Linux Powers Digital Muppets

Darren Alcorn writes "Red Hat and Jim Henson have teamed up to bring you digital animatronics through the use of Red Hat Linux." I bet thats a fun system to see in operation. The article is light on technical stuff, but discusses the computerized puppeteering system a little.

Comments

I wonder...

[Wonko the Sane 42]

The article is rather vague, so maybe I'm not getting this right (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). But it sounds to me like they're saying that they're actually doing the work on software running under Linux? I'm just sort of wondering.. where are they getting this software? Last I checked there's not a huge abundancy of high-end digital animation production software floating around for Linux. It took me awhile to find software that would suit my own purposes for audio recording. Even then, I can do everything and about 3 times more on a Mac with ProTool/Logic or on a PC with SoundForge/ProTools/Cakewalk...
I mean, not that I'm criticizing... it's major step forward for these companies to crank enough power out of RedHat servers to power a production studio. But the article is little more than a vague plug for Linux without some sort of specifics about what exactly is going on.

Sorry... can't resist... seeing as this fell right after the article on transformers... does this mean that the new transformers will run under RedHat? Will Kermit know how to use them? The world may soon know...

Re:I wonder...

[NanoGator]

What they have is a mo-cap sort of device that a puppeteer moves around, causing the 3D image of the muppet to react on screen. I'm at a loss as to how to explain it. It's a device you stick your hand inside of that has several articulated sensors that sense a variety of positions. Your fingers end up in a clamshell shaped thing you can open and close, causing the muppet to move his mouth.

I guess the reason that Linux is necessary for this is because it's a combination of hardware and software. Is it a big deal that it's Linux? I don't feel that way. Personally, I think the reason this made it to Slashdot was because they said they use Linux, as opposed to the real news that they're talking about using 3D to do puppet animations.

This technology's not really very new either. It's been in use for aaaaaaaages. What's different today is that computers are powerful enough to render Muppets in real time now. This means that some very interesting, yet bizarre kids shows could start appearing soon. Heh. And you thought that Winnie the Pooh show was strange...

Re:I wonder...

[witten]

Hey, I'm one of the guys who works on these HDPS Linux systems. For modelling, we're primarily a Maya shop. Maya has had a Linux port for a while, and many other 3D animation packages have Linux versions, with the glaring exception of 3D Studio Max.

As far as the rigs themselves, we run a custom 3D viewer based on Maya's Realtime SDK. As another poster has said, a puppeteer puts their hands in these sort of weird metal controls, and the character on-screen moves their face and head in realtime.

Note that this is technically not motion capture. Motion capture involves reading the exterior movement of a body or face with either optical or magnetic sensors. And then the exterior of the CG model is moved accordingly. This is not very accurate at all for facial animation because you are just moving around the surface of the face. What we do is allow the puppeteer to drive the virtual muscles of the character's face with their hand movements, thereby getting a much better facial performance than is possible with motion capture.

However, motion capture is very useful for body movement. And in fact, we have married the facial performance described above with traditional motion capture for the body, so that you can have one puppeteer performing a 3D model's face while another performer controls the body by dancing around a stage. All in realtime. It's quite cool to see in action.

Keep in mind that we do much more than Muppet characters. We're sort of a service available to anyone who has facial animation they want done. We do video games, movies, TV, etc.

We did digital puppets for Henson back in 1988

[Thagg]

Back in 1988, Graham Walters and I, at PDI, built a system in collaboration with Jim Henson and his creature shop, and with Kirk Thatcher (who since went on to greater things at Henson), to build the 'Waldo' character for The Jim Henson Hour. The idea was that this character would be controlled by a waldo, which would sense the position, orientation, and mouth angles, and display the character, blue-screen keyed onto the image on the screen in real time.

The beauty of this system is that Henson puppeteers always work by watching their images on TV monitors, so this kind of digital character wasn't even second-nature to them -- it was exactly how they'd been performing characters all along. Among the nice things about Waldo is that he didn't have to hang out at the bottom of the screen with all of the rest of the other puppets. This system was implemented and run on an old Power Series SGI borrowed from Sheridan College.

I saw Davey Goelz (Gonzo, and others) at Siggraph this year, at the Henson booth on the show floor. They're selling a somewhat improved version of the same waldo mechanism that we used 14 years ago. Davey got us out of a jam on the first Henson Hour show, as somehow we lost the mouth-opening information from the tracks that Henson recorded on the set. Davey lived right near us at PDI, and came down and laid those back in, mimicing Jim's style. I don't think that he ever found our, and it's tragically too late now.

Anyway, The Jim Henson Hour was too good, and perhaps a little too different, for American TV, and only 12 episodes were ever made.

thad