"Thomas de Groot" <tDOTdegroot@interDOTnlANOTHERDOTnet> wrote:

> Now, this is a huge improvement indeed! Much, much better than Egghead. His
> neck is a bit thick now, maybe.

Thanks, Thomas. (I *need* a bit of positive reinforcement, as I 'wander in the
wilderness', wondering how to proceed.) Of course, now that I look at this
first iteration with a fresh eye...*I* can't keep from laughing!! Hopefully,
with a bit of tweaking, I can wrestle it into a better form. It's a subtle
thing, trying to get everything 'working together' toward a coherent and
recognizable form. Just the slightest change can throw the look into the
'grotesque' category.

I agree about the neck (I was hoping *someone* would reinforce my own opinion; I
wasn't sure about it.)

KW

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This is a long-time overdue, and important, well-done work which you have 
done, Kenneth! I know of hundreds of uses for your invention in my scenes, 
thanks again for your well-appreciated present!

Yes, it would be fine to have on top of your template file a list of 
variables which can be changed by the user. Those variables would control 
the angles of each joint.

I could imagine your template to be fully in gold or chrome, to symbolize an 
advanced human robot. And that brings me to a next idea: make it possible 
that individual parts of your template can hold different textures, also 
specified on top of your template file. So if I want to use a special 
texture for the face, I then can do that easily.

I (we) also need to know the exact dimensions. I assume the being stands at 
the <0.0, 0.0, 0.0> point, right?

But how many units tall is he/she/it? Important to know for the correct 
scaling to fit the scenes.

Thanks again for your wonderful work,

Sven

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Maybe one more useful suggestion is to offer two versions of this being, the 
existing male one, and a female one. Just a touch of female attributes, 
nothing sexual. But this might be useful, too, for many. I hope at least.

Sven

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"Sven Littkowski" <Sve### [at] Jamaica-Focuscom> wrote:
> This is a long-time overdue, and important, well-done work which you have
> done, Kenneth! I know of hundreds of uses for your invention in my scenes,
> thanks again for your well-appreciated present!
>

Thanks indeed for the kind words. I do hope it proves useful.

> ...it would be fine to have on top of your template file a list of
> variables which can be changed by the user. Those variables would control
> the angles of each joint.

Yes, that's probably how I will list the joint rotations, to make them easy to
adjust.

> But how many units tall is he/she/it? Important to know for the correct
> scaling to fit the scenes.

I'm planning on just 1 POV-unit tall, with the feet resting at y=0. That should
make it easy to scale up.

SO... I haven't been idle.  Here's head iteration #2.  It's
looking...***better***. Still not done, though; it needs refining.  I'm finally
starting to 'see' the underlying shapes and masses, and how to go about modeling
them. And the cranium isn't just a simple scaled sphere (as this iteration
shows); it's more complex than that, so I'll try some things.  Sorry this
process is taking longer than I thought--real life reared its OWN ugly head.
;-)

I realize the body is too thin front-to-back (the result of another necessary
change that I had to make to the whole figure.)  I'll fix that too.

Stay tuned for more!

KW

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Attachments:
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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> Sorry this process is taking longer than I thought--real life reared its OWN
> ugly head.

Still, this one isn't any longer. Looks like he's wearing a beard, but good job!

(Duh. He's no fun any more... spoil-sport! :P)

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High!

clipka wrote:

> But no kidding actually: what kind of size system would *you* prefer to code
> your scenes in - one in which you can easily compute the next bigger or smaller
> scales by just moving around the decimal point, or one where you have to
> multiply/divide by 12, 3, and 1760, respectively?

With the Solar System project I'm currently working on, I was forced to 
equal one POV unit to no less than 13347 kilometres - otherwise the 
Kuiper Belt would have been outside the range of proper calculation. Too 
bad that POV-Ray's current epsilon value covers only about 12 orders of 
magnitude... now I won't be able to visualize small asteroids (below 
about 600-metre radius), let alone most human-made structures on Earth!

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

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"clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> "Kenneth" <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> > Sorry this process is taking longer than I thought--real life reared its OWN
> > ugly head.
>
> Still, this one isn't any longer. Looks like he's wearing a beard, but good job!

Or an old-style football helmet :-[
>
> (Duh. He's no fun any more... spoil-sport! :P)

Oh, there's still PLENTY of humor to be mined from this guy!  ;-)

KW

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It's finally getting close! (I had to break down and use a CSG difference, for
the eye sockets; the head just didn't look right without that. No other way of
getting that effect.)  I still see need for improvement, in all sorts of small
ways (as well as correcting some modeling flaws.) But I'll let it rest for now,
and start working on the body and its rotation joints. Will fine-tune the head
later.

KW

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Attachments:
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Preview of image 'head_test_3.jpg'