion techniques,” explains Google. In short, what that means is that viewers can look around inside the animated content by moving their body and the phone to see different parts or angles of the story taking place.
Basically, the app can take advantage of the device’s sensors like its gyroscope and accelerometer in order to offer an immersive viewing experience. However, it doesn’t let end users create these sorts of movies for themselves.
One of the original animations featured in Spotlight Stories when it debuted was a film called “Windy Days” by ex-Pixar moviemakers, which appeared on Moto X phones when the Android app rolled out. This, as well as the other content previously available on Android, is also available in the new iOS app.
The app includes films like “Duet” from Glen Keane, “Buggy Night” from ATAP, and “Help” by “The Fast and the Furious” director Justin Lin. What’s interesting is that this latter movie, unlike the others, is noted as being “free for a limited time,” which indicates that Google may be planning to sell movies through this service in the future.
The technology for making these artistic mini-movies was first developed by Motorola Mobility’s Advanced Technology And Products (ATAP) moonshot division, but Google continued to fund its development in the years that followed. However, because the app was originally intended for Motorola devices (like the Moto X), it didn’t immediately support a wide range of Android devices when it launched. Some limitations on Android continue today, as the Google Play version still indicates that Spotlight Stories is “not yet compatible with all smartphones.”
However, the new iOS release will work on any device running iOS 8.0 or higher, notes Google.
https://scanable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/00000009727.jpg7201280Travis Reinkehttps://scanable.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SCANable_Web_Header.webpTravis Reinke2015-09-03 13:43:362015-09-03 13:43:36Google Brings Its 360-Degree Movies App, Spotlight Stories, To iOS
Andersson Technologies has released SynthEyes 1502, the latest version of its 3D tracking software, improving compatibility with Blackmagic Design’s Fusion compositing software.
Reflecting the renewed interest in Fusion
According to the official announcement: “Blackmagic Design’s recent decision to make Fusion 7 free of charge has led to increased interest in that package. While SynthEyes has exported to Fusion for many years now — for projects such as Battlestar Galactica — Andersson Technologies LLC upgraded SynthEyes’s Fusion export.”
Accordingly, the legacy Fusion exporter now supports 3D planar trackers; primitive, imported, or tracker-built meshes; imported or extracted textures; multiple cameras; and lens distortion via image maps.
The new lens distortion feature should make it possible to reproduce the distortion patterns of any real-world lens without its properties having been coded explicitly in the software or a custom plugin.
A new second exporter creates corner pin nodes in Fusion from 2D or 3D planar trackers in SynthEyes.
Other new features in SynthEyes 1502 include an error curve mini-view, a DNG/CinemaDNG file reader, and a refresh of the user interface, including the option to turn toolbar icons on or off.
Pricing and availability
SynthEyes 1502 is available now for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. New licences cost from $249 to $999, depending on which edition you buy. The new version is free to registered users.
New features in SynthEyes 1502 include:
Toolbar icons are back! Some love ’em, some hate ’em. Have it your way: set the preference. Shows both text and icon by default to make it easiest, especially for new users with older tutorials. Some new and improved icons.
Refresh of user interface color preferences to a somewhat darker and trendier look. Other minor appearance tweaks.
New error curve mini-view.
Updated Fusion 3D exporter now exports all cameras, 3D planars, all meshes (including imported), lens distortion via image maps, etc.
New Fusion 2D corner pinning exporter.
Lens distortion export via color maps, currently for Fusion (Nuke for testing).
During offset tracking, a tracker can be (repeatedly) shift-dragged to different reference patterns on any frame, and SynthEyes will automatically adjust the offset channel keying.
Rotopanel’s Import tracker to CP (control point) now asks whether you want to import the relative motion or absolute position.
DNG/CinemaDNG reading. Marginal utility: DNG requires much proprietary postprocessing to get usable images, despite new luma and chroma blur settings in the image preprocessor.
New script to “Reparent meshes to active host” (without moving them)
New section in the user manual on “Realistic Compositing for 3-D”
New tutorials on offset tracking and Fusion.
Upgraded to RED 5.3 SDK (includes REDcolor4, DRAGONcolor2).
Faster camera and perspective drawing with large meshes and lidar scan data.
Windows: Installing license data no longer requires “right click/Start as Administrator”—the UAC dialog will appear instead.
Windows: Automatically keeps the last 3 crash dumps. Even one crash is one too many.
Windows: Installers, SynthEyes, and Synthia are now code-signed for “Andersson Technologies LLC” instead of showing “Unknown publisher”.
Mac OS X: Yosemite required that we change to the latest XCode 6—this eliminated support for OS X 10.7. Apple made 10.8 more difficult as well.
About SynthEyes
SynthEyes is a program for 3-D camera-tracking, also known as match-moving. SynthEyes can look at the image sequence from your live-action shoot and determine how the real camera moved during the shoot, what the camera’s field of view (~focal length) was, and where various locations were in 3-D, so that you can create computer-generated imagery that exactly fits into the shot. SynthEyes is widely used in film, television, commercial, and music video post-production.
What can SynthEyes do for me? You can use SynthEyes to help insert animated creatures or vehicles; fix shaky shots; extend or fix a set; add virtual sets to green-screen shoots; replace signs or insert monitor images; produce 3D stereoscopic films; create architectural previews; reconstruct accidents; do product placements after the shoot; add 3D cybernetic implants, cosmetic effects, or injuries to actors; produce panoramic backdrops or clean plates; build textured 3-D meshes from images; add 3-D particle effects; or capture body motion to drive computer-generated characters. And those are just the more common uses; we’re sure you can think of more.
What are its features? Take a deep breath! SynthEyes offers 3-D tracking, set reconstruction, stabilization, and motion capture. It handles camera tracking, 2- and 3-D planar tracking, object tracking, object tracking from reference meshes, camera+object tracking, survey shots, multiple-shot tracking, tripod (nodal, 2.5-D) tracking, mixed tripod and translating shots, stereoscopic shots, nodal stereoscopic shots, zooming shots, lens distortion, light solving. It can handle shots of any resolution (Intro version limited to 1920×1080)—HD, film, IMAX, with 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit float data, and can be used on shots with thousands of frames. A keyer simplifies and speeds tracking for green-screen shots. The image preprocessor helps remove grain, compression artifacts, off-centering, or varying lighting and improve low-contrast shots. Textures can be extracted for a mesh from the image sequence, producing higher resolution and lower noise than any individual image. A revolutionary Instructible Assistant, Synthia™, helps you work faster and better, from spoken or typed natural language directions.
SynthEyes offers complete control over the tracking process for challenging shots, including an efficient workflow for supervised trackers, combined automated/supervised tracking, offset tracking, incremental solving, rolling-shutter compensation, a hard and soft path locking system, distance constraints for low-perspective shots, and cross-camera constraints for stereo. A solver phase system lets you set up complex solving strategies with a visual node-based approach (not in Intro version). You can set up a coordinate system with tracker constraints, camera constraints, an automated ground-plane-finding tool, by aligning to a mesh, a line-based single-frame alignment system, manually, or with some cool phase techniques.
Eyes starting to glaze over at all the features? Don’t worry, there’s a big green AUTO button too. Download the free demo and see for yourself.
What can SynthEyes talk to? SynthEyes is a tracking app; you’ll use the other apps you already know to generate the pretty pictures. SynthEyes exports to about 25 different 2-D and 3-D programs. The Sizzle scripting language lets you customize the standard exports, or add your own imports, exports, or tools. You can customize toolbars, color scheme, keyboard mapping, and viewport configurations too. Advanced customers can use the SyPy Python API/SDK.
Photogrammetry and camera projection mapping in Maya made easy.
What’s included?
The Mattepainting Toolkit (gs_mptk) is a plugin suite for Autodesk Maya that helps artists build photorealistic 3D environments with minimal rendering overhead. It offers an extensive toolset for working with digital paintings as well as datasets sourced from photographs.
Version 3.0 is now released!
For Maya versions 2014 and 2015, version 3.0 of the toolkit adds support for Viewport 2.0, and a number of new features. Version 2.0 is still available for Maya versions 2012-2014. A lite version of the toolkit, The Camera Projection Toolkit (gs_cptk) is available for purchase from the Autodesk Exchange. To see a complete feature comparison list between these versions, click here.
How does it work?
The Mattepainting Toolkit uses an OpenGL implementation for shader feedback within Maya’s viewport. This allows users to work directly with paintings, photos, and image sequences that are mapped onto geometry in an immediate and intuitive way.
Overview
The User Interface
Textures are organized in a UI that manages the shaders used for viewport display and rendering.
Clicking on an image thumbnail will load the texture in your preferred image editor.
Texture layer order is determined by a drag-and-drop list.
Geometry shading assignments can be quickly added and removed.
Point Cloud Data
Import Bundler and PLY point cloud data from Agisoft Photoscan, Photosynth, or other Structure From Motion (SFM) software.
Point clouds can be used as a modeling guide to quickly reconstruct a physical space.
Cameras are automatically positioned in the scene for projection mapping.
The Viewport
A custom OpenGL shader allows textures to be displayed in high quality and manipulated interactively within the viewport.
Up to 16 texture layers can be displayed per shader.
HDR equirectangular images can be projected spherically.
Texture mattes can be painted directly onto geometry within the viewport.
Image sequences are supported so that film plates can be mapped to geometry.
Rendering
The layered textures can be rendered with any renderer available to Maya. Custom Mental Ray and V-Ray shaders included with the toolkit extend the texture blending capabilities for those renderers.
The texture layers can be baked down to object UVs.
A coverage map can be rendered to isolate which areas of the geometry are most visible to the camera.
For Mental Ray and V-Ray, textures can be blended based on object occlusion, distance from the projection camera, and object facing ratio.
https://scanable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/gnomon_cover.jpg510800Travis Reinkehttps://scanable.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SCANable_Web_Header.webpTravis Reinke2015-01-20 16:11:532015-01-20 16:11:53Photogrammetry and camera projection mapping in Maya made easy
Meshmixer 2.7 was released today full of new tools for 3D printing. Here I use the new version of the app to create a 3D printed kit of parts that can be printed in one job and assembled together pin connectors.
To do this I used several of the new features to make this a fast and painless process. I dug up a 123D Catch capture I took of a bronze sculpture of John Muir. I found it in my dentists office, it turns out my dentist sculpted it. I thought I’d make my own take on it by slicing it up and connecting it back together so it can be interactive, swiveling the pieces around the pin connectors.
I made use of the new pin connectors solid parts that are included in the release (in the miscellaneous bin). I also used the powerful Layout/Packing tool to layout parts on the print bed as a kit of parts to print in one print job. Also, the addition of the Orthographic view is incredibly helpful when creating the kit and laying it out within the print volume of my Replicator 2X. An instructable is in progress with a how-to for a 3D printed kit such as this.
This new release has some other nice updates. Check em out below:
– New Layout/Packing Tool under Analysis for 3D print bed layout
– New Deviation Tool for visualizing max distance between two objects (ie original & reduced version)
– New Clearance Tool for visualizing min distance between two objects (ie to verify tolerances)
– Under Analysis menu, requires selection of two objects)
– Reduce Tool now supports reducing to triangle count, (approximate) maximum deviation
– Support Generation improvements
– Better DLP/SLA preset
– Can now draw horizontal bars in support generator
– Ctrl-click now deletes all support segments above click point
– Shift-ctrl-click to only delete clicked segment
– Solid Part dropping now has built-in option to boolean add/subtract
– Can set operation-type preference during Convert To Solid Part
– Can set option to preserve physical dimensions during Convert To Solid Part
– New Snapping options in Measure tool
– Can now turn on Print Bed rendering in Modeling view (under View menu)
– Must enter Print View to change/configure printer
– Improved support for low-end graphics cards
For your kit of parts, try out the new pin connectors included in the Misc. parts library. One is a negative (boolean subtract it when dropping the part). The other you can drop on the print bed for printing by itself. It fits into the negative hole. You can also author your own parts and they will drop at a fixed scale (so they fit!).
Let us know what kind of kits you create…maybe we can add in your connectors in a future release. (There’s a free 3d print and t-shirt involved). Let us know at meshmixer@autodesk.com.
Have fun!!
https://scanable.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Autodesk-Meshmixer-Launch-2.jpg7261286Travis Reinkehttps://scanable.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SCANable_Web_Header.webpTravis Reinke2014-11-26 03:59:232014-12-02 04:07:49Make a 3D Printed Kit with Meshmixer 2.7
With Leica Cyclone 9.0, the industry leading point cloud solution for processing laser scan data, Leica Geosystems HDS introduces major, patent-pending innovations for greater project efficiency. Innovations benefit both field and office via significantly faster, easier scan registration, plus quicker deliverable creation thanks to better 2D and 3D drafting tools and steel modelling. Cyclone 9.0 allows users to scale easily for larger, more complex projects while ensuring high quality deliverables consistently.
Greatest advancement in office scan registration since cloud-to-cloud registration When Leica Geosystems pioneered cloud-to-cloud registration, it enabled users – for the first time – to accurately execute laser scanning projects without having to physically place special targets around the scene, scan them, and model them in the office. With cloud-to-cloud registration software, users take advantage of overlaps among scans to register them together.
“The cloud-to-cloud registration approach has delivered significant logistical benefits onsite and time savings for many projects. We’ve constantly improved it, but the new Automatic Scan Alignment and Visual Registration capabilities in Cyclone 9.0 represent the biggest advancement in cloud-to-cloud registration since we introduced it,” explained Dr. Chris Thewalt, VP Laser Scanning Software. “Cyclone 9.0 lets users benefit from targetless scanning more often by performing the critical scan registration step far more efficiently in the office for many projects. As users increase the size and scope of their scanning projects, Cyclone 9.0 pays even bigger dividends. Any user who registers laser scan data will find great value in these capabilities.“
With the push of a button, Cyclone 9.0 automatically processes scans, and digital images if available, to create groups of overlapping scans that are initially aligned to each other. Once scan alignment is completed, algorithmic registration is applied for final registration. This new workflow option can be used in conjunction with target registration methods as well. These combined capabilities not only make the most challenging registration scenarios feasible, but also exponentially faster. Even novice users will appreciate their ease-of-use and ready scalability beyond small projects.
Power user Marta Wren, technical specialist at Plowman Craven Associates (PCA – leading UK chartered surveying firm) found that Cyclone 9.0’s Visual Registration tools alone sped up registration processing of scans by up to four times (4X) faster than previous methods. PCA uses laser scanning for civil infrastructure, commercial property, forensics, entertainment, and Building Information Modelling (BIM) applications.
New intuitive 2D and 3D drafting from laser scans For civil applications, new roadway alignment drafting tools let users import LandXML-based roadway alignments or use simple polylines imported or created in Cyclone. These tools allow users to easily create cross section templates using feature codes, as well as copy them to the next station and visually adjust them to fit roadway conditions at the new location. A new vertical exaggeration tool in Cyclone 9.0 allows users to clearly see subtle changes in elevation; linework created between cross sections along the roadway can be used as breaklines for surface meshing or for 2D maps and drawings in other applications.
For 2D drafting of forensic scenes, building and BIM workflows, a new Quick Slice tool streamlines the process of creating a 2D sketch plane for drafting items, such as building footprints and sections, into just one step. A user only needs to pick one or two points on the face of a building to get started. This tool can also be used to quickly analyse the quality of registrations by visually checking where point clouds overlap.
Also included in Cyclone 9.0 are powerful, automatic point extraction features first introduced in Cyclone II TOPO and Leica CloudWorx. These include efficient SmartPicks for automatically finding bottom, top, and tie point locations and Points-on-a-Grid for automatically placing up to a thousand scan survey points on a grid for ground surfaces or building faces.
Simplified steel fitting of laser scan data For plant, civil, building and BIM applications, Cyclone 9.0 also introduces a patent-pending innovation for modelling steel from point cloud data more quickly and easily. Unlike time consuming methods that require either processing an entire available cloud to fit a steel shape or isolating a cloud section before fitting, this new tool lets users to quickly and accurately model specific steel elements directly within congested point clouds. Users only need to make two picks along a steel member to model it. Shapes include wide flange, channel, angle, tee, and rectangular tube shapes.
Faster path to deliverables Leica Cyclone 9.0 also provides users with valuable, new capabilities for faster creation of deliverables for civil, architectural, BIM, plant, and forensic scene documentation from laser scans and High-Definition Surveying™ (HDS™).
Availability Leica Cyclone 9.0 is available today. Further information about the Leica Cyclone family of products can be found at http://hds.leica-geosystems.com, and users may download new product versions online from this website or purchase or rent licenses from SCANable, your trusted Leica Geosystems representative. Contact us today for pricing on software and training.
FARO® Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: FARO), the world’s most trusted source for 3D measurement, imaging, and realization technology, announced the release of their newest version of laser scanning software, SCENE 5.3, and scan data hosting-service, SCENE WebShare Cloud 1.5.
FARO’s SCENE 5.3 software, for use with the Laser Scanner Focus3D X Series, delivers scan registration by eliminating artificial targets, such as spheres and checkerboards. Users can choose from two available registration methods: Top View Based or Cloud to Cloud. Top View Based registration allows for targetless positioning of scans. In interiors and in built-up areas without reliable GPS positioning of the individual scans, targetless positioning represents a highly efficient and largely automated method of scanning. The second method, Cloud to Cloud registration, opens up new opportunities for the user to position scans quickly and accurately, even under difficult conditions. In exterior locations with good positioning of the scans by means of the integrated GPS receiver of the Laser Scanner Focus3D X Series, Cloud to Cloud is the method of choice for targetless registration.
In addition, the software also offers various new processes that enable the user to flexibly respond to a wide variety of project requirements. For instance, Correspondence Split View matches similar areas in neighbouring scans to resolve any missing positioning information, and Layout Image Overlay allows users to place scan data in a geographical context using image files, CAD drawings, or maps.
Oliver Bürkler, Senior Product Manager for 3D Documentation Software, remarked, “SCENE 5.3 is the ideal tool for processing laser scanning projects. FARO’s cloud-based hosting solution, SCENE WebShare Cloud, allows scan projects to be published and shared worldwide via the Internet. The collective upgrades to FARO’s laser scanning software solution, SCENE 5.3 and WebShare Cloud 1.5, make even complex 3D documentation projects faster, more efficient, and more effective. “
About FARO FARO is the world’s most trusted source for 3D measurement, imaging and realization technology. The Company develops and markets computer-aided measurement and imaging devices and software. Technology from FARO permits high-precision 3D measurement, imaging and comparison of parts and complex structures within production and quality assurance processes. The devices are used for inspecting components and assemblies, production planning, documenting large volume spaces or structures in 3D, surveying and construction, as well as for investigation and reconstruction of accident sites or crime scenes.
Worldwide, approximately 15,000 customers are operating more than 30,000 installations of FARO’s systems. The Company’s global headquarters is located in Lake Mary, FL., its European head office in Stuttgart, Germany and its Asia/Pacific head office in Singapore. FARO has branches in Brazil, Mexico, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Netherlands, Turkey, India, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea and Japan.
Mantis Vision, a developer of some of the world’s most advanced 3D enabling technologies, today confirmed that its MV4D technology platform will serve as the core 3D engine behind Google’s Project Tango. Mantis Vision provides the 3D sensing platform, consisting of flash projector hardware components and Mantis Vision’s core MV4D technology which includes structured light-based depth sensing algorithms.
Google’s new seven-inch tablet is the first mobile device released that will access the MV4D platform to easily capture, enrich and deliver quality 3D data at scale allowing Google developers to quickly build consumer and professional applications on top of the MV4D platform.
“3D represents a major paradigm shift for mobile. We haven’t seen a change this significant since the introduction of the camera-phone. MV4D allows developers to deliver 3D-enabled mobile devices and capabilities to the world,” said Amihai Loven, CEO, Mantis Vision. “This partnership with Google offers Mantis Vision the flexibility to expand quickly and strategically. It will fuel adoption and engagement directly with consumer audiences worldwide. Together, we are bringing 3D to the masses.”
MV4D is Mantis Vision’s highly-scalable 3D capture and processing platform that allows developers to integrate Mantis’ technology into new and existing applications with ease, to drive user-generated 3D content creation throughout the mobile ecosystem. MV4D’s combination of field-proven 3D imaging hardware and software and a soon-to-be released software development kit (SDK) will ultimately serve as the backbone of 3D-enabled mobile and tablet devices.
“We are excited about working with partners, such as Mantis Vision, as we push forward the hardware and software technologies for 3D sensing and motion tracking on mobile devices,” said Johnny Lee, Technical Product Lead at Google.
Since its inception, Mantis Vision has been dedicated to bringing professional-grade 3D technology to the masses. The company’s technology will be a key component of both professional and consumer level devices and applications across a wide customer base of leading mobile technology companies, application developers and device manufacturers. Because the MV4D platform and SDK is fully scalable, it is already being planned for use in more powerful, diverse range of products in the future.
With its new ReCap Connect Partnership Program, Autodesk will open up Autodesk ReCap – its reality capture platform – to third party developers and partners, allowing them to extend ReCap’s functionality.
“Autodesk has a long history of opening our platforms to support innovation and extension,” said Robert Shear, senior director, Reality Solutions, Autodesk. “With the ReCap Connect Partnership Program, we’ll be allowing a talented pool of partners to expand what our reality capture software can do. As a result, customers will have even more ways to start their designs with accurate dimensions and full photo-quality context rather than a blank screen.”
There are many ways for partners to connect to the ReCap pipeline, which encompasses both laser-based and photo-based workflows. Partners can write their own import plug-in to bring structured point cloud data into ReCap and ReCap Pro using the Capture Codec Kit that is available as part of the new ReCap desktop version. DotProduct – a maker of handheld, self-contained 3D scanners – is the first partner to take advantage of this capability.
“Autodesk’s ReCap Connect program will enable a 50x data transfer performance boost for DotProduct customers — real time 3D workflows on tablets just got a whole lot faster. Our lean color point clouds will feed reality capture pipelines without eating precious schedule and bandwidth.” Tom Greaves, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, DotProduct LLC.
Alternately, partners can take advantage of the new Embedded ReCap OEM program to send Reality Capture Scan (RCS) data exports from their point cloud processing software directly to Autodesk design products, which all support this new point cloud engine, or to ReCap and ReCap Pro. The first signed partners in the Embedded ReCap OEM program are: Faro, for their Faro Scenesoftware; Z+F for their LaserControl software; CSA for their PanoMap software, LFM for their LFM software products; and Kubit for their VirtuSurv software. All these partners’ software will feature this RCS export in their coming releases.
“Partnering with Autodesk and participating in the ReCap Connect program helps FARO to ensure a fluent workflow for customers who work with Autodesk products. Making 3D documentation and the use of the captured reality as easy as possible is one of FARO’s foremost goals when developing our products. Therefore, integrating with Autodesk products suits very well to our overall product strategy.” – Oliver Bürkler, Senior Product Manager, 3D Documentation Software & Innovation, FARO
As a third option, partners can build their own application on top of the Autodesk photo-to-3D cloud service by using the ReCap Photo Web API. More than 10 companies – serving markets ranging from medical and civil engineering, to video games and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) – have started developing specific applications that leverage this capability, or have started integrating this capability right into their existing apps. Some of the first partners to use the ReCap Photo Web API include Soundfit, SkyCatch and Twnkls.
“Autodesk’s cloud based ReCap is an important part of the SoundFit’s 3D SugarCube Scanning Service. Autodesk’s ReCap service has enabled SoundFit to keep the per scan cost of its service very low, opening new markets, such as scans for hearing aids, custom fit communications headsets, musicians monitors and industrial hearing protection. ReCap allows SoundFit to export 3D models in a wide variety of popular 3D formats, so SoundFit customers and manufacturers can import them into Autodesk CAD packages from AutoCAD to 123D Design, or send them directly to any 3D printer or 3D printing service bureau.” – Ben Simon-Thomas, CEO & Co-Founder
For more information about the ReCap Connect Partnership Program, contact Dominique Pouliquen at Email Contact.
Additional Partner Supporting Quotes
“ReCap Connect gives our PointSense and PhoToPlan users smart and fully integrated access to powerful ReCap utilities directly within their familiar AutoCAD design environments. The result is a more simple and efficient overall workflow. ReCap Photo 360 image calibration eliminates the slowest part of a kubit user’s design process resulting in significant time savings per project.” – Matthias Koksch, CEO, kubit
“ReCap, integrated with CSA’s PanoMap Server, provides a powerful functionality to transfer laser scan point cloud data from large-scale 3D laser scan databases to Autodesk products. Using the interface, the user can select any plant area by a variety of selection criteria and transfer the laser scan points to the design environment in which they are working. The laser scan 3D database of the plant can have thousands of laser scans.” – Amadeus Burger, President, CSA Laser Scanning
“Autodesk’s industry leading Recap photogrammetry technology will be instrumental in introducing BuildIT’s 3D Metrology solution to a broader audience by significantly reducing data capture complexity and cost.” – Vito Marone, Director Sales & Marketing, BuildIT Software & Solutions
“I am very pleased with the ReCap Photo API performance and its usefulness in fulfilling our 3D personalization needs. I believe the ReCap Photo API is the only product that is available in the market today that meets our needs.” – Dr. Masuma, PhD., Founder of iCrea8
Massive has a completely new graphic user interface. With graphic design by Lost in Space the new interface not only looks stylish and modern but provides a much smoother interactive user experience. Dialog windows and editors now turn up in the new side panel, keeping the workspace clear and tidy. The main window now hosts multiple panels that can be configured to suit the users needs, and the configurations can be recalled for later use. Since any panel can be a viewport it’s now possible to have up to 5 viewports open at once, each using a different camera.
3D placement
The existing placement tools in Massive have been extended to work in 3 dimensions, independently of the terrain. The point generator can be placed anywhere in space, the circle generator becomes a sphere, the polygon generator gains depth, the spline generator becomes tubular. There’s also a new generator called the geometry generator, which takes a wavefront .obj file and fills the polygonal volume with agents.
Auto action import
Building complex agents with hundreds of actions can be a time consuming process, but it doesn’t have to be anymore. In Massive 6.0 the action importing process can be completely automated, reducing what could be months of work to a few minutes. Also, all of the import settings for all of the actions can be saved to a file so that revisions of source motion can be imported in seconds using the same settings as earlier revisions.
Bullet dynamics
To effortlessly build a mountain of zombies it would be useful to have extremely stable rigid body dynamics. Massive 6.0 supports bullet dynamics, significantly increasing dynamics stability. Just for fun we had 1000 mayhem agents throw themselves off a cliff into a pile on the ground below. Without tweaking of parameters we easily created an impressive zombie shot, demonstrating the stability and ease of use of bullet dynamics.
No typing required
While it is possible to create almost any kind of behaviour using the brain nodes in Massive, it has always required a little typing to specify inputs and outputs of the brain. This is no longer necessary with the new channel menu which allows the user to very quickly construct any possible input or output channel string with a few mouse clicks.
These are just some of the new features of Massive 6.0, which is scheduled for release in September.
Massive for Maya
Massive has always been a standalone system, and now there’s the choice to use Massive standalone as Massive Prime and Massive Jet, or in Maya as Massive for Maya.
Set up and run simulations in Maya
Massive for Maya facilitates the creation of Massive silmuations directly in Maya. All of the Massive scene setup tools such as flow field, lanes, paint and placement editors have been seamlessly reconstructed inside Maya. The simulation workflow has been integrated into Maya to allow for intuitive running, recording and playback of simulations. To achieve this a record button has been added next to the transport controls and a special status indicator has been included in the Massive shelf. Scrubbing of simulations of thousands of agents in Maya is now as simple and efficient as scrubbing the animation of a single character.
Set up lighting in Maya
The Massive agents automatically appear in preview renders as well as batch renders alongside any other objects in the scene. Rendering in Maya works for Pixar’s RenderMan, Air, 3Delight, Mental Ray and V-Ray. This allows for lighting scenes using the familiar Maya lighting tools, without requiring any special effort to integrate Massive elements into the scene. Furthermore, all of this has been achieved without losing any of the efficiency and scalability of Massive.
Edit simulations in Maya graph editor
Any of the agents in a simulation can be made editable in the Maya graph editor. This allows for immediate editing of simulations without leaving the Maya environment. Any changes made to the animation in the graph editor automatically feed back to the Massive agents, so the tweaked agents will appear in the render even though the user sees a Maya character for editing purposes in the viewport. The editing process can even be used with complex animation control rigs, allowing animators and motion editors complete freedom to work however they want to.
Directable characters
A major advantage of Massive for Maya is the ability to bring Massive’s famous brains to character animation, providing another vital tool for creating the illusion of life. While animation studios have integrated Massive into their pipeline to do exactly this for years, the ability to create directable characters has not been within easy reach for those using off-the-shelf solutions. With Massive for Maya it’s now possible to create characters using a handful of base cycles, takes and expressions that can handle such tasks as keeping alive, responding to the the focus of the shot, responding to simple direction, or simply walking along a path, thus reducing the amount of work required to fill out a scene with characters which are not currently the focus of the shot. For example, in a scene in which two characters are talking with eachotherand a third character, say a mouse, is reacting, the mouse could be driven by it’s Massive counterpart. The talking characters would drive their Massive counterparts thereby being visible to the mouse. Using attributes in the talking characters, their Massive counterparts could change colour to convey their emotional states to the mouse agent. The mouse agent then performs appropriately, using it’s animation cycles, blend shape animations etc in response to the performance of the talking characters, and looking at whichever character is talking. Once the agents for a project have been created, setting up a shot for this technique requires only a few mouse clicks and the results happen in real-time. Any edits to the timing of the shot will simply flow through to the mouse performance.
SCANable offers on-site 3D imaging of real-world people/characters to populate your 3D crowd asset library in Massive’s crowd placement and simulation software. Contact us today for a free quote.
Wrap is a topology transfer tool. It allows to utilize the topology you already have and transfer your new 3D-scanned data onto it. The resulting models will not only share the same topology and UV-coordinates but also will naturally become blendshapes of each other. Here’s a short video how it works:
and here are a couple of examples based on 3D-scans kindly provided by Lee Perry-Smith
As with all new technology during its final beta stages, Wrap is not perfect yet. R3DS would be highly appreciative and grateful of everyone that gives us the support and feedback to finalize things in the best possible way. This software has some potential to be a great tool. Check it out!
Directable characters
