"Rune" <run### [at] runevisioncom> wrote in message
news:41324cbb$1@news.povray.org...
> > 2). Animation of "a pair of pants" or a "sweater"-- say two
> > independently moving legs which smoothly join to a "hip & but" or two
> > independently moving arms smoothly joining to a "torso".
>
> > I think it's just a slightly bigger coding headache and
> > this discussion is almost about made me want to try it.
>
> If you mean it'd be a new coding headache every time you have a new model
or
> skeleton, then you're missing the point. Deforming a skeleton according to
> bones is a general technique that, once coded, don't require any
additional
> coding no matter how different the models and skeletons are. If on the
other
> hand you think you *do* have a general-purpose solution, then I wish you
> good luck coding it.
>


Consider the 'sweater' example.  I can envision a general model which works
of course for the first character you design with it. But if everything is
procedurally generated, then you can tweak skeletal points as well as the
splines that define the arm diameters as well as the spline that defines the
shape of the torso.  It shouldn't be too hard to go from robot to man to
woman to puppy dog once you've got the system.  You would however be locked
into designing the character within this system--or to put another spin on
it, blessed by having a totally procedurally generated, portable, 100%
povray, SDL-only character.  I intuitively appreciate this philosophy,
especially if it were politically incorrect with certain artsy-fartsy types.
To quote a recent winner of an IRTC Animation round, (from memory),  "Using
povray for character animation must be a complete waste of time".

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