Advice for rendering realistic 3d basketball scenes
Posted: July 02, 2011
Post subject: Advice for rendering realistic 3d basketball scenes
Post subject: Advice for rendering realistic 3d basketball scenes
Hi, everyone. I am new to computer graphics and 3-d modeling, so I apologize ahead of time for any dumb questions. However, I am actually fairly experienced in software (Python, C++, Java, C#) and I know a lot of math, so I'm hopeful that I may be able to get up to speed relatively quickly.
My goal is to be able to render fairly realistic looking 3-d basketball scenes, with the 10 players on the court in realistic poses. In the short term, I'm not really interested in animation. I just want to have a 3-d model of a particular moment in time so that I can generate images of the scene from the viewpoint of each of the players as well as fans in the stands, etc. I'd rather not have the players look too cartoonish, and ideally the models for the players would maybe be derived from photos of actual basketball players.
I am most comfortable in Python, so I downloaded cgkit and started experimenting. I actually succeeded in doing a super-simple cartoonish version of what I want, where the players are represented with very simple geometrical objects (sphere for head, thick cylinder for torso, skinny cylinders for upper and lower arms, etc.). I was able to figure out how to rotate the arms, legs, etc. to represent dribbling, playing defense, etc., and I was able to draw a simple court, rim, backboard and so on.
However, as I said, I want it all to look fairly realistic, and I probably don't want to do that from scratch. I bought a 3-d model of a basketball player off of TurboSquid, and I did manage to succeed in loading the player into cgkit so that I could render an image of him. This player is supposedly "rigged", which as I understand it means that there is a representation of his skeleton which should make it easy to manipulate his body into different poses. However, I couldn't figure out how to access this rig from cgkit, so at this point I'm stuck with one player in his initial pose, with his arms at his sides. So if anyone has any experience manipulating a character rig via Python/cgkit, I would really appreciate any pointers or help.
I've done a little research into graphics software packages, and as I understand it, Autodesk Maya is very useful for animating characters and manipulating them via rigs. If possible, I'd rather not pay the big money it apparently takes to buy Maya, but I may end up doing it if it's clearly my best option. If anyone has any alternative suggestions, aside from Maya, for manipulating 3-d character rigs- bearing in mind that I am reasonably savvy from a software and math perspective (although not experienced in graphics)- I'd be very interested in hearing them.
In the short term, I don't necessarily want to become a computer graphics expert. My short-term plan is just to generate a handful of 3-d basketball player poses (shooting, dribbling, leaping for rebound, etc.), buy a realistic model of a court (I know there is one available on TurboSquid) and then create a simple software program where you can specifiy the location of the 10 players on the court, their poses and orientations, and then render the scene from many different viewpoints. So whatever the easiest way is to get that done is what I'm interested in.
Also, I might be interested in hiring somebody for a very small project (a few hours) to help me get this done. I probably couldn't pay big money but maybe something in the range of several hundred dollars or up to a grand. If this sounds like something that's up your alley, let me know.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
My goal is to be able to render fairly realistic looking 3-d basketball scenes, with the 10 players on the court in realistic poses. In the short term, I'm not really interested in animation. I just want to have a 3-d model of a particular moment in time so that I can generate images of the scene from the viewpoint of each of the players as well as fans in the stands, etc. I'd rather not have the players look too cartoonish, and ideally the models for the players would maybe be derived from photos of actual basketball players.
I am most comfortable in Python, so I downloaded cgkit and started experimenting. I actually succeeded in doing a super-simple cartoonish version of what I want, where the players are represented with very simple geometrical objects (sphere for head, thick cylinder for torso, skinny cylinders for upper and lower arms, etc.). I was able to figure out how to rotate the arms, legs, etc. to represent dribbling, playing defense, etc., and I was able to draw a simple court, rim, backboard and so on.
However, as I said, I want it all to look fairly realistic, and I probably don't want to do that from scratch. I bought a 3-d model of a basketball player off of TurboSquid, and I did manage to succeed in loading the player into cgkit so that I could render an image of him. This player is supposedly "rigged", which as I understand it means that there is a representation of his skeleton which should make it easy to manipulate his body into different poses. However, I couldn't figure out how to access this rig from cgkit, so at this point I'm stuck with one player in his initial pose, with his arms at his sides. So if anyone has any experience manipulating a character rig via Python/cgkit, I would really appreciate any pointers or help.
I've done a little research into graphics software packages, and as I understand it, Autodesk Maya is very useful for animating characters and manipulating them via rigs. If possible, I'd rather not pay the big money it apparently takes to buy Maya, but I may end up doing it if it's clearly my best option. If anyone has any alternative suggestions, aside from Maya, for manipulating 3-d character rigs- bearing in mind that I am reasonably savvy from a software and math perspective (although not experienced in graphics)- I'd be very interested in hearing them.
In the short term, I don't necessarily want to become a computer graphics expert. My short-term plan is just to generate a handful of 3-d basketball player poses (shooting, dribbling, leaping for rebound, etc.), buy a realistic model of a court (I know there is one available on TurboSquid) and then create a simple software program where you can specifiy the location of the 10 players on the court, their poses and orientations, and then render the scene from many different viewpoints. So whatever the easiest way is to get that done is what I'm interested in.
Also, I might be interested in hiring somebody for a very small project (a few hours) to help me get this done. I probably couldn't pay big money but maybe something in the range of several hundred dollars or up to a grand. If this sounds like something that's up your alley, let me know.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
Posted: August 25, 2011
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Blender is a great free tool with increasingly sophisticated 3d character animation and rigging tools. Google "Blender
Character Rigging"
Regards