Hello, Chris,

I have struggled some more with my animation, then started playing with
POVPerson.  I was going to follow
Quick reference step by step before I play with animation

However I had not managed to go far:

The online documentation recommends

#include "povperson.inc"

object {ppFigure("ann.inc","style1.inc","smile","standing.inc","ppoutfit1.inc")
translate x*5}

to drop add into my pov scene.

I had surely updated my Library_Path to include PPV2 folder. well, as I started
testing the code hoping to see ann,
I realized, I had to add "pp" prefix to all include files.  For a Quick
Reference documentation, it might be a nice touch to keep example follow your
naming convention.

Anyhow, that is not where I stopped, as POV-RAY parser complained I kept adding
"pp" prefixes.  Only to realize,
there was no smile file, ppsmile.pov, or any version that sounded like an
expression, Okay. the document does say None yet provided, but I got a parser
error at line reading

#include ppExpression

in ppFigure macro.   What would you recommend that I do? Passsing a blank file
name does not work, not passing that argument does not work.  I could eliminate
that arg from ppFigure macro for now?  Would that be safe?

As for my simple approach, relying on POV-RAY to figure out the coordinates when
there are rotations involved in a subset of joints in a joint-segment pair CSG
union tree hierarchy.  It worked.  POV-RAY definitely figures out where the
segments go as  result of rotations in select number of nodes.  Having
programmed in C and SAS for a long time, I had assumed that there would be a
way to query POV-RAY to learn the resulting state of joint-segment coordinates.

Thanks to this listserve, and thank you Chris, I learned I was being just too
optimistic. Well, not being the one who can take a no easily, now I wonder, how
difficult could it be to add a custom C level function to POV-RAY.  I remember
seeing urls to source code somewhere, of course I am assuming it is very well
documented, it will be very easy to locate an object handle, given the name of
an object.  Even if I can locate the object handle for the root of my Humanoid
tree.  Would each node contain updated transformed coordinates of that node?

Now that I have started reading more on animation, and thinking about rotations,
I have come across a new branch of geometry that was not in the works while I
went for my doctorate with a minor in ECE. The Engineering Mathematics back
then were about Linear Algebra.  Given 3D vectors, we worked with 3x3 rotation
matrices.  Now I hear about "quaternions", memory and computational
efficiency-wise they are regarded very highly it appears.   Well, even for the
old school I used to know I cannot remember fathom how to apply cummulative
effects of rotational transformation at a node and at its parents.   Not only
there might be rotational transformations at some parent nodes, they are
happening  about the center points of those parents.  As for quaternions I
guess I need to get my hands on a book.
I need a few more life times to pursue this interest and possibilities.

Thanks,
Meltem

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