Hello,
I have been working on an IK snake, and have developed an incredibly
realistic looking snake body (see my posted file, snakesample.bmp, in
moray.binaries). The problem is that apparently it has too many objects
(each scale is a bezier patch). The part pictured is about half of it, an it
has no head yet, and it takes about 15 minutes to render. I made the middle
and tail in three sections, and when I put them together, Moray shuts down.
So, to render the entire snake appears to be an impossibility, let alone
making an animation, which was what I set out to do.
I just downloaded hamaPatch to see what I can do with it. If I could make
each ring of scales as a single patch, reducing the number of objects to
1/15 of what it is now, would that make a difference?
Any suggestions would be appreciated. I have a very strong desire to solve
this problem.
Thank you,
Steve shelby

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Steve Shelby wrote:

> (see my posted file, snakesample.bmp, in moray.binaries).

Ummm... Steve? In the future could you please try to post an image
using an image format that uses file compression? The .bmp file you
posted before encoding was 900k in size and I was able to reduce that
to a mere 33k by converting it to .jpg format. I could have posted
27 seperate .jpg images in the space it took to store your single .bmp
image!

I took the liberty of posting the .jpg version for you, and using my
discretion as a news group administrator, deleted your message in
moray.binaries. Your help in keeping our server hard drive space under
control would be appreciated.

Thanks,

-- 
Ken Tyler - News Admin.

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Hi Steve Shelby, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> The problem is that apparently it has too many objects
> (each scale is a bezier patch). 
Hmmm, there is no hard limit to the number of objects that Moray can
handle..... so I'd also be interested in seeing what causes this.
Could you mail me the relevant files with instructions of what you do
to get the error?

Regards,

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Lutz,
Could I overcome this problem by making the snake as a series of several
separate IK chains of, say, 30 levels each, connected end to end, but each
chain separate in its IK function?
Also, back to my original question, sort of. Is rendering time related to
number of objects? If I used hamaPatch to create rings of scales that were
only one object each, rather than 15, would that speed up rendering?
I'm sorry to hear that you are changing to OpenGL only. I find that quite
often the Moray wireframe view makes it easier to see what is what.
Sometimes in a scene with a large number of small objects, in openGL there
is a forest of red, green, and blue axes that make it impossible to see the
objects.
Steve


----- Original Message -----
From: Lutz Kretzschmar <lut### [at] stmuccom>
To: sshelby <ssh### [at] shelbyvisioncom>
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 1:24 PM
Subject: Re: Too many objects?


> Hi Steve,
>
> I'm afraid that you are overdoing it :-)  The good news is that my current
> beta development version doesn't crash when you select the top level
> object. The bad news is that if I copy this object and add it onto the end
> of the tail, it does. Now, as far as I can tell you are currently nesting
> 191 levels deep and even at that level IK takes almost 20 seconds to
solve,
> never mind about adding another two sections! It seems to be a stack
> overflow and I'm not sure I can actually do something about it....
>
> Your scene did help to uncover a "bug" in my current OpenGL code, which is
> also present in your Moray version. OpenGL can only handle a nesting level
> of 32 (actually that's the guaranteed minimum, some graphics cards might
> offer more). So in OpenGL view, your snake does not have a tail, it simply
> ends about a third of the way down :-)
> I have added code to my development version to overcome this limit, since
> the next version of Moray will only offer OpenGL drawing..... so thanks
for
> that :-)
>
> Regards,
>
> - Lutz
>    email : lut### [at] stmuccom
>    Web  : http://www.stmuc.com/moray
>
>
>
>

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news:3c6c34d8@news.povray.org...

> I'm sorry to hear that you are changing to OpenGL only. I find that quite
> often the Moray wireframe view makes it easier to see what is what.
> Sometimes in a scene with a large number of small objects, in openGL there
> is a forest of red, green, and blue axes that make it impossible to see
the
> objects.

Same opinion here.

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

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Hi Txemi Jendrix, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> Same opinion here.
Guys, give me some credit here :-) The wireframe representation
available in Moray will also be available in OpenGL. And the speed is
the same for software OpenGL rendering (hardware-accelerated obviously
blows current Moray redraw speeds totally out of the water). 

Besides, what you'll get in return for giving up Morays internal
drawing will more than make up, I promise ;-)

Cheers,

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Hi Steve Shelby, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> Could I overcome this problem by making the snake as a series of several
> separate IK chains of, say, 30 levels each, connected end to end, but each
> chain separate in its IK function?
Hmmm. Well, you can't connect it end to end without nesting is, so no,
I don't think that would work.

> If I used hamaPatch to create rings of scales that were
> only one object each, rather than 15, would that speed up rendering?
That would definitely help redraw speed and IK solving speed a lot,
yes. I'm pretty sure it won't do too much for POV-Rays rendering
speed, though..... I might be wrong, though, since it may be able to
bound one object more efficiently, or it won't have to calculate as
many intersections....

> Sometimes in a scene with a large number of small objects, in openGL there
> is a forest of red, green, and blue axes that make it impossible to see the
> objects.
This is being addressed. It's actually a "feature" or byproduct of
using OpenGL. Moray does not draw a subobjects local axis, whereas the
OpenGL view does (which I preferred). But it can lead to problems with
objects such as yours, where there are too many objects. It will be
changed so that this will not be a problem. 

Wait until the beta and then let me know whether you like it, or
not....

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

Post a reply to this message

Lutz,
Thank you for answering my questions.
When the new beta comes out, will it be possible to have it and the current
version both on the same computer at the same time?
Steve

Lutz Kretzschmar <lut### [at] stmuccom> wrote in message
news:ehho6ucv25tf8k6cgjbdin6msh2s94tms5@4ax.com...
> Hi Steve Shelby, you recently wrote in moray.win:
>
> > Could I overcome this problem by making the snake as a series of several
> > separate IK chains of, say, 30 levels each, connected end to end, but
each
> > chain separate in its IK function?
> Hmmm. Well, you can't connect it end to end without nesting is, so no,
> I don't think that would work.
>
> > If I used hamaPatch to create rings of scales that were
> > only one object each, rather than 15, would that speed up rendering?
> That would definitely help redraw speed and IK solving speed a lot,
> yes. I'm pretty sure it won't do too much for POV-Rays rendering
> speed, though..... I might be wrong, though, since it may be able to
> bound one object more efficiently, or it won't have to calculate as
> many intersections....
>
> > Sometimes in a scene with a large number of small objects, in openGL
there
> > is a forest of red, green, and blue axes that make it impossible to see
the
> > objects.
> This is being addressed. It's actually a "feature" or byproduct of
> using OpenGL. Moray does not draw a subobjects local axis, whereas the
> OpenGL view does (which I preferred). But it can lead to problems with
> objects such as yours, where there are too many objects. It will be
> changed so that this will not be a problem.
>
> Wait until the beta and then let me know whether you like it, or
> not....
>
> - Lutz
>   email : lut### [at] stmuccom
>   Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Hi Steve Shelby, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> When the new beta comes out, will it be possible to have it and the current
> version both on the same computer at the same time?
Yes, I think it will. But any MDL files that you save in the beta will
not be readable by V3.3 any more. So once you work on scenes with the
new beta there is no going back to the old V3.3.

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

Post a reply to this message

> > When the new beta comes out, will it be possible to have it and the
current
> > version both on the same computer at the same time?
> Yes, I think it will. But any MDL files that you save in the beta will
> not be readable by V3.3 any more. So once you work on scenes with the
> new beta there is no going back to the old V3.3.

no export to old moray?


--

Rick

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