Subject:
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Re: Ldraw Minifig "Machinima" POVray include file
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad, lugnet.animation
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Date:
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Fri, 27 Feb 2004 13:09:27 GMT
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Viewed:
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5734 times
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In lugnet.cad, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> In lugnet.cad, Miguel Agullo wrote:
> > Hi all,
> (snip)
>
> I have been following this with some interest. Are we going to see some examples
> of this in the next animation film contest from your user base?
Well, I guess I need a user base first ... 8?)
Actually, I'm developing this as fast as I can partly becasue I'm taking a two
week vacation away from it all starting a week from today & partly because there
is one user who has expressed interest in using the file. As a result, I'm
trying to implement first the features that he needs for his project.
As it stands right now, the latest (yet unreleased) file includes support for
multiple minifigs at once plus custom minifig placement and orientation within a
scene.
At this point, the user can already ask the inclde file to "make this minifig
take 2 steps - in whatever direction -; stop for x amount of time and then
continue walking" (using #if statements based on the POVray clock). The user can
also have two minifigs interact at a very basic level (i.e. "talk" - as in
moving their heads at the same time or with different timings). This is 90%
completed, although I'd like to include a "variance" variable that will make the
timing of the movement of multiple minfigs slightly different for each one of
them. This is specially important if, for instance, a scene includes several
minifigs moving in group in the same direction. Without a slight variance
between them, it looks too mechanical, too in-step.
The one other thing I'm trying to fit in before I leave for holidays is support
for minifig accesories and breast plates.
Things to come in the longer term include making turns and better "acting"
support (i.e. "make this minifig wave its hand, then take 2 steps, then turn
right, then take one more step"). Most likely, these sets of commands will not
be ready by next week.Also, at one point I'd like to replace all the
trigonometry functions with matrices: I've heard it's more "elegant" that way in
the POVray user forums ;-)
But the file is already usable (and hopefully useful as well). Getting to know
it early (i.e. before it gets too sophisticated) should not be a penalty. In
fact, quite the contrary: anything that you learn now will be certainly be
useful later. Any suggestions, offers for help, etc. are welcome - but I'd
really like to see people at least pick it up and breathe some life into their
fav minifigs. I've gone to great extremes to make the include as readable and as
easy to work with as possible. Very basic POVray knowledge is needed (i.e.
knowing what #include and #define do would be useful). The more the user knows
about POVray, the more useful the file is, obviously.
Here is an example of a scene with multiple minifigs. Please take into account
that minfigs can be placed anywhere (not simply merged together initially, like
in the video), can be of different kinds (in the video, it's the same instance
repeated four times) and can have different walking cycles / timing / movements
(in the video, they all have the exact same settings).
http://technicpuppy.miguelagullo.net/misc/multi.avi (~1 mb Xdiv)
> (Stop motion is
> very cool but this may actually be cooler in the long run)
Well, I'm not sure if I could pick a winner between, say, "Toy Story" and
"Wallace and Gromit"
Cheers
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