Hello All,

I am creating a character animation front-end for POV-Ray. It allows the
user to define the skeletal structure of a character. You can then attach
POV objects. Action files define the movement of the bones. As the bones
move, the objects move.

Although I still have a lot left to do, I thought I would solicit some
input. Here is a link to an animated gif file. It shows a simple character
doing a walk cycle.

http://www.imagicproductions.com/Example/AnimTest.gif

The POV code that I used is in a zip file here.

http://www.imagicproductions.com/Example/AnimTest.zip




files are house keeping that clean up when more then one character is used


My Rodney Robot character is a little lame. I think things will be more
impressive when I add blobs. I could also spend more time tweaking the walk
action. But, what I would like you to look at is the way the files work. My

adjust the angle of the joints. The actions can be combined. It uses the
POV clock so that the same shot can be rendered at 10, 15, 30 or whatever
fps without making any changes.

I welcome any comments, suggestions, criticisms, or witisisms. I thought I
might put the program out as a shareware application if there was any
interest. Let me know what you think.

Thank you for your time.
TRP

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Nice, this is something I've wanted for a while now. My hopes:

 - Mesh support, along with the ability to link vertices to bones - maybe
partially to one bone and partially to another to create smooth bends in
animations
 - A simple output format that isn't linked to POV-Ray (your current output
seems to be part POV-Ray and part your own language within POV-Ray comments;
it would be nice to be able to get output without the POV-Ray stuff so that
it could be read by other programs wanting to support animation)
 - Free, not shareware =)

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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Thank you for your comments.

- Yes, I agree. Mesh is in my plans. But, I want to do blobs first. I
started this whole thing when I tried to animate a blob character by hand.
I sort of got distracted.

- You are right. The output is POV-Ray code with my own code in the
comments. The program was written for POV CSG. My friends that looked at

overwhelmed. My program brings structure and a visual representation to
what they are creating. Here is a screen shot.

http://www.imagicproductions.com/Example/screen1.jpg

It is a simple prop that I created with Alive! You notice that on the left
is a tree diagramming the barbell. On the right is a rough display of what
it looks like so far. The prop is an object. The object is a union. The


a list of valid options I can place under a union; other objects, rotate,

the cylinder. But, not when you insert under the sphere.


is for POV-Ray. What I AM trying for is that it works with other POV

an animation. Applications like Moray are good for that. There are macros
that generate trees, utilities that generate textures, and so on. My goal
was to create an animation tool that can pull together the files of those
resources. If you look at the top of the tree you will see that I have

colors.inc file it was a part of my option list for the RGB setting towards
the bottom. I can use any material, texture, pigment, color, or rgb values
that have been declared in an included file.



Just for the heck of it, here is a screen shot of the action screen.

http://www.imagicproductions.com/Example/screen2.jpg

- It will be freeware if I win the lottery. Until then I have to try to


Thanks again for taking a look.
TRP

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years. But, thanks to a recent bout of unemployment I have a beta version of my
Alive! program available for download.


That is on my todo list. It does allow you to include files with POV code and
add any object from the files to the union that makes up a bone. So you should
be able to import a mesh created in another application.


ignore the advertisement in the upper left hand corner :) ) Thanks to a divorce
I spend my time any way I want now.

You can find it at http://www.imagicproductions.com


documentation and the download file. Let me know what you think.

TRP

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