melo wrote:
> Charles C <"nospam a nospam.com"> wrote:
>> melo wrote:
>>>> Has anyone had much/any experience with it.  Am I daydreaming?
>> I've been reading most of your posts with some interest, largely because
>> I've done my own skeletal system in POV-Ray.  It's not in a shareable
>> state though, and uses a completely different system than what sounds
>> like is in POV-Person. (I want to complete this project before I look at
>> others' code.)
>>
>> Anyway, the thing to know about Blender if you haven't noticed already
>> is it has a strong reputation for the steep learning curve with its
>> interface.  You don't seem too easily wavered though, so good luck :)  I
>> hear that it's great to use once you've learned it.
>> Charles
> 
> Thanks for your response Charles. Yes, I did hear about the steep learning curve
> and less than friendly user interface.  As if to make up for it, there were lots
> of documentation some in multimedia format to help with the learning.
> 
> Well learning how to use a tool some experts has built is some challenge,
> however it does not allow one to learn what it takes to build the tool itself.
> Given time, energy, budget limitations we all face, and the unending thirst for
> knowledge where do we put our priorities, do I really want to learn how to do
> skeletal animation well, or do I really want to start telling my stories,
> and/or focusing on potential research avenues that having such tools at my
> fingertips open up?
> 
> Sorry, for bringing my internal mental processes to this listserve?  My saving
> grace is my hope that I could not be potentially alone as a strugle to find the
> balance.
> 
> Meanwhile Charles, since you have also been involved in skeletal animation using
> POV-RAY, if you could share highlights of your learnings and approach, I would
> be most appreciate.  Yes, me, Melo, always the curious.  I had been a strong
> advocate of knowledge management and sharing initiatives in my previous working
> life.   Believing, as we shared our learnings, and struggles, we all grew in
> knowledge exponentially.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mel
> 
> 
> 
> 

Here's a bit on what I've done:
My skeletal system is pretty simple, at least in concept.  My 
implementation has a tendency to grow with 'features.'  It's basically 
just a bone tree rooted between the first tail vertebrae and the first 
back vertebrae.  Each bone is a pair of vectors, one which has the 
length and direction of the bone, and a second, nominally unit-length 
vector to keep track of orientation.  All bones support twist, and 
for/aft side/side rotations to their parent bones with per-bone and 
per-rotation-type&direction limits specified in an include-file.  I'm 
using separate macros for the spine and the limbs to optimize control 
for groupings of vertebrae with a single control value for the spine, or 
specify individual digits/segments out of multidimensional arrays for 
the limbs.  (E.g: LimbVectors_POSED[LF][Forefinger][3][Pos] tells you 
the posed position of the tip of the forefinger for the left/front 
limb.)  (I also keep track of an unposed  model for texture sampling and 
spline-length measurements etc.)

And what I plan to do..... later:
So far I've purposely avoided writing any keyframing macros.  I figure 
that'll be the fun part after I get this 'dang'ed' model built. :-)  I 
plan on using a spline based interpolation of values *after* accounting 
for the fact that my positive and negative rotation limits for each bone 
may differ (else, I'll get less-than-smooth movements).  I do not plan 
on making any automatic movements sequences (walking) other than a 
couple of minor elements of IK.  They are: two bone (e.g. 
shoulder-to-wrist or hip to ankle) resolving with locked twist values, 
and where the limb just points towards the target point if it's out of 
reach.  The other item is to make it possible for a given digit/segment 
to rotate until it hits a target, such as a floor.  That should make it 
so that if the leg can't reach a given spot on the floor, the 
character's foot should roll up onto its toes.

Anyway that's my story.  The real fun I've been having is in making 
systems to model with splines!  I'll tell you, there's no way to use 
splines this much without a token_counter-fixed version of POV-Ray, 
which the current release is not.
Charles

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