VT Project

Activity Log

January 1, 2000

Official Begin of Phase 1



January 19, 2000

Meeting with Michigan Football Staff (Phil Bromley and others) at Schembechler Hall: tour of facilities, collection of video clips, discussion of playbooks and chart software.



February 3, 2000

Meeting with Don Chaffin and staff at the University of Michigan Human Motion Simulation (HUMOSIM) Center, demonstration of motion capture hardware & software



February 7, 2000

First Milestone Reached:

First version of Chart Program and CAVE Program working - Chart Program allows to define player's movements and to create an output file - This file is read by CAVE Program which executes the player's movements - In this initial version, the players move in the CAVE like chess figures (not yet animated) - Movements can be changed on the fly (almost) by running Chart and CAVE program on the same computer in an alternating sequence.



February 11, 2000

Summary of Activities from Jan-1-00 to Feb-10-00



February 18, 2000

Visit from Greg Klecker, Director of Sales, Boston Dynamics Inc.
Demonstration of PeopleShop and DI-Guy software, discussion of software suitability for VT project, negotiation of a free trial license



February 24, 2000

Second Milestone Reached:

Human characters in CAVE are now animated (they run!). Successful combination of input from Chart Program (defining the path) and Poser4 animations (defining the movement of the character's joints). Characters are not yet football players!



February 29, 2000

Meeting with SGI in Farmington Hills, discussion of Onyx donation/loaner and future cooperation. Participants:
UofM: K.-P. Beier
SGI: Scott Jost, K. Nema, Gary Schubert, Scott Young, Alex Nguyen



March 6, 2000

Third Milestone Reached:

First football player successfully animated in Poser4 !
Result of a lengthy process: received player model from Viewpoint Digital, imported model into Poser software, defined links and joints, used walk editor to create animation. Player is still single colored (no textures yet), movements still creates gaps between link geometry.



March 9, 2000

Loaner Onyx2 system from SGI arrived !



March 10, 2000

Free trial version of DI-Guy and PoepleShop software from Boston Dynamics (BDI) arrived ! Problems with installation, BDI will mail new CD.



March 14, 2000

New Onyx2 system set up by SGI field engineer. Connecting the machine to our network and Lab environment begins.



March 15, 2000

4th Milestone Reached:

First football player is running in CAVE !
Movement derived from video of a selected play, translation and timing defined with Chart program, animation added from Poser4 .
Problems to be resolved: timing incorrect, player slides, errors in link/joint geometry, foot disappears partially under ground plate.



Last Update: March 16, 2000 by beier@umich.edu
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