I am talking about blobs.  My IRTC entry, "Lane changing incident at the
Pan-Compositional Games," was made of blobs of human running figures.  The MPG is
at:
 http://oz.irtc.org/ftp/pub/anims/1998-10-15/lane.mpg
And a JPG is at:
 http://irtc.org/anims/1998-10-15/lane.jpg

My runners are not in dresses but their legs "blob" together when they get close
to each other.   I wanted a feature that would say,

blob{
    threshhold  0.4
    sphere {center_1, radius, strength, [list_of_subblobs]}
    sphere {center_2, radius, strength, [list_of_subblobs]}
    sphere {center_3, radius, strength, [list_of_subblobs]}
    etc.
    }

Where [list_of_subblobs]  is a list of ordinal numbers,  say [1,3,4], where each
number corresponds to a different area on the big blob to blob with.

Each blob component would have a list of subblobs that it would choose to blob
with.  For example, the blob components for the right leg would blob with each
other and the but but not the left leg. The buttock collection or the whole torso
could be sub-blob #1, the right leg sub-blob #2, the left leg sub-blob #3, etc.

Some advanced BLOB MODELLERS, or META-BALL MODELLERS, have this feature, according
to the book Digital Character Animation.


Bob Hughes wrote:

> Yep, okay, I know very little of things outside of POV-Ray and not
> enough even now of POV.
> Thing I was getting at though is it's highly unlikely to get a good
> combination of blobs to work right for animations, a still image would
> be possible much more so than animation anyhow.
> The "feature request" sounds very much like a combination of positive
> and negative strength blobs working in conjunction. Better yet, a
> "directional" type of thing, inside/outside separated influences instead
> of both at once acting on each and every blob element.
>
> Lance Birch wrote:
> >
> > No, he wants blobs...  I think (and I'm pretty sure I understand this) that
> > what he is trying to say is to have some blobs only interact with certain
> > blobs...
> >
> > Get it?  NURBS has nothing to do with this...
> >
> > Anyway, back to the subject.  There are some plugs-ins for MAX which do very
> > advanced "skinning" based on meta blobs, only the blobs are not standard
> > blobs, they are kind of elastric strands of blobs.  Using this method it's
> > easy to make muscles etc etc
> >
> > --
> > Lance.
> >
> > ---
> > For the latest 3D Studio MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
> > The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone
> > For a totally different experience, visit my Chroma Key Website:
> > Colorblind - http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/parallax/359/colorblind
> > Bob Hughes wrote in message <37250E22.1404C30E@aol.com>...
> > >You're wishing for NURBS modelling I believe. Think this is actually
> > >just fancy meshes. 'blob' is of a two-fold design being
> > >attractive/repulsive and there are possible ways to add both, though
> > >messy as heck and not always workable for complex things, especially
> > >animated shapes I would think.
> > >
> > >
> > >TonyB wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Yeah. I also want this. I have a project where I want to use blobs, but
> > the
> > >> darn blobs 'blob' with the wrong ones. It would be nice if you could for
> > >> instance, declare blob element 1 as, say, A, and elements two and three
> > as B
> > >> and C. Then you could give an 'interactions' list. B for A, C for B and B
> > >> for C, you see?
> > >>
> > >> (A)===(B)
> > >>       //
> > >>    (C)
> > >>
> > >> Forgive the crude ascii art.
> > >
> > >--
> > > omniVERSE: beyond the universe
> > >  http://members.aol.com/inversez/homepage.htm
> > > mailto:inv### [at] aolcom?Subject=PoV-News
>
> --
>  omniVERSE: beyond the universe
>   http://members.aol.com/inversez/homepage.htm
>  mailto:inv### [at] aolcom?Subject=PoV-News

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