"Gilles Tran" wrote:
> Animating Poser characters can be already be done within
> Poser and the results can be exported to Povray. I did a
> test with a few hundred running horses some time ago.

How was this done? One mesh per frame? How long was the animation? And how
much disc space did it take?

Would it have been possible to make the horses run over a height field and
other such demanding interactions with the surroundings?

> You're right in saying that character animation is a
> weakness of POV-Ray, but I fail to see how a POV-Ray-only
> solution could be useful from a practical point of view
> (I mean for creating full animations, not just tests to
> prove a point).

With the feature I propose combined with the right macros, it would be
possible to animate characters using POV-Script, just like other things can
be animated in POV-Ray.

And yes, I *do* believe quality character animation can be done writing
numbers in a text editor. With the proper macros of course.

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
Rune's World:    http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated June 26)
POV-Ray Users:   http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk/povrayusers/
POV-Ray Webring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

Post a reply to this message

"Kari Kivisalo" wrote:
> All the serious computer animations have been done
> with a system that has a GUI. Very few people can
> do Toy Story by writing "...<34,234.23,2343>} blah{
> 1231,2132,<234,2334,853>..."

And very few people can model anything at all that way. But lots of POV
users can. I don't think you should underestimate them.

> When there is GUI to back it up then it's a good idea.

GUI is fine for some, but not a necessity.

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
Rune's World:    http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated June 26)
POV-Ray Users:   http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk/povrayusers/
POV-Ray Webring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

Post a reply to this message

"Christoph Hormann" wrote:
> But Povray is certainly not a character
> animator and not a modeller.

People use it to model, so it is a modeller.

I'd like it to be a character animation program too.

> What you suggest is a specialized capability for
> manipulating mesh data.

No, a capability for deforming meshes in a certain way.

> the purpose is quite special

It could be used for bending, stretching, lip-synchronization, boning, and
many other things. The way I've proposed it is rather general.

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
Rune's World:    http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated June 26)
POV-Ray Users:   http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk/povrayusers/
POV-Ray Webring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

Post a reply to this message

"Tony[B]" wrote:
> I proposed something like this in my wish-list for 4.0,
> but I'm afraid that it will remain a wish with the
> attitude most POVers have about keeping modeller and
> renderer separate, something which I don't really mind
> combining.

I feel that way too. Well, thanks for your understanding...

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
Rune's World:    http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated June 26)
POV-Ray Users:   http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk/povrayusers/
POV-Ray Webring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

Post a reply to this message

Rune wrote:
> [...]
> 
> > What you suggest is a specialized capability for
> > manipulating mesh data.
> 
> No, a capability for deforming meshes in a certain way.
> 

What's the difference?

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

Post a reply to this message

"Christoph Hormann" wrote:
> Rune wrote:
> > [...]
> >
> > > What you suggest is a specialized capability for
> > > manipulating mesh data.
> >
> > No, a capability for deforming meshes in a certain way.
> >
>
> What's the difference?

Well, it's a matter of definition I guess but I choose not to call it mesh
data manipulation since the mesh data (in the file) remains constant. "Mesh
data manipulation" leads my thoughts to changing the written mesh data,
which it is not what happens. But of course all computations involve
internal manipulation of data but that's needless to say.

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
Rune's World:    http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated June 26)
POV-Ray Users:   http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk/povrayusers/
POV-Ray Webring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 30 Sep 2001 18:04:20 +0200, "Gilles Tran" <tra### [at] inapginrafr>
wrote:

>You're right in saying that character animation is a weakness of POV-Ray,
>but I fail to see how a POV-Ray-only solution could be useful from a
>practical point of view (I mean for creating full animations, not just tests
>to prove a point).

I'd like to see some sort of boning features available for the meshes
I use with POV, and I don't even do animations. I'd like the ability
to accurately deform 3rd party meshes for still images. 

Of course I *could* buy Poser, Rhino, or any one of several other
commercial 3D packages, but POV-Ray is free. It would be terrific if
there were some sort of practical way to accurately deform meshes
(boning comes to mind in particular), without spending a lot of money
on some external modeler.

Later,
Glen

Post a reply to this message

"Rune" <run### [at] mobilixnetdk> wrote in message
news:3bb719c3@news.povray.org...
> "ingo" wrote:
> >  Yes, they can be assigned to several vertices, but they
> > don't have to be! Nothing stops you from writing a mesh
> > that specifies a normal per vertex
>
> Ok, but that's rather inefficient.
>
> I think there's plenty of good reasons to implement the feature I've
> proposed.
>
> Is there anybody besides me who thinks it would be a good idea?
>
I think it's a good idea, considering there are so few Pov animation entries on
IRTC. It might just help to get more animations on there.

 - Nekar

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 30 Sep 2001 15:06:59 +0200, "Rune"
<run### [at] mobilixnetdk> wrote:

>I think there's plenty of good reasons to implement the feature I've
>proposed.
>
>Is there anybody besides me who thinks it would be a good idea?

I don't know the technical details of the best way to implement boning
in meshes, but I would definitely like to be able to use meshes with
bones in my renderings. I'd love to be able to deform and tweak
meshes,  instead of using them as static objects, as I do now.

Later,
Glen

Post a reply to this message

Glen Berry wrote:
> 
> I'd like to see some sort of boning features available for the meshes
> I use with POV, and I don't even do animations. I'd like the ability
> to accurately deform 3rd party meshes for still images.
> 
> Of course I *could* buy Poser, Rhino, or any one of several other
> commercial 3D packages, but POV-Ray is free. It would be terrific if
> there were some sort of practical way to accurately deform meshes
> (boning comes to mind in particular), without spending a lot of money
> on some external modeler.
> 

Just like to point out that deforming meshes (meaning translating the
vertices in a certain defined way) is really not much problem in current
pov/megapov.  Just define a vector field in a user defined function or
pigment and use it to translate the vertices.  It will work like displace
warps for patterns.

I haven't used any character modelling packages at all therefore i can't
say much about 'boning' and the things required for that, but looking at
Rune's first proposal i think implementing a transform weighting method
would really be the first step (either in SDL or as a patch) Having this
function limited to meshes would be a major restriction (just imagine
blobs could be nicely 'boned' too)

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

Post a reply to this message