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Subject: 
Re: Restart of LDA2001 Project (using LDraw models - L3P - POV)
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad.ray, lugnet.animation, lugnet.cad.dev
Date: 
Thu, 13 Jan 2005 12:54:45 GMT
Viewed: 
168 times
  
In lugnet.cad.ray, James Reynolds wrote:
In lugnet.cad.ray, Tore Eriksson wrote:
I am still planning to restart the LDA2001 project.

See details in http://home.swipnet.se/simlego/ldraw/lda2001/ .
I found the latest source cade on a hd with crasched system files but intact
file system. :D

As you already know, animation is very complicated. The LDA2001 project is
thought to make it as easy as possible. You want your minifig to walk, then just
select that option and let the software write the code needed. Inspiration comes
from visual software programming environments.

On my page (see link above), you can find a sample animation with its "source
files" made by LDA2001. It is in the archive called d01a.zip. A fully functional
but yet clustered with minor bugs version of the .exe is found in LDA2001.zip

There are two alternatives when making POV animations from LDraw models. Either
you use POV's own internal animation support and write functions that call the
clock varible. Using that method, you can make repetive movements that are
easily defined by mathematical statements. But if you want a minifig to walk
five steps, stop, turn around, and climb into a vehicle, the POV clock method
seems very, very complicated to use. At least to me. That's why I have picked
the other alternative; make an LDraw model for each frame and batch convert them
through L3P.

My first step of this restart is to remove the bugs and make it compatible with
the new and improved LDraw minifigs.

Step two is to use .ldr files for models instead of .dat files.

If you find find my project interesting, feel free to explore the resorces in
the link.

Tore,
I think I know what you could do that would meet even my needs.

Here is my idea.  Output one pov-ray file.  Have it export valid pov-ray format
using unions, macros, clocks, switches, ranges, etc.  Then, with that, it will
be easy to add things like effects, height fields, etc.

How are you currently outputing the results.  One file or many?  And are they
pov-ray format?

By chance, is your app any way portable to Mac or Linux?  If it is in an MS-only
language, is your app too far along that it can't be ported to c/c++ and OpenGL?

Have you thought of ever adding a GUI to do keyframes and dragging of objects?

I'm interested in combining efforts to get something done.  Not that my efforts
amount to much (I barely know c and I don't know OpenGL).  But who knows.

James

Thanks for the response.

Just a qiuck reply, got to go back to work... LDA outputs both .dat files for
the indiviual frames but also one master .dat that has references to the
single-frame files, separated by CLEAR and STEP. L3P supports stepclock (-sc),
but not corectly as it does not support CLEAR. I think it should be quite easy
to change if(clock > n) to if(clock == n) or something like that. I don't have
the time to experiment on that this lunch break. Hopefully, next L3P version
will support that, Camera.dat, and LookAt.dat from models. I know he's about to
release a new version and I'm pretty sure I asked the Lars for these features.

I write Windows apps in Delphi (and small DOS apps in a very old Turbo C++
environment). Learning C for Windows would likely be like learning a new
language I guess.

I am not enough skilled to make direct POV output, so my programs will still be
depending on L3P.

I will reply longer later this evening.


/Tore



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Restart of LDA2001 Project (using LDraw models - L3P - POV)
 
(...) That is what I was going to do too. (...) I guess what I was thinking was exporting a file that could either be povray format, a format that l3p could convert (preserving unions, macros, etc), or a format that I would use with Anton's library (...) (20 years ago, 14-Jan-05, to lugnet.cad.ray, lugnet.animation, lugnet.cad.dev)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Restart of LDA2001 Project (using LDraw models - L3P - POV)
 
(...) Tore, I think I know what you could do that would meet even my needs. Here is my idea. Output one pov-ray file. Have it export valid pov-ray format using unions, macros, clocks, switches, ranges, etc. Then, with that, it will be easy to add (...) (20 years ago, 13-Jan-05, to lugnet.cad.ray, lugnet.animation, lugnet.cad.dev)

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