"John VanSickle" <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:4132b83d$1@news.povray.org...
> Case in point:  The green aliens in my April 2004 entry would have taken
> weeks to create using hand-edited SDL code.  Using the modeler I've
> developed, I generated the model in only a couple hours.  This enabled
> me to move on to other portions of the work.
>


Questions:
1) Are they also part of the lion snake modelling system?  I was about to
download and try it out once, but the weekend I had free to do it was when
your ISP was refusing attempts.

2) One thing I've always been wanting to ask about your system.   I'm
assuming you're talking about the aliens which got bit by the tomatoes.  Has
your system therefore reached the "pants" level of acheivement-- to use my
earlier terminology-- where the "body" is like the hip/but" of a pair of
pants, and the two eyestalks are the "legs"?   If so, is this part of
something you have released-- lionsnake??

Thanks.

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Greg M. Johnson wrote:

> "John VanSickle" <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
> news:4132b83d$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>>Case in point:  The green aliens in my April 2004 entry would have taken
>>weeks to create using hand-edited SDL code.  Using the modeler I've
>>developed, I generated the model in only a couple hours.  This enabled
>>me to move on to other portions of the work.
> 
> Questions:
> 1) Are they also part of the lion snake modelling system?  I was about to
> download and try it out once, but the weekend I had free to do it was when
> your ISP was refusing attempts.

Yes.  I moved the download to a new site (the old page will link to it).

> 2) One thing I've always been wanting to ask about your system.   I'm
> assuming you're talking about the aliens which got bit by the tomatoes.  Has
> your system therefore reached the "pants" level of acheivement-- to use my
> earlier terminology-- where the "body" is like the hip/but" of a pair of
> pants, and the two eyestalks are the "legs"?   If so, is this part of
> something you have released-- lionsnake??

Yes.  The eyestalks are chains of three or four bones each.  At the end
of each stalk there is a two-bone fork, to support both the upper and
lower lid of each eye.

The mouth is done with eight bones, one for each corner of the mouth and
three for each lip.

The modeler applies only the most basic limits to the bones, namely that
bones can share start points, but not end points, and that the end point
of any bone can be the starting point for as many bones as your memory
will allow.  I'm working on a model of a creature with six legs and two
arms (I forget whether I gave it a tail).  I still haven't modeled the
bone support for the mouth or the eyelids (or the mesh to serve as the
skin).

The actual reason I started working on the modeler was that after seeing
some of the initial concept art for the IMP I concluded that a real
modeler was essential for some of the work planned.  This was shortly
after the IMP was launched, and to be honest I haven't paid much
attention to the IMP since then.

Regards,
John

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"Rune" <run### [at] runevisioncom> wrote:
> I'm not sure I have the required skills, but I'd like to write a program in
> Java that can import a boned mesh in some format, move the bones around,
> deform the mesh according to the moved bones and then export the mesh as a
> mesh2 for example.
>
> Are there any widely used formats for boned meshes?
>
> It should contain the mesh (typically a character in some standard pose),
> the bones in the same standard pose, and data about which vertices are
> affected by which bones.
>
> However, in order to deform the mesh correctly, I'd probably also have to
> know the algorithm used for the deforming. Even with that available I might
> not have the skills, but I can always hope.
>
> I think I have to base it all on a pre-existing format for boned meshes,
> because how else would people be able to actually create those boned meshes?
> I certainly don't have the skills to create a graphical mesh and boning
> modeler/editor.

I was going to point you to the h-anim work that has been done for VRML, but
a lot of that seems to have disappeared off the web3d site. The people who
did the h-anim work have kept some of it up and available at
http://www.hanim.org
It might help, but will probably leave you more puzzled than anything.
H-anim and VRML are open formats.

A better place is a young guy's site here in Australia. He calls himself
Thyme and is very friendly and helpful. He makes his program Seamless3d
available free from his website at
http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/gperrett/seamless3d/index.html
It does animation of single-mesh avatars by moving the points in the mesh as
you were saying. He really is the best person you could talk to on this.
His work is all in VRML, but really that is similar in many ways to
POV-Ray; just that VRML is real-time and POV-Ray is raytraced and geared
more to complex, beautiful images.

If you want to see some of the examples they used to have on the h-anim site
and the web3d site email me back and I'll send them to you. Luckily I saved
them to my hard drive a while ago.

Best wishes,

- miriam (at) werple . net . au

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I should have mentioned that conversion between VRML and POV-Ray is easy.
They are both ASCII 3d scripting languages with some similarities, and
there are a number of tools that will convert automatically (pov2vrml,
AccuTrans, etc).

VRML continuous mesh avatars can use java to manipulate the mesh vertices or
VRML's own scripting to do it. I have examples of both. At the very least
this would help you work out a way to get POV-Ray to do it.

I have been using VRML for several years and have become a little unhappy
with the development effort there in recent years. I've always thought
POV-Ray had one of the coolest communities and has a very economical
language. It always seemed to me that being able to model and move things
in POV-Ray in realtime would make a lot of sense, so that when you are
happy with the layout of the scene you could render that as the raytraced
final image. It surprises me that this never happened. When I was manager
of a 3d multiuser world for kids a little while back I had the wonderful
experience of watching kids as young as 5 years old building things by
moving them around inside the virtual world. It is a very powerful way of
doing things. Imagine if we could do that with POV-Ray!

(Sorry, that last bit is a little bit off-topic.)

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