Tail Kinker <the### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Uploaded a new version of IK Skeleton.  Added a waist joint, and allowed
> for rotating it in three dimensions instead of only one.  The
> documentation reflects these changes, and the html version includes two
> flash animations showing off what the package can do.  (I'll be adding
> at least four more of those over time.)
>
> You can grab it at http://tailkinker.contrabandent.com/software.htm

I just had a brief look at your work.  You might be interested in a couple other
projects:

http://www.magicalrobotics.com/bones.zip

Alive! at http://www.imagicproductions.com/

I wrote bones.inc (posted the link here in May 2010:
http://news.povray.org/povray.animations/thread/%3Cweb.4bdf545b88bb62bc926a7e230%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=371289&toff
=50
), and I think we've both got different aspects of this problem solved from
different angles; your work and my work might fit together very well.  For
instance the base of the torso in a skeleton in bones.inc is called the Zero
bone and the positions of the hands and feet (really the wrists and heels) can
be looked up with simple bones.inc macro calls:

baseOfTorso = getSkeletonPosition (SkelName)
rightHand = getBoneStart(IndirectBoneLabel("RArm_Hand_Wrist"))
leftHand = GBS(IBL("LArm_Hand_Wrist"))
rightFoot = GBS(IBL("RLeg_Foot"))
leftFoot = GBS(IBL("LLeg_Foot"))

Using my skeleton data structures, much of the work you have done here could be
overlaid on top of my base, with the positions of the hands, feet, and lower
torso (or center of mass) driving macros (later to be attached as a string
object to the Zero bone) that determine the rest of the joint angles, thus
generating Poses automatically.  If you check out bones.inc, look at section 4.6
and 3.2 of the readme file and the way I generated joint angles in the Canfield
joint demo with the CanfieldCalc() macro.  Animation of skeletons in bones.inc
is accomplished by interpolating between poses.

I've been looking for some sort of IK solution for bones.inc to generate poses,
and I think you've got it.  Have a look at the readme file in bones.zip and tell
me what you think.  The BipedRobot file will give you a good bones.inc bipedal
skeleton to work with if you want to try messing around with adding your IK work
to my Poses and interpolations.

I'm thinking about ways to incorporate a converter program between blobman and
bones.inc, so existing blobman characters can be overlaid on bones.inc
skeletons, have poses generated by your IK functions attached to Zero bones, and
then animated via the InterpolatePose() macro in bones.inc.  That way existing
blobman work can be re-used and much more easily animated.

Several skeletons can be animated at once with bones.inc, and they don't need to
be bipedal - could be dragons or spiders or snakes.  Your IK stuff could be
applied to these types of skeletons as well.  This could be very useful for lots
of people.

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