http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AT_7nAr99A

I submitted an animation to the 11 Second Club.  I came in near the bottom.  In
some ways I guess I didn't even try hard enough-- I just slapped some clunky
lip sync on a pre-existing walk cycle.

I think the biggest thing I'm missing is arcs and non-linear motion.  I know a
way to make this happen in SDL; I just haven't figured out a way to make it easy
to do so "often" for my own use, or for others to ever eventually use.

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"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> I think the biggest thing I'm missing is arcs and non-linear motion...

When you say "arcs and non-linear motion", what exactly are you refering to?

--
Dan
GoofyGraffix.com

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"Dan Byers" <goofygraffix_at_geemail_dot_com> wrote:
> "gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> > I think the biggest thing I'm missing is arcs and non-linear motion...
>
> When you say "arcs and non-linear motion", what exactly are you refering to?
>


ARCS:
I acted out a hand gesture with my own hands.  Then I quickly programmed a
spline to do this motion.  When I saw my character do it, it was instead a
violent, pointless thrust of the arms instead of the graceful gesture I made
with my own body.  I realized that I was missing the animation principle of
arcs. If you move something, it's good for it to be in a big wide arc-- a
smoothly sloped curve IN SPACE.

NONLINEAR MOTION:
All the pro packages talk alot about spline editors-- that you can have your
movements show acceleration and deceleration. That is, the movement from point
to point goes along smoothly sloping curves IN TIME.

Now I've got the macro that lets me type in 4D vectors to do the smoothness in
time.   I think I need to get it also to be a smooth curve in space.  And with
all this typing, I think I just figured it out.  I'll just "waste" the first
point and use cubic splines in my current macro.  I'd really wish there were
akima splines, however.  These IIRC allow for smooth movement even with the
first point.

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> I'd really wish there were akima splines, however. These IIRC allow
> for smooth movement even with the first point.

MegaPOV has akima splines.

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"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> NONLINEAR MOTION:
> All the pro packages talk alot about spline editors-- that you can have your
> movements show acceleration and deceleration. That is, the movement from point
> to point goes along smoothly sloping curves IN TIME.

Nice.  I haven't seen the others, but I like it.  Don't get it, but that only
makes it funnier.

Unfortunately, character animation is not a strong point of POV-Ray.  Seems
though like if you have some good macros to parameterize the spline in time and
accelerate/decelerate, you should be able, with enough tweaking, to get some
smooth motion.  Nothing fundamentally different from what the 'pro packages'
do... 'cept the GUI.

 - Ricky

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