I've been away from POV for a bit (around 1 1/2 years), so I haven't been
keeping up on what other people are doing.  I'd like to animate a person,
and I don't know if anyone's yet come up with an elegant solution for that
(ie, using a common file format such as skinned models from games would be
an elegant solution; typing in hundreds of bezier patches for each from
would not).  What have other people been doing to solve this problem?

If I need to, I'll work out my own system; I'd just rather not reinvent the
wheel.

....Chambers

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"Chambers" <bdc### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message 
news:web.43d81a10670091f6eed49ef10@news.povray.org...
> I've been away from POV for a bit (around 1 1/2 years), so I haven't been
> keeping up on what other people are doing.  I'd like to animate a person,
> and I don't know if anyone's yet come up with an elegant solution for that
> (ie, using a common file format such as skinned models from games would be
> an elegant solution; typing in hundreds of bezier patches for each from
> would not).  What have other people been doing to solve this problem?
>
> If I need to, I'll work out my own system; I'd just rather not reinvent 
> the
> wheel.
>
> ....Chambers
>

Hi Chambers,

I recently posted an Alpha copy of POV-Person. It generates a range of 
people, does animations and a bunch of other stuff. It's free and is 
designed to be readily extended. It doesn't yet have any converters for 
common anatomical model file formats, but over the weekend I wrote a BVH 
converter to convert some free motion capture data to POV-Person format to 
increase the number of poses that it can handle, so that's coming soon (as 
soon as I've debugged my converter).

It's still a work in progress and I get the impression that hardly anyone 
has done anything with it yet, but then it's not been out for long.

I posted the source here:
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.scene-files/thread/%3C43bb0b2b%40news.povray.org%3E/

There's an example of a walking animation I generated using it here:
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.animations/attachment/%3C434287ae%40news.povray.org%3E/pp00animationexample0101.gif

Other Alternatives
------------------
Zeger Knaepen is working on an animated Muscle modelling macro. See the 
thread:
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.animations/thread/%3C43c6bed8%40news.povray.org%3E/

Most of the human forms in POV-Ray I've seen on the newsgroups recently have 
been exported from Poser or from modellers.
I think this is how the 'Fighting Temeraire and Friend' mpeg that Stephen 
posted at
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.animations/thread/%3Co5cos1tjr1upujtsa0417f0cqtq8ddeg16%404ax.com%3E/
was probably generated. It was his posting and his link to the BVH files 
that got me writing the converter mentioned above.

Otherwise, most POV Scenes still seem largely devoid of human life.

Regards,
Chris B.

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:37:33 -0000, "Chris B"
<c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote:

>I think this is how the 'Fighting Temeraire and Friend' mpeg that Stephen 
>posted at
>http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.animations/thread/%3Co5cos1tjr1upujtsa0417f0cqtq8ddeg16%404ax.com%3E/
>was probably generated. It was his posting and his link to the BVH files 
>that got me writing the converter mentioned above.

Of course, you are right. It was some new BVH files that I found
(available if anyone wants them 2.5 Meg) that prompted me to post.

I'm interested to hear about your converter, keep us informed.

Post a reply to this message

"Chambers" <bdc### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> I've been away from POV for a bit (around 1 1/2 years), so I haven't been
> keeping up on what other people are doing.  I'd like to animate a person,
> and I don't know if anyone's yet come up with an elegant solution for that
> (ie, using a common file format such as skinned models from games would be
> an elegant solution; typing in hundreds of bezier patches for each from
> would not).  What have other people been doing to solve this problem?
>
> If I need to, I'll work out my own system; I'd just rather not reinvent the
> wheel.
>
> ....Chambers


Some have done it with just intelligent stacking of a lot of spheres.
(See the source code for Pool Shark at
http://irtc.org/anims/1998-10-15.html)

I myself use either CSG, blobs, or Mike William's sweepspline code
(http://flickr.com/photos/pterandon/sets/110545/).
I haven't released the code because I vascillate between thinking it too
lame or too precious.  I did put a basic stick figure using cylinders into
one of these forums a long time ago. It's the same system, just prettier.

If you build your system where you think in the construction of every
element in terms of transforms, then you can set up a separate scene file
to define all your transforms as a function of the clock.  Build it with
time-zero construction, then instert a
transform{Your_Right_Forearm_Transform} at the end. Then figure out a
transform that moves that limb from the time-zero position to the position
you want it in.

I haven't figured out how to make bicubic patches work where povray SDL
itself does the bending and stretching.

Post a reply to this message

Stephen wrote:
> Of course, you are right. It was some new BVH files that I found
> (available if anyone wants them 2.5 Meg) that prompted me to post.

I wouldn't mind seeing them. I went looking for BHV files on google a 
while ago, but I could only find the specs. What terms did you use, or 
did you get them from someone "in person"?

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
    Luke, the Force is a powerful ally,
    second only to The QuickSave.

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:07:14 -0800, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>
wrote:

>
>I wouldn't mind seeing them. I went looking for BHV files on google a 
>while ago, but I could only find the specs. What terms did you use, or 
>did you get them from someone "in person"?

My pleasure to share them. I downloaded most from an American
University that was running a media course now discontinued. And I
picked up 80 martial arts ones from the internet. This has been over a
couple of years. I have about 500 files which come to about 35.7 Meg
zipped. If you drop me a line we can arrange a way of getting them to
you or anyone else. Unfortuanly I don't have a website I can upload
them to.

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:

> I've been away from POV for a bit (around 1 1/2 years), so I haven't been
> keeping up on what other people are doing.  I'd like to animate a person,
> and I don't know if anyone's yet come up with an elegant solution for that
> (ie, using a common file format such as skinned models from games would be
> an elegant solution; typing in hundreds of bezier patches for each from
> would not).  What have other people been doing to solve this problem?
> 
> If I need to, I'll work out my own system; I'd just rather not reinvent the
> wheel.

I have a modeler at www.geocities.com/evilsnack/lionsnake.htm , which 
can do a reasonably human-looking model if you take the time.  The 
joints will probably have the "bent tube" effect that is painfully 
obvious on the elbows of most Poser rendering that I've seen.

I haven't added skin or muscle simulation, or morphs either, but I hope 
to do so at some point in the future.

I tried to make the modeler as intutive as possible; right-clicking in 
the edit window should give you a pop-up with all of the available options.

Regards,
John

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Stephen wrote:
> Unfortuanly I don't have a website I can upload them to.

Well, if it's not a violation of their copyright, you can put them on

ftp://povray:xyz### [at] sgfdnsaliascom/incoming/

There should be lots of gigs free there. Others should feel free to pull 
them from there when you've finished. If it fails, I'm probably 
rebooting the machine for some reason and it'll be back in 10 minutes. 
It's on cable, so uploading to the machine should be quite fast. 
Remember to use binary mode. :-)

You might want to consider putting them into multiple smaller zips, if 
it's convenient.

Thanks!

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
    Crate & Barrel -
      Furnishing Video Games Since 1962!

Post a reply to this message

The BVH files I'm using are here: http://www.bvhfiles.com/
There's also a BVH viewer available from there that I've found useful.
There's a lot of them and they are mostly simple movements (not as complex 
as the sequence of movements Stephen used).

Regards,
Chris B.

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:20:26 -0000, "Chris B"
<c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote:

>There's also a BVH viewer available from there that I've found useful.

Thanks, I lost that the last time my HD crashed. It's quicker than
loading them into Poser for a quick view.

Post a reply to this message