"Matt Burns" <mac### [at] wppl> wrote:
> Hi!
>

Thanks for your interest in my work.

1) The jelly objects are from the "blocks.pov" shipped with Megapov 1.1 to
demonstrate its mechsim capabilities.

2) Re: sticking. I'm still working on the sticking of individual points.  It
may be a function of the friction setting too high, the stiffness too low,
or an inherent result of the blasphemy of combining cartoony blobs and a
"serious" mechsim patch.  And my threshold for posting here is not whether
it's highly polished but rather whether a piece represents some
groundbreaking in my capability and whether it's entertaining. ;-)

3) Re: Hand motion.  Good feedback that the hands ought to move during a
walk as well.

4) Re: blobs.   I once installed a blob-making program installed with one of
the early povray CD-ROM collections.   With just four spheres I made a cool
human face with a lot of character, as per the OpenGL view of the blob.
When I imported it to povray, it looked like crap, regardless of the
threshold I used.   Yes, there may be something  a bit odd about how POR
povray does blobs, which is one reason I'm so interested in seeing how the
blob2 patch may work.   I've got five hobby-years invested in doing people
with povray blobs.


5) Re: some other modeller.  I have a system which is suitable, IMNSHO, for
doing the kind of movie production I'm into.   The idea of using some other
modeller to export a mesh to pov on a frame-by-frame basis to povray is
philosophically untenable for me for two reasons:
i) If the "other program" were capable of doing a better job at modelling,
why on earth would you waste your time exporting into *this* program,
especially for a project like a lengthy animation? I can see Gilles doing
it for his stills but it seems hopelessly impractical for an animation.  I
have the highest loyalty to povray in regards to some of its capabilities,
but am first to turn traitor on others.
ii) Right now, I can fit my life's work (4 years) of coding onto a single
CD.  That's the joy of procedurally generated characters.  I also at this
point in my life need to stick with the animation system I have set up.
With it, I can with a few lines of cutting & pasting insert different
poses, skeleton sizes, and costumes/racial effects. The joy is that I don't
have to re-invent a walk cycle every time I make a radical advance in the
construction in my characters, or switching between CSG and my blobs.  Even
if a program were to display with OpenGL the blob character as it were
being modelled, I'm wondering just how export-able it would be.  I've got
so much skin invested in this game that I'm not going to change now.
iii)  I think the answer may be in coding *into* povray (SDL or v. 5.0?) an
Animation:Master-like system with bicubic patches controlled by bones (uh,
transforms) which are completely controllable with SDL code. I've tried it
a few times but got nowhere.

6) Re: realistic.   I often feel like the guy who has brought the best
applie pie ever to a chili cook-off.  I believe there is an unfounded
prejudice against cartoony work versus what some would call "serious" work.
 At the same time, I know there's the possibility of making sloppy work and
saying, ah but it's cartoony.  I love "actual-photorealism," as evidenced
in most of Gilles Tran's work.  I truly hate "wooden attempts at exhaustive
photorealism," as evidenced in [deleted].  [ Just kidding, couldn't think
of a name and glad I couldn't  ;-D ]

I am trying, however:
http://pterandon.blogspot.com/2004/10/ive-been-working-on-increasing.html
http://pterandon.blogspot.com/2004/10/portrait-of-latest-version-of-my.html

Consider the products of Pixar.  How many kids have Jar-Jar Binks dolls vs.
Buzz Lightyear dolls?    Mrs. and Mrs. Incredible, with their hip or
shoulder and facial shapes, are goofily cartoony.   They will bring their
creators a billion in revenue and bring their fans great delight.  I've
already spent $8 on a book and my son says he loves how Dash can zip back
and forth so fast.   These are marks of "great work" if not "serious work."

> Keep up the good work.

Thanks greatly again, and sorry for the rant.

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