Automaton animation

[jcpalmer]

Ok, I have a preliminary feature to transfer Expressions to a PoseLibrary. I PR'ed and approved it. I ended up using the directory ops calls with some changes to get pose available to Blender.

These 2 calls give me both the make human & user directories. I just then read each .mhpose file directly in Blender, so no need to gather up info in MH pass it back, then go through it in Blender.

The SyncPose operator is then called in a loop, passing the file name of the expression to return. The result of the call is saved in the poselibrary with the name matching the name field in the .mhpose file.

Only problem is I do not know near enough about MH to actually change the expression in code. It creates all the poses with the right names, but they are all the same expression. Help, please.

[joepal]

That's nice.

I'll take a look at it tomorrow and see if I can figure out the missing step.

[jcpalmer]

Thanks. In the meantime, I just updated the documentation page.

BTW, I did isolate that expressions get loaded in the 2_posing_expression plug-in. There is a chooseExpression() method which takes a filename arg. After that, I have no clue, but passing a filename string means the Blender side is done.

2_posing_expression.py

[joepal]

Yeah, applying poses in MH is a somewhat involved process, where you have to create an animation first. And on top of that, for expressions you might have to mix two poses.

I'll see if I can wrap this in an easier manner in MHAPI and then expose it as as a new socket call.

[joepal]

For future reference (mainly so I find it again later this afternoon), here is how to rotate individual bones in order to create a pose manually: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14356&p=39209#p39209

[joepal]

So far so good... I've been able to make a MHAPI wrapper for setting an expression with a single file name as argument. I'm working in a separate branch in the MHAPI repo atm, see https://github.com/makehumancommunity/c ... keleton.py, line 61.

With this, I was able to use the scripting tab to run the following:

Code: Select all

from core import G
mhapi = G.app.mhapi
mhapi.skeleton.setExpressionFromFile('/home/joepal/source/makehuman_stable_with_assets/makehuman/data/expressions/cry01.mhpose')

If I wrap this with an operator in the socket plugin, is that approximately what you'd need?

[jcpalmer]

Great!

I have already reorganized the Blender side so that the SyncOperator class does not inherit from bpy.types.Operator, essentially a button callback. Makes calling the directory ops to get the directories, which should never really be buttons easy to call where ever. Also makes the easily SyncPose callable in a loop. Remember also that you can pass parameters in the socket calls. The SyncPose call conditionally passes a poseFilename parameter.

I do not want a separate socket call. I want to use the SyncPose call, as there is considerable processing in applying the return data to the skeleton. I think checking for a poseFilename parameter right in the SyncPose socket code is the way I was expecting. Like:

Code: Select all

    def getPose(self,conn,jsonCall):
       
        poseFilename = jsonCall.params["poseFilename"]
        if poseFilename is not None:
            from core import G
            mhapi = G.app.mhapi
            mhapi.skeleton.setExpressionFromFile(poseFilename)
       
        self.parent.addMessage("Constructing dict with bone matrices.")
       
        skeleton = self.human.getSkeleton()
        skelobj = dict();

        bones = skeleton.getBones()
       
        for bone in bones:
            rmat = bone.getRestMatrix('zUpFaceNegY')
            skelobj[bone.name] = [ list(rmat[0,:]), list(rmat[1,:]), list(rmat[2,:]), list(rmat[3,:]) ]

        print skelobj

        jsonCall.data = skelobj


[joepal]

Ok, there's a semantic quirk here though: There are two different kinds of poses. "Expressions" are actually a collection of face units which in a second step causes a pose, while there are also "poses" which are poses directly. The difference being that an expression is collected in a ".mhpose" file referring to frames in a BVH file, while a pose is fetched directly from a BVH file verbatim.

I've extended the code example you wrote to take both into account, see https://github.com/makehumancommunity/c ... 5f874a5383

Note that I've taken the opportunity to break out the socket server to a separate repo now too, as I'm going to ensure py3 compatibility and so forth. The only things remaining active in the old community-plugins repo is now the blender side stuff, and the CLI stuff. The new repo is here: https://github.com/makehumancommunity/c ... ins-socket

I have not actually tested any of these things, just made sure the plugin loads.

I sent a github invite with write permission for the new repo.

[jcpalmer]

Everything except Blender & CLI could then be deleted from this repo, right?

I might not get to testing this till tomorrow. Will not be testing the .bvh route.

[joepal]

Everything except Blender & CLI could then be deleted from this repo, right?

Yes. I'd probably be a good thing to do so eventually.