User:Phabtar/Project Proposal for GSoC 2012

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Name :- Sukhitha Prabhath Jayathilake

Email :- pr.jayathilake@gmail.com

IRC Nick :- Phabtar

Physical Address :- 42, Kegalle road, Dewalegama, Kegalle, Sri Lanka

Abstract

This project will be to Improve the COLLADA im/export functions of constrained animations, including Baked IK animations and IK chain animations. Also the project will attempt to implement Morph constraint animations in COLLADA.

Synopsis

COLLADA is a XML based Data exchange Schema used in DCC Software which is extensively used as a common data format for collaboration of Digital Data amongst DCC software.

Although Blender implements COLLADA support for many core elements, effects, etc. Blender support of COLLADA is not fully complete yet. Bugs and feature requests point to many areas of improvement including Animation. Basic animation features support is there, but further improvements more relevant to the industry is to be added.

Software like 3DS Max, Maya, Poser and Game Engines like Cry Engine 2 and Unreal Engine has support for COLLADA. This support is used to interconnect and collaborate Creation of 3D art. Having a good support for important COLLADA features is important to make Blender a good candidate for such 3D asset production pipelines. Animation support is a necessary aspect in these creations. So having not enough capabilities to efficiently port Animation data in and out of blender will lost Blenders candidacy for such pipelines.

This project will focus on improving animation aspects of COLLADA, which is not yet supported or rather buggy. The improvements have been requested by Blender Users.

Deliverables

- Successful Im/export of constrained animations (in baked form), for example the follow path constraint, IK constraints.

- IK-chain im/export support

- Morph Constraints support

- Morph Constrained animation support.

Project Details

With the project I did for last year’s GSoC, many improvements for the COLLADA features in animation were introduced. By the project I was able to enable support for exporting and importing rigged skeletal animation. The implementation is somewhat buggy still, so first of all it would be desirable to stabilize the code. Through that further modifications related other constrained animation support can be achieved. IK constrained animation support and IK chain animation support is requested from industry users, especially users in robotics arena. With their support the best way to approach can be found out.

The current COLLADA system supports skin controller data substantially, but morph controller data is not yet supported in Blender. This is also requested from people in the industry. Blender handles Morph Controller data in the form of Shape keys. Therefore Data transitions between Blender and COLLADA, related to morph controller data, must be done through handling Shape keys.

The current COLLADA initiative inside Blender is focused on Having a COLLADA core in Blender using the interfaces presented by Opencollada and having application specific scripts, so that data loss is minimal, and bugs can be reduced. The Developments of the project will try to follow this guideline as much as possible. Second Life will be used to test exports, because currently it is the app in focus used in blender for testing the new approaches.

There is also discussion on having other COLLADA profile support, like the profile_GLES, instead of defaulting to profile_COMMON as always. Because that will add more flexibility and less roundtrip data loss for blender. If feasible this will also be added in to the developments.

Project Schedule

From April 15th to April 20th
- Review the code, and come up to speed with current developments in COLLADA in Blender.

From April 23rd to May 15th
- The community bonding period directly coincides with my semester exams, from end of April to mid may. So within this time period there won't be much time on my hand to work on the project.

From May 15th to May 21st
- Review on IK and path constrained animations and implementation and on how COLLADA support can be implemented.

From May 21st to June 15th
- Implement constrained animation support. For IK and path constrained animations.

From June 16th to June 20th
- Test with Second Life, Fix bugs

From June 20th to July 4th
- Implement IK chain animation support.

From July 5th to July 13th
- Test and Bug fixing. Submit Midterm Evaluations.

From July 15th to July 20th
- Review on Morph controller data in Blender and COLLADA.

From July 21st Until August 13th
- Implementation of Morph Controller data transition and Morph animations COLLADA features.

August 13th to August 20th
- Finalize Documentation.

Bio

I’m an undergraduate at the Computer science and engineering department in University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. I am a fan of gaming,also like watching movies.

I did a GSoC Project last year also in Blender COLLADA arena, the project details are here. The project was successful and has made it into the trunk. This years project will be building on the improvements made last year while fixing the bugs. Also did a COLLADA Physics Support Patch, which enables support for some Basic Physics elements. :

This project will not be that much of a challenge with the experience I have. So a successful project which will be beneficial for blender can be guaranteed if this gets selected as one of the projects for GSoC this year.