Hey HN! I planning to run some benchmarks showcasing the quality of different models for Motion Canvas-based animation. I thought it would be funny to include the pelicans on bicycles as well (you know, https://github.com/simonw/pelican-bicycle ). The linked animation is Opus 4.7 and it did a great job. It even added a little jump!

Do you think it makes sense to include them or would you think I am just testing the SVG quality again? Maybe other benchmarks/prompts would be better suited?

PS: The link got corrupted... this is the actual link: https://videozero.ai/view/?id=d65d479e-1060-4f26-a28f-4d80f2...

That the calibration got the simulation so close to reality was quite impressive.

Though he had to resort to manual calibration. I always find he has interesting problems for domain experts and would like to see him team up with one. Also with programmers for faster programs than self taught python.

The guy has a masters in compsci and mechanical engineering, he has done both python and c++ afaik for his projects

In the video in question, he doesn't seem able to choose a good scoring function for the stochastic solver (even over multiple weeks), seemingly choosing a linear sum of distances (see 8:50) between simulation and reality. That's a mistake that not even an undergraduate should make. He needs some domain experts.

I did comp sci, I sucked at this stuff, and I have a masters.

Low level stuff? Os? Distributed systems? Multithreaded code? Now that’s more on my alley

I think the parent comment is specifically addressing why the black box (or stochastic?) optimizer he used not working.

We are using MuJoCo to train a G1 humanoid robot right now. The best thing is that we do not need to fight with NVIDIA software and that it runs on macOS.

PS: I just finished a first draft for agentic skills around working with MuJoCo in Python. Feel free to check them out here: https://github.com/prathje/agentic_mujoco_skills

GIF would indeed be nice! Will try to compile a short demo

Canvas Commons is an active fork of the original repo: https://github.com/canvas-commons/canvas-commons Docs for Canvas Commons: https://canvascommons.io/

Furthermore, the old docs for Motion Canvas can be found here: https://archive.canvascommons.io/

Happy to see Schleswig-Holstein switching as well and also it being mentioned in an article on the HN front page. Who would have thought?

They also have their own Mastodon server, which is a great way forward for government institutions!

If you have worked with MotionCanvas or wanted to give 2D canvas animations it a try, you might notice that the website is currently not reachable and that the repo has not received any updates in over a year, suggesting that the project is not actively maintained at the moment.

However, you will also find that the community is still active and that, for example, Canvas Commons is an active fork of the original repo: https://github.com/canvas-commons/canvas-commons

Docs for Canvas Commons: https://canvascommons.io/ Furthermore, the old docs for Motion Canvas can be found here: https://archive.canvascommons.io/

Cheers! Patrick

Still working on enabling llms to generate structured videos with text and formulas over at https://videozero.ai but man the marketing side feels IMPOSSIBLE. Really struggling with that one…

There are a lot of old and new mobile applications doing this. If there is anyone doing some research in this space, maybe take a look at our "DisruptaBLE" implementation for delay tolerant networking on embedded devices: https://openreview.net/forum?id=xy3Y6cLOV2

I work as a freelancer, but I have been wanting to start something of my own. A couple of months ago, I started working on VideoZero.ai with the vision of generating videos that feature text, formulas, and graph elements without breaking after 10 seconds or weird artifacts. Instead of generating raw pixel values, we leverage Motion Canvas to create the video elements. Some results are quite cool, but some videos are quite crappy. We have a whole list of animations to explore here: https://videozero.ai/gallery