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Subject: 
Re: Unfinished Project Release
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.animation
Date: 
Fri, 2 Jan 2004 22:17:33 GMT
Viewed: 
5584 times
  
Animating with POVray is a matter of mathematics, but animating
Ldraw-generated things is pure horror. You have to analyse the source file
to locate the different objects, you have to find out where the pivots are
(which is not easy, since the auto-generated POV files use counterintuitive
Matrix transforms rather than separate rotations and translations). The
solution seems to be LD4D Modeler, but that program is far from ready for
general use, and the documentation is lacking. See
http://members.rott.chello.nl/rmelkert/LD4DModeler/

Stefan.

--
---
YellowHead Studios. Where LEGO comes to life.
http://www.yellowhead.nl/
"Mike Thorn" <buachaille@neo.rr.com> schreef in bericht
news:6.0.1.1.0.20040102083745.01cfef20@mail-server.neo.rr.com...
At 07:53 AM 1/2/2004, you wrote:
In lugnet.animation, Mike Thorn wrote:
Usually people try to finish projects before they release them, • but...got
to make room for other projects, you know.

It's a shame there isn't a bit more. How long did you spend on that, • Mike? I
tried to do some POV animation a while back, but the learning curve was a
little
too steep for what I wanted to do.

Chris,

Actually it took longer than you'd expect. I haven't learned enough about
using the PoV-Ray clock yet, so I did it the hard way. For each frame I
created a new file with MLCad, then ran it through L3P to produce the POV
file. From there I just created my particular resolution (592x400 isn't a
standard PoV-Ray resolution) and rendered it. For the custom lighting
frames I had to go in and hand-edit the light definitions. Simple, just
monotonous. I'd say all told it took me two or three weeks to finish up,
but there were a few big gaps in there where I didn't have time to work on
it. If I animate that slow on the VODB project I'll be till *next* year
finishing that one...

The PoV-Ray stuff really isn't that hard. If you want to learn the basics
I'd suggest going through the povray.org Beginner Tutorial. I learned
enough to let me create a basic scene from scratch that looked • half-decent.
To animate smartly, though, you really need to learn how to use the clock
and let it all be automatic. I did this with my VODB trailer, where the
camera pans around the Black Falcon army. That was all automatic; I just
started it going and stitched the frames when it was done. It's a little
more tricky to learn, though, because you have to fiddle with the axes of
movement and the settings aren't exactly the most conducive to animation.

It's somewhat easier than building big sets, though, if you're good with
MLCad. Doesn't make nearly the mess, either. :) If you have a good fast PC
there are settings you can use that make it look a lot more realistic, but
are seriously power-hungry. Each of those frames took probably 30 seconds
to render. With the better settings they would have taken at least five
minutes. It adds up.

~Mike




Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Unfinished Project Release
 
(...) Which I'm not good at, which is why I had trouble. :) (...) That is, if you try to use the clock on the LDraw-generated file. If you're just rendering a new file for every frame there's no pain. I agree with you, though, on the difficulty of (...) (21 years ago, 3-Jan-04, to lugnet.animation)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Unfinished Project Release
 
(...) Chris, Actually it took longer than you'd expect. I haven't learned enough about using the PoV-Ray clock yet, so I did it the hard way. For each frame I created a new file with MLCad, then ran it through L3P to produce the POV file. From there (...) (21 years ago, 2-Jan-04, to lugnet.animation)

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