"Gilles Tran" wrote:
> What I'm suggesting is that this sort of large-scale
> proposal would be much more convincing and "saleable"
> to other people if you'd do first some sort of
> feasability study of what you propose and demonstrate
> it on a smaller scale.

Quite understandable. That's what I'm working on, I just wanted to seed a
discussion and awareness of the possible potential at an early stage. Then
when I post my animated demonstrations people will already have this in
mind.

> So, making a working, usable include file of a generic
> (bones only) quadruped (not biped) walking/running
> animation would be a first step in that direction.

While I can understand that a quadruped will be a greater challenge, I can't
see why a biped would be about equally useful. But in the long run I'll have
a try with both.

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

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"Christoph Hormann" wrote:
> Rune wrote:
> > Besides, it doesn't work for smooth meshes.
>
> No problem with some extra calculations.

Deforming the normals too involves knowing the positions of the accompanying
vertices, after which for each normal at least 4 samples must be taken to
estimate the normal, and then various vcross operations are performed to get
the final result.

While it is possible if the number of normals specified is equal to the
number of vertices, it sure is not a simple operation, and it's extremely
computationally expensive for large meshes. I estimate a deformation of a
smooth mesh would take about six times as long as a deformation of a
non-smooth mesh.

> There are many cases BTW, where a field based deformation
> is much more convenient than something based on transforms.

Sure, but not for character animation which is the primary goal here.

> What's so different about blobs (the blob component
> coordinates can be compared to the mesh vertices)

The surface of a mesh is entirely dependent on the vertices. The surface of
a blob is dependent on many other things than just the center coordinates.
This is also why you can't UV-map a blob.

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

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> While I can understand that a quadruped will be a greater challenge, I
can't
> see why a biped would be about equally useful. But in the long run I'll
have
> a try with both.

There have been many bipeds animated successfully in Povray. I even did a
basic walking stick figure in 1993 with Povray 1. So it's difficult, but
it's been done before, at least partially (see the anim "For a claw full of
gold" http://www.irtc.org/anims/2001-01-15.html).
However, I've never seen a Povray-made quadruped trotting or galloping
(which was why I used Poser to do it, BTW). So I guess that solving such a
problem in a way that's appealing to users would be a much better proof of
Povray's ability to support a native, flexible character animation system.

G.
--

**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
Graphic experiments
Pov-ray gallery

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Rune wrote:
> 
> The surface of a mesh is entirely dependent on the vertices. The surface of
> a blob is dependent on many other things than just the center coordinates.
> This is also why you can't UV-map a blob.
> 

Sorry, but i don't see a reason for limiting new, more sophisticated
transformation capabilities (which is what this is all about as far as i
understand from your proposal) to mesh2 objects.  

Christoph

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

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"Christoph Hormann" wrote:
> Sorry, but i don't see a reason for limiting new, more
> sophisticated transformation capabilities (which is what
> this is all about as far as i understand from your
> proposal) to mesh2 objects.

The feature I'm proposing is not a new type of transformation. It is a
deformation. Only objects made of triangles can be deformed this way. Sorry.

More details can be found in the POV-Ray 3.5 documentation
section "9.1.1.11  How can I bend a object?"

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

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news:3bb86a38@news.povray.org...
> No they couldn't. But bezier patches could perhaps.

I got 2 little utilities in my HD that do that with bezier patches.
First you export your bezier patches in the initial position in pov format
Second you export your bezier patches in the final position in pov format
Third the utility creates the meedle frames.
(IIRC you can insert different meedle steps before getting to the final
position).
If you're interested I can do a search thru' my HD and backups to find them.

Anyway, it's a great challenge to make what you're trying to do, but, form
what I've seen from your work, I believe you'll find a solution.

(In Rune we trust ;-)

--
Txemi Jendrix
tji### [at] euskalnetnet
http://www.geocities.com/txemijendrix

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"Txemi Jendrix" wrote:
> I got 2 little utilities in my HD that do that with
> bezier patches. First you export your bezier patches
> in the initial position in pov format. Second you
> export your bezier patches in the final position in
> pov format. Third the utility creates the meedle frames.

> If you're interested I can do a search thru' my HD and
> backups to find them.

Thanks for the offer, but that's not quite what I'm after.

> Anyway, it's a great challenge to make what you're
> trying to do, but, from what I've seen from your work,
> I believe you'll find a solution.

Thanks. I hope you're right! ;)

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

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"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?
>
> 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
>
>

Personally, I would like POVRay to switch to a plug-in architecture.  Where
different functionality could be attained by seperate modules.  Adding more
and more functionality to POVRay simply bloats it.  Those that simply want a
fast single frame raytracer wouldn't have to contend with the added memory
overhead of a animation system built in to it.  Those that want animation
would simply add the animation dlls to the system.

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khaver wrote:
> 
> Personally, I would like POVRay to switch to a plug-in architecture.  Where
> different functionality could be attained by seperate modules.  Adding more
> and more functionality to POVRay simply bloats it.  Those that simply want a
> fast single frame raytracer wouldn't have to contend with the added memory
> overhead of a animation system built in to it.  Those that want animation
> would simply add the animation dlls to the system.

Concerning the problems of this you might want to have a look at the 'POV
4 philosophy' thread quite recently in this group.

Christoph

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

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khaver <kha### [at] netzeronet> wrote:
: Personally, I would like POVRay to switch to a plug-in architecture.  Where
: different functionality could be attained by seperate modules.

  And how do you make portable then?

  And don't come up with the typical "all OS's have dynamically loaded
libraries" answer. That's not the problem.

-- 
#macro N(D,I)#if(I<6)cylinder{M()#local D[I]=div(D[I],104);M().5,2pigment{
rgb M()}}N(D,(D[I]>99?I:I+1))#end#end#macro M()<mod(D[I],13)-6,mod(div(D[I
],13),8)-3,10>#end blob{N(array[6]{11117333955,
7382340,3358,3900569407,970,4254934330},0)}//                     - Warp -

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