Sign language's sign generator

General Discussion
1

Hello people!

I’m a computer engineering student and I’m working with a translation system from Portuguese to Brazilian sign language.
I would like to have some graphical output, with an avatar making the signs.
I have no previous experience with graphical computing, so I would like to know how so far Panda3D could fit my requirements, that are:

  • having an avatar moving hands, arms and mainly fingers (there is a lot of details and many possible positions for the fingers); there are also facial expression for this avatar.

  • I would like to have at least the arms moving been processing at runtime, i.e., some real-time processing.

I would be very pleased if I could know this things before starting work hard on discovering how Panda3D actually works.

Very thank you.

2

hi, and welcome to panda3d

panda supports bone-based animations aswell as morph-targets aka shapekeys aka vertex-based animation.

for arms+fingers i definetly suggest bone-based animation. pretty much every 3d-modelling package will be able to allow you to make animations with bones.
for facial animations you can use bones,too. or you try to go with morph-targets which, in your case, might be a bit more suited.

you can combine and blend each animation freely, you can also controll parts of your avatar at runtime (using bones).

so long answer short. yes panda can do it. all you need to do is to export your avatar correctly. you might want to read the chapters animation, animation blending and subpart actors on the manual.

3

Very thank you for the warming welcome!

I think I’m really going to use Panda.
I have just started to read the docs and I hope find out some more answers… (I’m still a bit confused with some concepts, hehe… like if Panda is only a set of APIs or it’s a environment; if Panda makes the modeling, or if I would have to use something like Blender)

4

panda is hm… well basically a set of APIs.but it comes with a number of very useful tools especially when it comes to debugging and performance tuning.
for models… you’d have to make the models in blender or maya or some other 3d-package.

5

Nice…

I have read the chapters you said, and it seems great things like the blending, multi part actors and Controlling a Joint Procedurally (I still confused if the blending is done between the parts of the multi part actors, hehe)

Someone know a ‘human model’ and/or a ‘hand model’ that is already made and can be used in Panda?

6

maybe you can use the makehuman project. afaik you can import it into blender

7

Humm… I have take a look at the makehuman project, but it was not conclusive for me.

But I would like to make clear about another question: at this point I see Panda like a engine but not like a modeler, so I would use a modeler like Blender.
But it seems Blender has also animation and real-time features, as Python APIs as well.

So my doubt is if there are a functionalities overlap between Panda3D and Blender (mainly the integration with Python scripts) or they are different things.
If they are the same, why use Panda would be better?

Thank you
ps: it’s really a doubt, I hope no flames coming from this!

8

if you just wanna do sign languages. both engines should work.
panda offers a lot more,thought. it’s more optimised, robust etc. also featuring tons of stuff blender doesnt.
but in your simple case, both will do a fine job.