Unable to use actor - or find documentation - in gazebo 2

Question

Hi

I'm trying to model a human in gazebo, initially I tried using urdf but having to many problems. I'm now considering to try and model directly in gazebo - using sdf!?! - and I though the best place to start is to see what the actor element or model can do, especially as I'd like to have a smooth single mesh affected by multiple links - as what I believe actor dose - not by chopping the mesh into rigid parts as I'm doing at the moment

I can't find the tutorials that was on http://gazebosim.org/wiki/Tutorials/intermediate/animated_characters, one day I was able to access it in the morning and then in the evening the wiki shape changed and no longer offer to search for similar pages. I also searched for the dae files and included this code in a world file

    <actor name="actor1" static="true">
        <pose>0 0 0 0 0 0</pose>
        <skin>
          <filename> /home/muhammad/gazebo_models/walk.dae </filename>
        </skin>
    </actor>

However I get the following error

    Error [SDF.cc:788] Missing element description for [filename]
gzserver: /usr/include/boost/smart_ptr/shared_ptr.hpp:653: typename boost::detail::sp_member_access<T>::type boost::shared_ptr<T>::operator->() const [with T = sdf::Element; typename boost::detail::sp_member_access<T>::type = sdf::Element*]: Assertion `px != 0' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)
[gazebo-2] process has died [pid 25074, exit code 134, cmd /opt/ros/indigo/lib/gazebo_ros/gzserver /home/muhammad/catkin_ws/src/inmoov_gazebo/worlds/inmoov.world __name:=gazebo __log:=/home/muhammad/.ros/log/150be0e0-bc35-11e4-b963-0004769f65c7/gazebo-2.log].
log file: /home/muhammad/.ros/log/150be0e0-bc35-11e4-b963-0004769f65c7/gazebo-2*.log

Can anyone direct me to where to find the code and tutorials for animating characters please?!? I'd also appreciate any recommendations regarding simulating humans, I will need to attempt to lift the human using a robot so I plane to include inertia and kinematic parameters

Thanks in advance, and I apologise if the question is not very clear, this is my first question here

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Originally posted by Muhammad Badr on Gazebo Answers with karma: 13 on 2015-02-24

Post score: 1

Answer 1

There were some problems with the Actor code that was fixed in Gazebo5. Could you try using Gazebo5?

Take a look at the example, and make sure the the files your references are in your GAZEBO_RESOURCE_PATH.

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Originally posted by nkoenig with karma: 7676 on 2015-02-24

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 0

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Original comments

Comment by Muhammad Badr on 2015-02-24:
thanks, however I'm not very experienced with gazebo and want to use it with ros indigo, I'm not sure I'll be able to use it with gazebo 5

Comment by nkoenig on 2015-02-25:
Here is information about using (gazebo5 with Indigo](http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=ros_wrapper_versions&cat=connect_ros#Gazebo5.xseries)

Comment by Muhammad Badr on 2015-02-26:
thanks, any idea what happened to the tutorial or where to find it?!? it had something about making new meshes for the actors using blender and models from makehuman

Comment by Muhammad Badr on 2015-02-26:
Unfortunately I keep having other problems after installing gazebo5 - such as the pioneer robot rolling over instead of moving forward as it should and as in gazebo2 - any suggestions on how to fix the actor code in gazebo2?!?