more Croquet movies of the new improved avatars/motion

We can now import better avatars and animations into Croquet because
there is now support for BVH pose/motion files for avatars.

This is really our first release of this stuff and we just started
tuning it, so think of this as a baseline rather than a finished
product. I used SnapZ ProX on a MacBookPro to make some movies as a
form of self-service demo, but keep in mind that the same machine
that is running Croquet is also capturing the movies, and your mileage
may vary.

I'm quite interested in getting some meshes and motions that
we can distribute free, and in understanding what we can do to
help create a healthy ecosystem for artists who make avatars
(see http://croquet-bento.blogspot.com/2006/06/better-avatars.html).

now dim the lights, everyone's gone to the movies...

Example:
   http://hedgehog.software.umn.edu/croquet/croquetMovies/ 
avatarObjBVH.mov

How to update your Croquet image:
    http://hedgehog.software.umn.edu/croquet/croquetMovies/ 
updateToMotion.mov

Locating legacy content for demo purposes:
    http://hedgehog.software.umn.edu/croquet/croquetMovies/ 
firefoxAvatar.mov

Poser import and export to Croquet compatible format:
    http://hedgehog.software.umn.edu/croquet/croquetMovies/ 
PoserToCroquet.mov

Another example:
    http://hedgehog.software.umn.edu/croquet/croquetMovies/ 
SLfemaleInCroquet.mov

On Jun 7, 2006, at 8:32 AM, David Faught wrote:
>
> This does prompt a few questions though:
> 1.  Is the method you describe in this movie for updating an image  
> the proper and preferred method, or is it one of a few available  
> that happened to work for these updates?

Monticello is the preferred method of publishing updates/changes to  
the Croquet SDK, and the
update method shown in the movie is what to use if you want to keep  
up with things as they develop. Think of the changes (particularly in  
the "contributions" and "public contributions" areas) as the  
development/unstable branch of the project. That movie showed you how  
to track those changes.

> 2.  Does this mean that the update stream won't be used?

The update stream is useful to apply an update once (and only once)  
to a given image. Monticello
has virtues like showing you diffs, and allowing you to go back to a  
previous version easily, but Monticello changesets need to be  
designed so that they can be applied more than once to an image.  
We'll probably only use the update stream to bundle together a big  
bunch of Monticello changeset for a major new release at some point.  
In other words, the update stream is there in case we need it, but  
Monticello is where the real action is.

> 3.  Should I save this updated image replacing my normal image, or  
> as a new version?

I usually keep a couple versions around. One is a known good image  
and another is experimental.

> 4.  Are there some updated Monticello packages that should not be  
> part of my normal image?

Croquet-Updates-mpm.1.mcz  -  is not needed by most people. It is  
just there for those who will create changesets for the update  
stream, but we almost never use the update stream, and only a few  
people create changesets for it, so ignore this.

install.mcm  -   was there to create the base image (which you  
already have)

Fdlibm-ar.5.mcz   -   I'm not sure what the status of this is.


> 5.  Is there going to be a place to share content such as legally  
> shareable meshes, textures, and animation files with the Croquet  
> community?

I'm working on getting a self-service way for people to put that sort  
of content up for sharing,
give me a week and we'll get something in place on  
hedgehog.software.umn.edu. For now, if there is something needed, let  
me know and I'll put it up by hand. We have plenty of space to hold  
this sort of thing, I've just been busy.


> 6.  After updating my image as you describe, I noticed that there  
> are now some Robot entries in the menus.  Are these functional?  I  
> had a little trouble when I tried them.
>

there is an update coming soon for Robot services... and a movie  
about them too.

> Maybe I am being a little too literal minded with some of this, but  
> I am a curious sort.