Mocap... that explains it.  Not to say a person couldn't possibly
articulate a human model pretty well but this thing was given some
real noticeable human characteristics.  I see your efforts were in the
POVing, so to speak, and it's a good job at that.  It's a fact that
POV-Ray is itself, and its various counterpart modelling
utilities/programs, is hard pressed to be anything like those high end
programs.  Fantastic to see something come to life using it then even
if only for the end result.

Bob

Mike <pov### [at] aolcom> wrote in message
news:37E9138F.137DDC64@aol.com...
> > Yeah, like at least how many rendering sequences it took to make
it.
> > Really great stuff especially considering the difficulty involved
with the
> > limited tools POV-Ray has.  Any Moray IK in there?
> >
> > >   Now you must tell us how the **** did you do that... :)
>
> The animation is 423 frames, all rendered in one shot, though I had
to restart
> once or twice because there were a few frames missing.  This is the
result of
> months of work on writing an exporter for Animation Master that will
convert
> models to .pov format - something that I've been determined to do
because I
> firmly believe that POV-Ray isn't limited as a renderer, it just
needs a good
> modeller and animation tool to go with it.
>
> This was intended as a test to see how well it worked and didn't
involve all
> that much work on my part.  The model is one that comes on the
animation master
> CD with a mocap action applied to it.  The only real work I did on
it was
> setting it up in A:M, exporting the frames to sequenced .incs, write
a little
> script to read them in as the clock increase, a little touching up
of the
> materials, and some keyframing of the spotlight using Colefax's
autoclck.mcr.
> Oh, and some tweaking of the media and rendering using my media
patch so it
> would go faster.
>
> I came to this point after getting many requests to add features to
a RIB
> exporter I wrote.  It was going along pretty well when I realized
that there
> were certain quirks of RIB that would make the project impossible to
accomplish
> without writing a whole bunch of other tools like render managers
and shaders
> managers - long story short, it's my personal belief now that POV is
better
> than RIB for my purposes.
>
> I intend to release the exporter once I've touched it up a bit.
Here's
> basically how it works:
>
> Model and animate in A:M and setup a choreography.  Delete
everything in the
> choreography except the model you want to export.  Export to .pov -
you'll get
> a dialog asking you the range of frames you want to export.  Give it
a name and
> then you get a dialog asking if you want to save material info and
or texture
> maps (the latter will require uv mapping which isn't ready yet).
Then sit back
> as it writes all the include files and an include containing all the
materials
> for the model.
>
> Now you can create a master file for rendering the animation and
adding new
> items to the scene.  Only two lines are needed to add in the include
files -
> here's the one for this animation:
>
> #declare CURRENT_FRAME = clock;
>
> #include concat("yurika",str(CURRENT_FRAME,0,0) )
>
> So for 400 frames the clock goes to 399.  I put it at the bottom so
that the
> model is included last.  Then I open up the material files and touch
them up so
> that the model is looking just how I want it.  After that you can
add
> absolutely anything to the file.  Say you had a whole scene layed
out in A:M -
> the elements that are static can be exported once and included in
the file.
>
> The best part is that this is very easy on memory.  Since the
materials are
> stored in a seperate file, you can just make a backup and copy it
back over to
> the home directory after exporting more frames for rendering.  The
work flow is
> really slick.
>
> That's about all there is to it so far.  I plan on polishing up
everything I've
> done so far and get to work on doing original models and animations
with this.
> A release of the exporter could come by the end of the month, though
I still
> need to wrap up (so I don't have to worry about it anymore) what I
have done
> already for RIB for the poor saps who use those kinds of programs.
>
> I've said it before and I'll say it again:  POV-Ray is awsome!
>
> -Mike
>
>
>
>

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