This is an animation I did today of a characture which I have been working
on for the past week.  The characture was modelled in wings3d with bones
done in milkshape3d.  I wasn't very careful while creating the bones, and so
the characture deformes oddly in places.

I am posting this because I haven't seen anyone else trying this kind of
thing with Povray.  With Wings3d and Milkshape3d I can finaly do characture
animations.  These three together create a powerful toolset, and all of it
for 25 USD.  I am certain that with a little more time and effort you could
make cinimatic quality animations by combinding these three.  Now if only
milkshape wasn't shareware.

PS: I don't know how well people are going to be able to see the animation.
I used the intel-Indeo 5.10 codec to keep the file size down, but I don't
know if it is availible on non-windows platforms.  I can repost it in almost
any codec people would like, but I'd rather not fill up the newsgroup with
copies of the same thing.

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Kitsune_e wrote:

> PS: I don't know how well people are going to be able to see the animation.

No one is going to see it until you attach the file :)

-- 
Ken Tyler

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Oops, Mozilla just crashed on me twice, and so I sent this message in
outlook... minus the video.

Kitsune_e <kit### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:3e989841@news.povray.org...
> This is an animation I did today of a characture which I have been working
> on for the past week.  The characture was modelled in wings3d with bones
> done in milkshape3d.  I wasn't very careful while creating the bones, and
so
> the characture deformes oddly in places.
>
> I am posting this because I haven't seen anyone else trying this kind of
> thing with Povray.  With Wings3d and Milkshape3d I can finaly do
characture
> animations.  These three together create a powerful toolset, and all of it
> for 25 USD.  I am certain that with a little more time and effort you
could
> make cinimatic quality animations by combinding these three.  Now if only
> milkshape wasn't shareware.
>
> PS: I don't know how well people are going to be able to see the
animation.
> I used the intel-Indeo 5.10 codec to keep the file size down, but I don't
> know if it is availible on non-windows platforms.  I can repost it in
almost
> any codec people would like, but I'd rather not fill up the newsgroup with
> copies of the same thing.
>
>

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Attachments:
Download 'clawz.avi.dat' (457 KB)

I couldn't see it.

Could you try again with MPG-1, or Divx

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I'm asking this here because your pic got me thinkin and I wanna try
something like that too. I've been using wings for a while and done some
tuts on it but still I'm awful, I might be able to manage a character though
and then I'd have to animate it :) Here ia my questions:

1. How did you get that to pov??? Does milkshaper allow you to set pov as a
renderer, or do you have a big .inc file INCLUDING animation info.

2. In either case, how do you get a character like that to interact with a
POV-Ray environment? Lets say you make 2 buildings and you have your guy
jump from one to the other? How do all the positioning?

Thanks, and great job!!!

Corey




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> I couldn't see it.
>
> Could you try again with MPG-1, or Divx

HAH.  :o)  Sorry Greg, you're just a funny guy .. with constant bad luck..
;o)

Regards,
Hugo

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Looks promising! I use Wings3d and POV too, and have yet to find a bone
tool... I'll probably check out Milkshape.

Regards,
Hugo

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Corey wrote:
>I'm asking this here because your pic got me thinkin and I wanna try
>something like that too. I've been using wings for a while and done some
>tuts on it but still I'm awful, I might be able to manage a character though
>and then I'd have to animate it :) Here ia my questions:
>
>1. How did you get that to pov??? Does milkshaper allow you to set pov as a
>renderer, or do you have a big .inc file INCLUDING animation info.
>
>2. In either case, how do you get a character like that to interact with a
>POV-Ray environment? Lets say you make 2 buildings and you have your guy
>jump from one to the other? How do all the positioning?
>

Milkshape does export to povray, but it exports a plain mesh include, and I
have yet to figure out how to export keyframes for animation.  What I do
is:

1) export from wings as a *.obj file
2) import to UVmapper.exe if I need good uv coords
3) import to milkshape, setup bones, assign vertexes and animate
4) now the inconvienient part-
        export each of your keyframes as *.obj files to some handy folder
        import each file to wings3d, select all and export as pov file.
        (at this point you can have wings do another subdivision of your
model
        to make it look smoother)
5) Another inconvientient part- you need to edit each of the exported
includes
        to remove the texture declaration, and the object instance.
6) now you just show the keyframes in order.  I use a macro I wrote to
decide which keyframe to show, and to show each keyframe for more then one
video frame.

I am thinking about writing a python script to automate as much of this
proccess as possable, but I haven't even started that yet.

    as for positioning in your scene there are two things- first while
modelling keep <0,0,0> between your characters feet so when you import you
know about where they are.  THe other thing is that you don't need to be
exact, if you looked at my animation frame by frame you would see that his
feet go through the floor at two frames, but this isn't visable at full
speed.  Put you creation in your scene, it exists at <0,0,0>, then scale it
to fit.  As far as I can tellone unit is one unit through all the programs,
so you can estimate how far to move each frame.  Thats it!

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Kitsune_e wrote:
> 
> This is an animation I did today of a characture which I have been working
> on for the past week.  The characture was modelled in wings3d with bones
> done in milkshape3d.  I wasn't very careful while creating the bones, and so
> the characture deformes oddly in places.
> 
> I am posting this because I haven't seen anyone else trying this kind of
> thing with Povray.  With Wings3d and Milkshape3d I can finaly do characture
> animations.  These three together create a powerful toolset, and all of it
> for 25 USD.  I am certain that with a little more time and effort you could
> make cinimatic quality animations by combinding these three.  Now if only
> milkshape wasn't shareware.
> 
> PS: I don't know how well people are going to be able to see the animation.
> I used the intel-Indeo 5.10 codec to keep the file size down, but I don't
> know if it is availible on non-windows platforms.  I can repost it in almost
> any codec people would like, but I'd rather not fill up the newsgroup with
> copies of the same thing.

Looks nice but it's a bit hard to see the movement from that far and the
second half of the animation mister Clawz just sits there :)

BTW, what do you mean with noone else trying this kind of thing? Are you
referring to the size of the hands? Or character animation in general.
In that case you should look at the stuff Greg has been posting here
regularly.
It doesn't quite have the Japanese cartoon look to it, but it's very
sophisticated (and pure POV I believe).

Cheers!

Remco

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Remco de Korte wrote:
>Looks nice but it's a bit hard to see the movement from that far and the
>second half of the animation mister Clawz just sits there :)
>
>BTW, what do you mean with noone else trying this kind of thing? Are you
>referring to the size of the hands? Or character animation in general.
>In that case you should look at the stuff Greg has been posting here
>regularly.
>It doesn't quite have the Japanese cartoon look to it, but it's very
>sophisticated (and pure POV I believe).
>
>Cheers!
>
>Remco
>

If you are referring to the blob men then yes, I have seen them.  I have
been seeing the blob people for some time, and they are just getting to a
really usable state.  But the amount of time required to create such a
character is much too high.  The what to which I am referring is polygon
mesh animation.  polygon mesh animation is afaik the primary tool used in
most CG production houses today.  with subdivision modelling anyone can
quickly prototype animate and render a creature which few could even make
in native povray sdl.  I can understand peoples reluctance to use outside
modellers with Povray, I feel the same way myself, but these type of
results can only be achived with a polygon based model.

about the camera work- I did all those things for specific reasons.  First
the distance frome the character: I tried getting closer, but those dang
claws kept hitting the camera.  Also the distance from the figure covers
some of my mistakes.  The ending is just an orbit to show off the fully
deformed character.  I was concidering making the camera spiral inward, but
this seemed just to focus in on the wierd spots in the mesh.  I am working
on his head now, maybe when I finish I will do a better animation.

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