"Chambers" <bdc### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> I've been away from POV for a bit (around 1 1/2 years), so I haven't been
> keeping up on what other people are doing.  I'd like to animate a person,
> and I don't know if anyone's yet come up with an elegant solution for that
> (ie, using a common file format such as skinned models from games would be
> an elegant solution; typing in hundreds of bezier patches for each from
> would not).  What have other people been doing to solve this problem?
>
> If I need to, I'll work out my own system; I'd just rather not reinvent the
> wheel.
>
> ....Chambers


Some have done it with just intelligent stacking of a lot of spheres.
(See the source code for Pool Shark at
http://irtc.org/anims/1998-10-15.html)

I myself use either CSG, blobs, or Mike William's sweepspline code
(http://flickr.com/photos/pterandon/sets/110545/).
I haven't released the code because I vascillate between thinking it too
lame or too precious.  I did put a basic stick figure using cylinders into
one of these forums a long time ago. It's the same system, just prettier.

If you build your system where you think in the construction of every
element in terms of transforms, then you can set up a separate scene file
to define all your transforms as a function of the clock.  Build it with
time-zero construction, then instert a
transform{Your_Right_Forearm_Transform} at the end. Then figure out a
transform that moves that limb from the time-zero position to the position
you want it in.

I haven't figured out how to make bicubic patches work where povray SDL
itself does the bending and stretching.

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