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> > I have never tried it and I don't know anything about it. I know Ahui Herrera
> > wrote the LDraw.org animation tutorials. I just went looking and the other 2
> > LDraw animators I know of are Steve Krass and Martin Humel. Anyone I miss?
> > Shall we all get together and talk?
>
> Maybe, maybe not. I recall James J and me had like a competition with his LDraw
> and my SimLego. At first, I thought my program was better, easier interface and
> faster rendering. So we developed our programs parallelly, until the day I
> realized the LDraw was in fact better. Its "foundation" was much more generic
> while I had to start from.scratch with all improvements. So I happily
> surrendered to the better idea and abandoned SimLego.
>
> This is a little bit of the same situation. We have at least two systems
> competing and I'm willing to give up my system if another proves to be better.
> But I hope to win this time. :)
You mean LD4D and you or POV-Ray and you?
> Thing I would happily recieve assistance with:
> * A system for .dat files (or maybe .ldr?) that work the same way as the jump,
> run, different walk macros/functions/include files or what you said. These
> should define different minifig behaviours, but also other figures and vehicles
> and...? They should be read by any LCad viwer but also contain the information
> needed for LDA to manipulate for example a minifig in a desired way.
> I have thought about STEP and CLEAR but some kind of clock information seems
> necessary. I have somehow prepared for that with the variable FramesPerLoop.
> * Syntax advises. Somebody stop me if I'm on the wrong way somewhere, and tell
> me how a more proper syntax used for animation purposes sounds.
> * The latest thoughts I have is that I think I need three different LookAt
> states (used by both figures and Camera), plus maybe a clocked "turn head
> towards" function.
You really need to look at how POV-Ray does animation. It has all of this built
in. I think one reason why animation is so hard is because L3P's output is
overwhelming. It is not good for newbies to look at it. A solution is to put
all of the model and part information in a seperate include file. The main pov
file would only contain the scene: the background, the camera, the lights, and a
one liner that declares the location of the model. This info is very
digestable. Anton Raves does this. For example, see this file:
http://james.magnusviri.com/lego/pov_ray_tutorial/demo_sm.pov
There is no info in there about the Jamie's Couriership, or the parts it uses.
And without knowing POV-Ray syntax, you can still get an idea what is going on.
Of course in this file I have multiple scenes, a path that the ship follows, a
camera macro and the planet. Those last 2 don't even need to be in the file,
they can be moved to a different file, making the file even easier to read.
But when I look at a POV file from L3P, WHAM. There is so much there. If I
don't KNOW what to look for, I wouldn't be able to read it. In the past I have
never been able to read it, but after a year of messing with Anton's stuff, now
I know what to look for, so I can ignore the heaps and heaps of info that
doesn't really matter when all I want is to spin a model in the air and bounce
it off the ground or something.
Anyway, the workflow I am interested in pursing is the syntax that would allow
LDraw editors to position cameras, lights, objects in keyframe format. And
mainly, the new syntax would allow:
A script or GUI to apply "actions" to animatable parts. Animatable parts will
be the parts of an MPD file, or some other keyword to identify it and it's
linked points. The animatable parts will also contain information about what
actions are possible: pivot points, axis of rotation, etc. The parent part of
the model would define overall actions like "walk".
So, basically, I am interested in having an extended LDraw syntax which includes
information for:
Actions:
- pivot points, axis of rotation, sliding, etc.
Movable parts:
- something at the top of a MPD part that defines the name, so that it can be
referenced elsewhere. This would require namespace rules as well.
Macros
- a syntax that can be easily converted to POV-Ray which can do multile actions
over a period of time.
Anyway, it has been a long time since I have thought about all of this and I am
writing this quickly now, but this is what I am interested in developing, a
syntax that is on its way to becoming a standard that any LDraw application can
use without fear of it braking.
James
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