I had a great time in Seattle speaking at the AUGI CAD Camp on Monday in Seattle (next Tuesday in Minneapolis). In addition to showing Project Photofly live and other great Autodesk Labs technologies I also showed a live demo of the new Project Geppetto in 3ds Max 2012.
Project Geppetto is an early technology preview available free from Autodesk Labs that allows you to create animated people in 3ds Max 2012 and 3ds Max Design 2012 either following paths or idle and look different and have different actions. This technology answers the need for moving characters in your animations instead of just frozen people of the same character used over and over in a scene. The best part is that some of the idle people appear to have zombie characteristics.
I can almost hear this character moaning “brains…”
You can even have the zombies chase your bosses head created using Project Photofly.
Here are images linked to animated GIFs so they play on all browsers.
Project Geppetto created crowd of people. 
Download Geppetto 1.gif (1881.2K)
A close up of one of the people that appears to me to have been a zombie acting like they are reading an invisible book or answering a phone, while they stalk you. Brains… brains… brains!
Download geppetto2.gif (14875.4K)
To be fair this is an early preview and where this is most likely headed is nothing less than amazing with textured people, object avoidance, and more.
See what a professional can do with Project Geppetto
HNTB Geppetto Test
Not a way to start the day today.
What’s worse than spilling coffee on your keyboard, sneezing with a mouthful of oatmeal…what a mess. Its like a nuclear bomb of oatmeal went off. Racing to find all of it before it dries to concrete globs…
Definitely not the way to start a busy day.
Cheers,
Shaan
What’s worse than sneezing with a mouthful of oatmeal? Swallowing a mouthful of oatmeal. It’s not my favorite. I think Fiber One bars taste like candy but count as fiber.
Note: I have not tried Project Geppetto yet, I just watched the videos posted.
My observation; to me it looks like the people that turn the corners at the cross walk need to tighten up the route they take. What I mean is no one walks half way out into the middle and then turns the corner. People cut the corner on the shortest route. In the USA you keep right to oncoming traffic but if no one is coming at you, you cut it. It may be left in other countries and may depend on which side of the road you drive on?
You can tighten them up and define your paths as well as much more that were are developing. The goal is smart human like behaviored characters in animations.
PING:
TITLE: Unleash the Zombies! Project Geppetto for 3ds Max 2013 Updated
BLOG NAME: Between the Lines
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 Autode…
PING:
TITLE: Creating an Animated 3D Crowd Animation Hacking It
BLOG NAME: Between the Lines
Autodesk Project Geppetto is the result of over 5 years of research called “People Power”. The basic idea is to try to assemble all the components you would need to create, manage, and control large crowds of characters. Imagine using several unique 3D…