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I'd happy to announce a new tutorial: Dancing Mech Modeling/animatino
LDraw/POV-Ray Video Tutorial Series
<http://www.magnusviri.com/lego/articles/dancing_mech.html>
From the webpage:
This series of videos walks through the process of creating a dancing mech from
start to finish. Here are the anticipated steps:
* Show off the model
* "Digitize" a model with Bricksmith (LDraw) - Left Leg, Right Leg, and
Torso
* Convert the model to POV-Ray using Anton Raves' POV-Ray converter
* Add a minifig using my minifig macro
* Build a scene
* Use Bricksmith to create a keyframe file for POV-Ray and visualize the
movements
* Add inverse kinetics so the mech limbs figure out their own rotations
* Render the final animation
The vidoes are from 40 to 60 minutes each. You will probably want to download
them (right click thingy) and not try to watch them in your browser because it
could "freeze" your browser.
The modeling portion caters to the basics (although I'm acutely aware I move too
fast). The animation portion is very advanced and very experimental.
I'm hoping everyone who says they don't know how to use the LDraw tools or are
"CAD-tarded" can break into LDraw from this. And for those who are dabbling in
POV-Ray, I'm hoping to show how to do some really powerful stuff that isn't that
hard to pull off.
Please send me comments or questions or post them in the lugnet thread! I will
put them in the "addendum" sections so that other users benefit.
My setup is as follows: MacBook, Bricksmith 1.6, a perl script, Anton Raves'
POV-Ray library, the command line version of povray, text editor, and Quicktime
Pro. I wont be attempting to show any other tools (like GUI POV-Ray or other
ways to make movies from frames).
---------------
Why Videos?
Videos are much easier for me to produce than webpages. This is completely
unscripted and I'm doing no post processing. This might require more time from
the viewer, but they might get more from it, either because my comments are
insightful, or because they catch up on their sleep.
Anyway, doing it as a video makes this tutorial series possible. There is no
way I could do this as a webpage/paper tutorial and post processing or writing a
script would probably doom the project as well. I have a lot of stuff to cover
and enough of it falls in the "unknown" category that I just have to plow ahead.
The videos are from 40 to 60 minutes long and can be as big as 300 MB and are
compressed with H264, which requires QuickTime 7 to watch and is pretty
processor intensive (older machines may not be able to play them). I realize
this is going to limit who can watch it. I can't do anything about your
computer, but when I'm done with all the videos, I have nothing against burning
them all to CD or DVD and mailing them out if people want them.
---------------
How Long Before the Next Video?
I have no idea how long this series will take to finish.
As of March 15, 2007, I already have the digitizing steps done and posted. I've
already recorded the POV-Ray conversion movie. I anticipate making a 2 hour
long videos on the minifig and the scene and if everything goes as planned they
should be recorded and posted within the next few weeks.
After that, I have the keyframes and and the IK videos and these are the
experimental parts of the project, so I honestly have no idea when they will
come out. It is a big project for me, but is already moving much faster than
many of my previous tutorial projects.
---------------
Where is the Final Animation?
Well, the series isn't done yet! In fact, the end animation may not become a
reality. There could be difficulties that pop up that I haven't anticipated.
But I'm limiting each video to self contained topics so that they stand on their
own even if the animation doesn't materialize. And if all goes well, then I
hope to have a really cool animation by the end of it!
I have thought through and have planned most of the code that needs to be
written for the experimental keyframe and IK stuff but I haven't coded it and
debugged it. That is what this project is about. Instead of making a tutorial
*after* the fact, I thought I would make it as I did it. And I needed a very
agile model so I built my own and decided I would make videos from the very
start.
--
James Reynolds
http://www.magnusviri.com
james(a)magnusviri.com
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