Subject:
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Re: My humble opinion about LDraw animation
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad
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Date:
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Tue, 23 Aug 2005 18:14:13 GMT
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Viewed:
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2953 times
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> Considering what we have here, I think we need:
> * A Lego animation file/script format which positions LDraw parts in
> relation to others, which is then distilled (using a front end) into
> POV scripts - so POV still handles the rendering.
You do not need a new format. MPD's do the job just fine. I now realize I need
to write a follow up to this article:
http://james.magnusviri.com/lego/animatable_models/
In it I will show how modeling using these guidelines leads to animation bliss.
> An animation script which is simply an extension of LDraw, where a
> meta-command tells it where the animation starts, and then (using line
> numbers or some reasonable ID), only details the *changes* to the last
> frame is relatively easily acheivable, crude, but acheivable. This
> would be the key frames, with part of the meta-data detailing how many
> steps to interpolate over.
LDraw files are perfect for models, but trying to add time information to the
format is a bad idea. Mainly because there are other formats that already have
time information as a part of them.
The reason why you don't want to add time info to the LDraw format is because it
will add complications that at first don't seem that bad, but as you try to get
more and more out of it, you keep having to add more and more until eventually
it is as hard to learn or *harder* than the current formats.
For example, POV-Ray supports equations and variables. My walk macro would not
work without variables and equations. Are you going to add equations and
variables to the LDraw format?
Another example, POV-Ray supports splines. Splines are smoothly curving lines
that are made of points. My walk macro can actually walk on a spline. That is,
I give it a whole bunch of points, and the spline makes a smooth curve that
intersects all the points. So my minifig can walk on that curve without
anything more I need to do. I haven't really made an animation showing this
because I'm too busy doing other development work.
Another example, POV-Ray has math functions like sin, tan, cos, power, square
root, etc. Will the format support those? A simple circle requires sin and
cos: object_location = <sin(clock), 0, cos(clock)> (or something)
For a list of povray functions, see:
http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/226/
And look at everything that can be done with floats:
http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/228/
James
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: My humble opinion about LDraw animation
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| (...) Considering what we have here, I think we need: * A Lego animation file/script format which positions LDraw parts in relation to others, which is then distilled (using a front end) into POV scripts - so POV still handles the rendering. * A GUI (...) (19 years ago, 23-Aug-05, to lugnet.cad)
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