Josh wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've been animating pov for a while, done moving the camera, objects,
> walking etc.  But now I want to move to the next level.  I'd like to try
> animating the sand falling in an hourglass.  I envision lots of "sand-grain"
> objects.  The question I have is how would you guys recommend starting this.
> Should I write extensive SDL or model the scene in a C# app' that outputs
> the scenes?  Anyone got any suggestions?
> 
> 

I've modeled an hourglass with falling sandgrains for the IMP (internet 
movie project) - it has been used in our "the end of..." entry for the 
IRTC, see http://www.irtc.org/anims/2004-01-15/view.html
(the sourcecode can be downloaded there too).

see scenes/hourglass/hourglass.inc and scenes/sand/sand.inc

The falling sand-grains are set up by a simple SDL particle system, the 
rest is CSG. As there are only a few (e.g. 100) grains visible per 
frame, SDL is fast enough, so there's no need to precompute anything 
(however, I'd write an external app for more complex simulations, 
C[++/#], Java, even perl is faster than pov SDL...)

Post a reply to this message