Project Geppeto is an early stage research project that makes it fast, easy and fun to add crowds to your work. It is a brilliant way for architects, engineers, and designers to bring their presentations to life using simple geometric shapes and paths.
What autodesk says about this is:
Autodesk Project Geppetto is an early-stage research project that explores making it easy, fast, and fun to add crowds to 3ds Max scenes. Geppetto is a data-driven animation system that offers high level control of plausible human motion. Creating and editing Geppetto crowds is done using simple geometric shapes and paths. This free* technology preview of Project Geppetto comes with a set of animations for use in common settings like sidewalks, hallways, lobbies, and plazas. Architects, engineers, and designers can use Geppetto to enrich the context of their presentations with realistic human activity. Geppetto is the first crowd technology to offer both ease of use and high quality results.
The idea is to solve these 3 big problems
- Creating believable motion easily (Geppetto)
- Creating the look of any kind of human population or demographic and allowing for cultural influences (Evolver)
- Creating an efficient framework for interacting with tens of thousands of such characters
Geppetto technology can currently solve some of the following problems:
- Path following: Real-time steering of physically correct walking and running motion that follows a specified path.
- Agile responses: Real-time triggering of physically believable agile motions, such as quick turns. This is required for collision avoidance and navigation.
- Object interaction: Seamless and natural real-time interaction with objects in the environment, such as sitting in chairs, or stepping up to climb stairs.
- Intelligent “human-like” dynamic obstacle avoidance: The perception of potential collisions and subsequent evasive actions must mimic the response times and behavior of real human beings.
- Intuitive crowd orchestration: New methods will be introduced that allow artists to directly control the flow and interaction of traffic patterns. Ease of use plays a major role in the design of the intended workflow. Characters are orchestrated in an intuitive high-level fashion through the manipulation of flow patterns, goals, and designated behaviors. The tools are geared toward controls that are fun to use, and accessible to “non-animators” but not at the expense of serious artistic control.
This free technology preview of Project Geppetto comes with a set of animations for use in common settings like sidewalks, hallways, lobbies, and plazas.
To read more about the Geppeto Project Click here.