Project Geppetto is our free technology preview for easily adding realistic autonomous crowds to 3ds Max animation and scenes. Project Geppetto helps bring your designs to life. This is definitely one of the more funs things to come alive in the Autodesk Labs. 

They appeared like zombies to me in the last Project Geppetto Labs technology preview release as the characters were limited and a default gray scale with rough edges, Now there is a nice textured display mode for the characters - no melting flesh, and do not feed on brains, so technically they are not zombies.

Below is a simple scene with Project Geppetto characters placed in a scene with Utah's Delicate Arch captured with a FARO Focus3D laser scanner.

What can you do with Project Geppetto?

Learn more about Project Geppetto on Autodesk Labs

This update includes:

• Support for Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 and Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2013
• Inclusion of the Evolver technology
  “Recently Autodesk acquired the Evolver character generation technology along with certain employees. We have paired the Evolver technology with Project Geppetto to efficiently create large, randomly varied visual styles of Project Geppetto actors. Evolver uses a "virtual gene pool". The gene pool is a set of pre-designed body types, facial features and clothing components that are combined to generate the variety needed for a crowd. Facial features, including overall face, eyes, ears, mouth, chin, nose and cheeks, and physical attributes including overall body, arms, shoulders, chest, stomach, hips and legs, can be customized along with skin tone, eye color and hair. Given additional facial, body and clothing data, the Evolver component can be customized and extended to generate crowds of any culture or style.”
• Extension of the technology preview period until January 15, 2013.

• Project Geppetto Technology Preview

  

  Watch
  Download

• Project Geppetto Quick Start Guide

  

  Watch
  Download

Project 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.

Project Geppetto is awesome and not only fun but practical for autonomous human figures in your animations. Give it a try and also take my tips to hack it detailed in my blog post “Creating an Animated 3D Crowd Animation Hacking It” to make your own characters, even an army of your bosses.

Make sure you have the latest 3ds Max 2013 updates installed or you may experience issues with Project Geppetto.

Send us feedback otherwise we will not know you like it and it will go to the vault of unloved technologies labs.3dsmax.geppetto@autodesk.com also tell us how you are using Project Geppetto by contributing to our Autodesk AREA Project Geppetto Forum.

Go to the original post...