im an engineering professor who is looking to help my students develop a system where they could measure specific human body parts and have those figures transfer to a model. Ideally the model could then move and indicate points of stress. This may be something that can be done using a Realillusion product, or possibly it is something that someone who is more familiar with human animation could refer me to an appropriate program for my needs.

We are working with a research lab in the University that does movement and fitting of artificial limbs, and movement studies with live motion capture. We have been asked to develop a tool that measures limb circumference at a series of locations, and also can apply a pressured squeeze at that location to determine how much 2 or 4 pounds of pressure changes the circumference. This is used in a number of different ways from a clinical standpoint, from determining fluid retention, muscle mass, and specifically for this project, the firmess of the risidual limb after amputation for the fitting of an artificial limb.

The fit for an artificial limb is critical, and can change depending if the surgical site is fully healed and depending on fluid, the fit needs to be adjusted for "firm "or "squishy" characteristics. I would like to be able to take the data generated by the measuring tool, and input that into an animation program to create a realistic representation. Ideally, the program would allow that generated 3D image to be modeled in a walking form so that adjustments can be made to improve the movement and fit at a prothestic limb, and possibly show stress points or points where the fit could be improved. It would also be fitting ( pun intended) if the motion of a soft and puffy limb movemnt could be illustrated as being different from a firm limb while in motion.

This just seems like something that is feasible with the realillusion products, but I don't know if anything like this can be done, or has been done with them. If they can't then knowing how close I could get to this ideal using which specific product would be helpful, or if anyone knows of another mathematical image generation program, I would appreciate some guidance. I have been trying to work through mathlab which we have accounts, but it does not seem to be able to handle this type of problem.

This sounds like a very interesting project.

Unfortunately, it is calling for information that is beyond the scope of iClone. It sounds like this is actually needing not only the motions, but also some finite element analysis on soft tissue.

You might want to inquire in these open source software forums:

http://www.makehuman.org/ (Click on "Forum" to join)
http://blenderartists.org/forum/index.php

Both of these may have users doing similar things to what you are after, precise measurements and display of pressure.

iClone 6 will have basic physics, similar to a game engine, but probably not scientifically significant for your application.

I agree this gets too far outside of iClone's purpose, and it probably won't do the job you want it to.

It sounds to me like you need a blend of multi-physics FEA (finite element analysis - maybe ANSYS?) to model the hard/soft interface between the prosthetic and the patient and something like Siemens "Simulation Jack" to determine forces (to be used as inputs to the FEA work). 

It's not as pretty as iClone, but you can make animations with Jack, which is normally used for ergonomic studies in factories and to analyze the ability to perform maintenance and repair on things like airplanes.

You can probably get free or nearly-free "education" licenses.  They're pretty good about stuff like that.

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/tecnomatix/manufacturing-simulation/human-ergonomics/jack.shtml

Free trial:

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/tecnomatix/free-trial/free-jack.shtml

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Thanks for the replies. I will check out the links you mentioned, and post some feedback about it. While I clone may not be able to do the precise movemnt studies, would it be capable of doing general motion work like changing the gait or creating a limp by stiffening the knee? Even this load bearing and alternate gait simulations would be helpful

Hi DrThomATP,

Welcome to the forum.


The beauty of iclone is where there is a will, there is a work around, plus you have a great community here that will help you figure things out. If precision is not a major concern, i can imagine a few ways to illustrate what you are doing - it will be quicker and easier than using maya or max, but it won't be as accurate. And even that is questionable if you come up with innovative ways to measure scale with creative illustrations.

For example you can attach primitive objects to special characters in iclone called a clonebone - to access the resizing features.

We'd love to have you join us and we can all figure out solutions together, but don't want to mislead you into thinking iclone has tools designed to make scientifically accurate presentations ...at least not yet anyways ....the developers of this company and community, are innovative, super talented and friendly...so things can be created to help make ideas happen. This is an evolving community and software....and a fun place to be

Cheers

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You can emulate these kind of gaits in iClone with some careful animation, but you cannot put loads on a character and get any interaction. The physics is able (so far, anyway) able to transfer forces back to the character.

There is a software called Endorphin that does do much more what you need. I would check that out. If you need pretty pictures, then you could import those motion studies into iClone via 3DXchange, so that they could be applied to iClone Characters.

Endorphin also allows for multiple character interactions.