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CV-AR: Support
Posted: 24 June 2018 09:28 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 16 ]  
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Dr. Sassi - 19 June 2018 12:59 PM

Hi Tim,

Edit: Post #14 tells Studio only. So, I downgraded my version, and went step by step up again. No luck with anything but Studio. What baffles me is, that this is no-where mentioned so far. I checked the tutorials, the CV-Toolbox text, and wherever I saw anything about CV-AR. Nothing. Not even in the txt file inside the plug in. Sorry about that. This is not how the tools should be supplied. Again sorry, I had really no idea. /edit

That sounds all good, which means that needs to be explored directly by the plug in developers.
I’m really sorry that you have this trouble, as I know how it feels to do everything needed, and then no “show”.

Fingers crossed, this will be running in no time for you.

All the best

Sassi

Hi Sassi,

Thanks very much for all of your Help!  I hope this is simply an oversight of including a version and not restricted for licensing reasons.  If it’s just about licensing that would be a big disappointment.

Best regards,
Tim

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Posted: 24 June 2018 01:39 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 17 ]  
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Hi Tim, hi picsel100,

I let the developers run this thread from now on. I can’t find even today any updated information anywhere. This is not nice for anyone who is interested in using it. I’m really sorry about this, but I can’t change it from here.

Fingers crossed, this will be all fixed ASAP!

My best wishes.

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
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Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
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Posted: 29 June 2018 01:38 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 18 ]  
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picsel100 - 21 June 2018 01:10 AM

I double-clicked it in my browser and loaded it, and even when I clicked the ‘add to scene’ button, neither method could load the data. If you give me another way, I’ll test it.

P.S. Is there any plug-in that should be installed as required in CV Toolbox?

Hi picsel100,

What you mentioned was correct. So it should have worked. Could you upload a screen shot of what the CV-AR Dialog looks like in Cinema 4D? How long was the capture that you recorded?

Did you set a path for your captures folder (in the preferences under CV-AR)? Can you look inside this folder and tell me what you see?

Are you on OSX or Windows? And could you send me also the version of OSX or Windows as well.

If you right click on a thumbnail in the CV-AR Dialog can you play the sample movie clip?

I would like to get to the bottom of this to find out why it’s not working for you. Really sorry you are having these issues.

Also regarding your question about Houdini, no you do not need Houdini. The information in the 3rdparty file is just to acknowledge that I used some pieces of that developers initial project for the iPhone App when the project was initially first started.

Best Regards,
Kent

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Posted: 29 June 2018 01:43 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 19 ]  
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Dr. Sassi - 24 June 2018 01:39 PM

Hi Tim, hi picsel100,

I let the developers run this thread from now on. I can’t find even today any updated information anywhere. This is not nice for anyone who is interested in using it. I’m really sorry about this, but I can’t change it from here.

Fingers crossed, this will be all fixed ASAP!

My best wishes.

Hi Dr. Sassi,

Unfortunately I am on the outside here regarding any information officially available on Cineversity. I will let Rick know to update the official page to state that this is currently for Studio users only. This was a business decision at the time before release. We will see if this can be relaxed in a future build. However for now it is only for the Studio version.

Best Regards,
Kent

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Posted: 29 June 2018 01:49 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 20 ]  
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Thanks a lot, Kent!

I can only help as far as I have first hand informations.

Yes, I appreciate the information that you share here and the care you provide. An update of the requirements will certainly prevent quite some frustration.

Again, thanks a lot for pushing this thread to the high valuable level it has now, really nice of you.

Enjoy your evening

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSassiLA/playlists

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Posted: 24 August 2018 09:58 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 21 ]  
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Hi polypoint,

One issue I had was connecting via 2Ghz or 5Ghz over wifi.  My router has both 2Ghz and 5Ghz and if I connected over different ones then it didn’t detect it as being on the same wifi network, which I find odd, but it is something that has happened to me.

So just check that your phone and computer are both on the same frequency. If the computer is hard wired in then try checking both on the phone and see if it can connect.

We are looking at updating it to add workflows without wifi, and I would also like to look at supporting direct USD connection as well. But this will not be for a little while yet.

Let me know if this works for you or not.

Best Regards,
Kent.

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Posted: 24 August 2018 10:04 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 22 ]  
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One other issue I have had is that my computer has multiple network cards. If this is the case then also make sure that you have set the correct IP address in the C4D Preferences for CV-AR to the ip address assigned to the network card (found using ipconfig) that is on the same network that the phone is connecting to. The ip address in the preferences is the IP address of that computer. Its a bit of a hassle at the moment I have to agree, we will be looking at streamlining this in future as well.

To answer some of your previous questions, currently no there is no way to manually transfer from the phone to your computer. There are some sample recorded files, I will talk to Rick about possibly getting a link to these up on the forum.

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Posted: 25 August 2018 01:40 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 23 ]  
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The frequency is only an issue if your friends router has both enabled. Then on your phone you can choose to connect to the 2Ghz or the 5Ghz, just just shows up as a different name, based on the name your friend gave the wifi network. Hard to describe.

Unfortunately with these kind of issues it’s hard to diagnose the exact problem. Just to throw a wild idea out there into the open, you could try connecting via a different wifi system. Such as perhaps enabling hotspot on your phone and your computer and your friends phone both connect to that.

It sounds like you are doing every thing correctly.

At the moment there is no other way to transfer the data.

I have already contacted the folks at Cineversity to see if they can provide a capture that people can use to test out the plugin.

Again really sorry you are experiencing these issues. It is difficult to know what the exact problem would be since it may be something specific to your friends wifi setup.

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Posted: 25 August 2018 06:14 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 24 ]  
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Hi polypoint,

Glad to hear you got it going!

polypoint - 25 August 2018 03:42 PM

- Is there a way to get a higher texture resolution from the phone? It’s currently 1280x720.

Not at the moment.  But we can look into it for a future update. It is a compromise between quality, speed and storage space at the moment, since it captures an individual image per frame at 30fps.

polypoint - 25 August 2018 03:42 PM

- There is a bit jittering in the mesh movement. Do you have any suggestions how to smooth/interpolate that? I’ve tried the delay effector on a baked mesh and it helps a bit but maybe there is a better way.

There is no way to smooth it out in the current version. It is on the todo list however.

polypoint - 25 August 2018 03:42 PM

- The “add Camera” function helps a lot for what I want to achieve (which needs editable camera mapping). After some rotations, the texture maps quite well. Adjusting the FOV manually kind of fit’s too, but maybe you know the exact FOV. Can’t find it online.

The uvs are adjusted every frame so that they perfectly align to the captured textures taking into account the exact specs of the camera itself.  You should not need to rotate the textures or change any FOV settings at all. Could you let me know what it is you are trying to do that is different from what it gives you by default? My guess is you are not projecting the image each frame (ie you have disabled this checkbox) and they you are wanting to do it yourself manually?

polypoint - 25 August 2018 03:42 PM

- Do you know a good procedure to extend the face to a full head, maybe with a bit of a neck and shoulders while preserving the characteristic facial features?

As long as you do not delete any faces of the model itself, you should be able to extend it through the polygonal modelling tools to add additional detail. The plugin will still adjust the vertices and uvs of the model for the head and it will ignore any additional geometry. Making it easier to extend the model is something we would like to look into in the future. But the best method for now would really be to create your own model with poses, and drive that using the blendshape data with xpresso.

Cheers,
Kent

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Posted: 26 August 2018 04:30 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 25 ]  
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polypoint - 26 August 2018 02:09 AM

From my first impression, the plugin is super cool and it has the capacity of being used for the purposes described above. But the most crucial thing is the texture size. 720p doesn’t provide enough detail. Glad to hear that this is not restricted by the phones camera. An option to allow the user to choose high resolution video instead of 720p would be an enormous feature! Btw, does the phone has the option to switch between 30 and 25 fps? This would save some space and would be also beneficial for PAL productions.

For the texture size the best thing I can recommend for now is to simply have the camera as close to the actors face as possible. There will be options later to adjust the frame rate, but the most requested feature is to actually increase the frame rate rather than decrease, so provide 60fps. This will help reduce jitter and provide a smoother capture.

polypoint - 26 August 2018 02:09 AM

Maybe there is a smoothing function in the AR kit itself that can be used? However, I’m looking for such a feature in C4D for a long time. The delay effector only interpolates present and past values and thus always has latency and inaccurate viewport update when scrub the timeline. Concerning objects with keyframes such as blend shapes or PLAs, the interpolation could be also bidirectional (in theory), although it might only perform well with a rather small amount of values.

No there is no smoothing in AR Kit. It will be done in the plugin as a post operation on the sampled data. There are plans for this, it will just take some time to get to it. Also better support for subframe interpolation is required, for instance if you want to slow down the animation.

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Posted: 29 August 2018 08:37 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 26 ]  
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The plugin needs to be installed on the Team Render clients as well. All the captured textures are uniquely named. They are loaded in and applied to the material using the CV-AR Face Shader, which is automatically added to the capture when you import it into your scene.

If you are setting up your materials manually then you will need to also manually add a CV-AR Face Shader to the texture slot so that it gets the appropriate textures. Or you can choose a specific texture and lock it to that texture by turning off the continuous projection option.

If you are manually trying to copy the scene and send it to another computer you should choose “File->Save Project With Assets”. But if you are doing this through Team Render then it should be working already.

If it does not work with Team Render and you have installed the plugin on all your clients then perhaps something else has happened.

Unfortunately I am unable to test Team Render here since I do not have it set up here. But maybe someone else reading this thread can do so.

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Posted: 07 September 2018 07:39 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 27 ]  
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Joined  2012-05-02

Hi, thank you for making this great plugin. I’m currently working on apply facial capture to anime characters (Yes I’m Japanese)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1we8TEAXvfft6D40jcXxrqRXlv9TBSV1V

And I have noticed iOS 12 have some additional parameters for ARface’s blendshapes
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/arkit/arfaceanchor/blendshapelocation

Possibly because of this, CV-AR plugin doesn’t work with captured data by iOS 12 devices.
CV-AR object is created normally but there’s no animations and mesh.

Are you going to support iOS12? (It might be released soon)

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Posted: 11 September 2018 12:25 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 28 ]  
Total Posts:  1
Joined  2018-09-03

Some wish-list items:
1. Its been mentioned here already, but some form of wired data transfer would be desirable as wifi is not always accessible and/or fast enough
2. Recorded data filtering / smoothing option would be great
3. Option to not record jpeg texture stream to help keep data size down
4. I’m sure there is a legitimate reason to stream / load the data via a custom object in C4D, but it would be great to have the option to import the data into the scene using a conventional pose-morph tag and key-frames

Great plugin tho! Works like a charm.

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Posted: 17 September 2018 04:20 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 29 ]  
Total Posts:  1
Joined  2018-09-16

I wanted to use the CV - AR plugin and went into platinum membership, but I could not find the CV - AR plug - in in the CV - Tool box, but I will make it messed up quickly.

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Posted: 21 September 2018 06:02 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 30 ]  
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Joined  2017-08-24

FYI iPhone XS is now shipping and seems to not work with CV-AR (obviously because you haven’t had the chance to even test on one, so that’s to be expected).

Appears the video is black and the plugin thinks there’s one frame (perhaps because no video track in the mp4) so probably an app issue.

Here’s my downloaded capture
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mvoexigiwovogr9/C31D571D-3C45-4EE4-8EBA-A831D6C93F5A.zip?dl=0

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