Hassan’s Work Blog

It seems that who ever copied the new linux images from the mobile station to SFDM-GHOST did not copy all the files properly, only the main image file was copied and the subsequent numbered files were never transferred, same goes for the Z600 images.

This is the reason why Ben had issues re-imaging malcolm’s PC and kept getting a corrupted image error. I am running a session right now from the mobile station, when its done i will copy the files to the Ghost Server.

Also installed RenderManProServer 15.0 on seven machines in 223 (teachers station and 02,03,04,19,20,21) as requested by Professor Malcolm. I will also install RPS 15.0 on his new test machine.

Body paint was not responding in the grad lab, we get an error that says “Wrong Serial Number for Body Paint 3D”. Tried re-registering it but it does seem to work. I tried using all serials available for body paint but i get an expired error.

221 and 204 are all good, Body paint works fine.

Rest everything was pretty much quiet, the tour went fine. No one came in to the Systems Office.

Also, Andres from the cage needed the Network port tester but i was unable to find it.

The new join domain script is very simple, its only around 7 or 8 lines, im invoking it in our postghost script at the point when the machine has been renamed and then it calls the script, joins the domain based on the credentials provided to us by Christian and then deletes itself since we the script has the user and pass in it.

Currently, running a sysprepped image with the new join domain vbs script along with the postghost script we always use.

Following machines are imaging: Z600  - Systems Office

Mont-109-04, Mont-110-21, Mont-120-18

The 6600 base has been reverted back to the updated base image without sysprep.

Lots of work being undertaken by the Systems Office these days. Not only were we learning updcast and sysprep but we’ve also had to make some changes to the way the postghost scripts run that enable us to rename a machine here at Monty.

For now, we’re going to stick with Norton Ghost as we know it works well for multicasting.

One additional script had to be written that would join the Active Directory domain after the renaming process is complete. I tested out the script on one 8400 and a z600, it works fine and joins the domain as expected.

We were getting some access denied errors at times but Phong said it is to be expected specially because for testing purposes we were joining and disjoining the domain so often and also some other synchronisations are being made by the people at Propes Hall and so these network delays is what is causing this.

Now ive incorporated the new domain joining scripts along with postghost scripts and ive sysprepped the image and am capturing it right now. Hopefully should test the image tomorrow on some 6600s, 8400s and one Z600 just to be sure that after imaging, the machine renames properly and joins the new domain.

- All license servers stopped working around 4:50 pm, maya, houdini, renderman nothing was responding. The renderfarm seems to be locked as well.

I made a call to help desk and they have put in a work order for this issue.

i made some progress today with importing mocap data into massive, it mostly works out if you import the fbx file instead of the maya ascii. There are some problems with the scale and default pose of the agent and im working on figuring that out.

Motion in Massive

Here is a clip showing the motion in MotionBuilder and then brough into Massive.

test <— Click Here

There are some pending items for follow up:

• Dave Lewis was having some issues in linux, those are fixed now.
• Alex Barella reported some addons issues in Firefox in room 302 on all machines with windows. Its not much of a problem but we might want to look for a work around.
• Need to fix issues with the intranet site. Firstly, i made the changes successfully so that a workstudy application form was available and the content from the database was being extracted and displayed properly but then it somehow broke some link for the problem report section and a blank page was being displayed
• Secondly, Mehreen Bazm reported she was having issues posting items to the news items on the intranet site, there are weird characters being displayed and if she breaks everything down into paragraphs, its not taken in account and everything collapses into a single paragraph.

Ok so i was able to find some steps that nicely laid out on what to do in trying to get your motion capture data into Massive, although there are other ways. The one that seems simpler is to bring .c3d data into MotionBuilder, build your skeleton around the points/marker data and then save it out as FBX and then bringing it into Maya and then rename the joints so that Massive can recognize them. For this i found a script that a student at SCAD had already written and had got it to work. His name is Ryan Osteen and i am in touch with him on how to get it to run in our scenario where were want to use custom motion capture data from third party sources.

Here is a snapshot that shows the mocap in MotionBuilder and then at the side loaded the FBX into Maya with the script running at the very right side. Trying to get this to work. Will update once i have some results.

I have decided to explore how to import and use custom Mocap data and bring it into Massive and be able to utilitize that for more interesting results. I need to go through alot of research for this as it requires understanding all the necessary mocap formats and then binding it in Massive with the skeleton.

Here is one the custom mocap data i got from third party sites: Its being imported into MotionBuilder:

mocap <—- Click here