VPET API Sample Clauses

VPET API. VPET [3] supports the usage of multiple client tablets in the same scene at the same time. All updates applied to scene objects by a client are communicated to all others through the SyncServer. The SyncServer is a standalone software running on the same computer serving the scene. The communication and redistribution of updates is realized by using zeroMQ, an open source software library implementing a vast amount of networking patterns as well as solutions for e.g. automatic queuing of messages etc. To support external animation engines, or more general external tools, the SyncServer was enabled to also listen and redistribute updates coming from a standard TCP/IP port. Thereby the external tools do not need to implement zeroMQ but are able to utilize TCP messages. A new class of update message was also implemented to support character animation updates. This message contains the updated position of the hip bone, a number to identify the character and an quaternion for each bone in the rig, representing the new rotation of it. This update is sent by the animation engine and applied to the character on each VPET client. A user of the tablet tool can define a target position for a character by clicking on it within the tablet user interface. This target position is sent to the animation engine, which in turn is able to solve the animation for the character. Even before the SAUCE project, a scene transfer API was implemented. The VPET clients are available as general purpose Virtual Production Editing Tool, not limited to a specific production or scene. Instead the scene transfer API allows arbitrary software to serve the scene to the clients. The API is currently implemented for Foundry’s Katana and the Unity engine. Additionally, as it is an open protocol, it can be adapted for any software capable of providing scene data. The protocol is able to handle mesh information, textures, materials, scene graphs as well as instancing information. Within SAUCE, the scene transfer protocol has been extended to support animated characters. A skeleton and bone mapping is transferred for each character. Each vertex of the character mesh can be influenced by up to 4 bones. This mapping is transferred in form of vertex weights. The initial bind pose is also included into the extended scene transfer protocol. This bind pose defines the initial pose a character mesh is in. Generally this is the so-called T-pose. By transferring this bind pose, also other poses can be supp...