Programming and animation

A little about Optitrack SDK and TrackIR

In this post I’ll tell you a little about the experience of working with Optitrack SDK and connecting the TrackIR.

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OR SDK and STL string

OR SDK and STL string together generate 118 errors when compiling from error C2365: ‘operator new’: redefinition; previous definition was ‘function’

It seems that there is no reason to combine them, because in the OR SDK there is a class for the string – FBString. However, such a challenge comes when you want to connect third-party libraries or own development, often it’s all tied to the STL string and get rid of that there is no possibility.

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Some notes about constraints in ORSDK

Constraints have a very useful opportunity to update the position of objects in the evaluation thread. For example, I have a plug manipulator, which manages a set of objects in the scene. On the one hand could simply ask the object location like SetVector for each object. But first, it will be on thread in the drawing, and secondly, my plug-in performs the action in time.

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Free 2-day MotionBuilder SDK Training in San Francisco

The Autodesk Developer Network is offering a free 2-day MotionBuilder SDK training at Games Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco on March 9 and 10, 2010. This is a rare opportunity to work in a small class room environment with very knowledgeable instructors on the Media & Entertainment product of your choosing. The unique opportunity allows you to dive into the inner workings of the software, and come out with a strong fundamental knowledge of their architecture to see and understand how you can utilize and benefit from the API’s/SDK’s of these powerful software’s. For more details, go to the following links:

MotionBuilder SDK Training Description and Agenda

Register here for MotionBuilder SDK

Evaluation thread in a shader plugin

* Image taken from the documentation of the Autodesk MotionBuilder 7.5

When I was writing a plugin shader for a webcam, I have faced with such a contradiction: on the one hand is necessary to process each frame of a web camera with no impact on the overall performance of the MoBu scene, and with another – rule for creating plug-ins for MoBu says: Any extra threads or processes running parallel to MotionBuilder might seriously slow down performance or even prevent MotionBuilder from running at all. 

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MoBu Snippets: Parent\Child constraint

How to: draw scene with camera background in a FBView

This is the forum question from Autodesk Area, so I will add it to the tips for OpenReality SDK:

You can operate with camera background by using property BackGroundColor.

So to get color at current frame:

FBColor color = lCamera.BackGroundColor;
Now we have to set clear color using OpenGL command:

glClearColor( color[0], color[1], color[2], color[3] );

How to: Change the width for the first column in the table

Once questioned, how to change the width for the first column in the table component of the FBSpread class. It appears that it’s need to identify by the column index -1, like this:

<spread>.GetColumn(-1).Width = <value>

FBString, be careful

When working with FBString revealed one feature – the constructor does not initialize the string memory. Ie if you do not assign a variable value and want to use it, you get an error. While the familiar course when the string class assign empty string value by default in constructor, but in the case of FBString this is empty pointer.

Math library for developers 2

In a previous “math library for developers” post, I published a library of classes for vectors, matrices and quaternions. At this time I decided to go ahead and rewrite the classes directly in the file fbtypes.h

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