"Stephen" <mcavoys_AT_aolDOT.com> wrote in message 
news:web.44fe9081c1d6ecebf1cb1e660@news.povray.org...
> "octogonalMonk" <fucrate ::at:: gmail ::dot:: com> wrote:
>> Hey, thanks for getting back to me so quickly, after posting I looked at 
>> the
>> forums and got a little worried that it wasn't really that active. 
>> You've
>> proved me wrong.
>>
>> I'm still a little unsure of what you're recommendation is, though.
>
> What I think Charles is saying is;
> You have, or what you could have, is a series of meshes of a skeleton 
> model.
> Possibly named skeleton001.obj to skeleton100.obj or skeleton001.inc if 
> Maya
> has a Pov-Ray output. (You can convert the obj's to include files using
> Poseray.)
> In an INI file for the animation settings
>
> Initial_Frame=1
> Final_Frame=100
> Initial_Clock=0
> Final_Clock=1
>
> In the POV file
>
> #declare My_Object = concat(skeleton,str(frame_number,-1,0),".inc")
> /* This gives you the series of meshes */
> #include My_Object
> /* This calls the meshes */
> This will give you the animation but not much understanding of bones in
> general. Working with bones and Inverse Kinematics would be a major
> project, in Pov. I'm sure that someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
>
> Stephen
>

I'd agree with Charles and Stephen. If your job depends on it then keep it 
simple and use what you've got. Animation and particularly character 
animation aren't for the novice or the faint hearted, so if you can readily 
generate a file per frame then that would be the easiest solution.

If you are using file names like 'skeleton001.inc' though, I think the 
concat function should read:
  #declare My_Object = concat("skeleton",str(frame_number,-3,0),".inc")
where the word 'skeleton' is in quotes and the string length would be '-3' 
(where the negative sign says to pad with zeros).

Regards,
Chris B.

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