bones that stretch without programming

[tyree_2]

[url]www.bleed3d.com/bones%20grow.htm[/url]

I have seen the question of whether or not bones can stretch asked and the
reply has been no, an emphatic no. and quickly pointed out but it can be done
thru programming. While I knew this not to be true I waited to see if anyone
else was going to post something. showing that simply is not the case. I havent
seen any such post. so here is something simple showing it

[duckets]

Eww... weird choice of model to demo your code with. Maybe this should come with a NSFW warning!

[tyree_2]

duckets you must be some kind of conservative. To be more concerned about what
you think it looks like. instead of noticing what it is actually doing those
are exported bones stretching. there is no code making them stretch. that is
straight from max. something that is not supposed to be possible to bring into
a w3d.
maybe you could be more concerned about the fact that whats percieved to be a
limitation of what can be done in the 3d authoring environment and the w3d
actually is not. Maybe thats of more importance than what it looks like

[necromanthus]

[q]Originally posted by: tyree_2
duckets you must be some kind of conservative. To be more concerned about
what you think it looks like. instead of noticing what it is actually doing
those are exported bones stretching. there is no code making them stretch. that
is straight from max. something that is not supposed to be possible to bring
into a w3d.
maybe you could be more concerned about the fact that whats percieved to be a
limitation of what can be done in the 3d authoring environment and the w3d
actually is not. Maybe thats of more importance than what it looks like[/q]

tyree_2,

First of all, in order to argue with Ben, you need to reach his level !
Secondly, as general rule: you can scale the bones, but you can NOT animate
the scaling
And that's because this kind of animation is NOT exported (and not recognized
by Director Shockwave anyway)
Trirdly, your "example" is worthless because the entire bones chain is scaled.
And finally, because it's obviously you need to learn, take a look at this
short movie:

[url]http://www.geocities.com/necromanthus/scale_bone.html[/url]

What's there ?
A cylinder (3 segments, 16 polys per segment) and a chain of 4 bones (the last
one is a "dummy").
The second bone has a 3 frames animations (in the 2nd frame is scaled with
200%).
Of course, for the cylinder is used the physique modifier and all of them are
grouped before exporting.
Result: NO animation is the exported W3D file !
You may test with any kind of 3D modeler (including 3DS Max 9 !).

I hope it's clear enough now (for you at least).

[duckets]

Hehe, that's great tyree_2. I'm far from conservative, and I actually found it
pretty funny, sorry if you couldn't tell that from my post. I noticed what your
bones are doing, but it would be more interesting if you gave some details of
how you're doing it, rather than just giving a link to a "growing bone" ;-)

[necromanthus]

[q]Originally posted by: duckets
I noticed what your bones are doing, but it would be more interesting if you
gave some details of how you're doing it, rather than just giving a link to a
"growing bone" ;-)[/q]

In fact he messed up the entire scene ...
Here is what he did (viewed from the right angle !):
[url]http://www.geocities.com/necromanthus/tyree_2.html[/url]

His bones animation is reduced to a simple keyframe animation.
There're 2 dummies involved in this motion: the chain root node and the last
chain bone (always treated as dummy).
That's all.

[tyree_2]

well necormanthus that bullshit example isnt anything like mine. for one, with
your smart ass there is no scaling going on. of any kind, the bone not the
dummy is being transformed, not scaled, there is no scaling at all, anywhere.
its because of the type of bones that they are. Their spline bones.and I know
about the group thing. grouping then scaling. I dont use that type of bullshit.
Im an animator. I animate clothes I animate lightning. I animate glass breaking
I even take the volume smoke that I make put bones on that and animate that as
a w3d. I animate all this as a w3d. things you never considered most likely
have never seen from a w3d
and while skilled duckets may be he is a skilled programmer. Im a skilled
artist skilled at being creative with a love for animation you obviously dont
have necormanthus. An animator would let no perceived limitation stop him from
animating what he wants to animate, the way he wants to animate it . And if I
couldnt actually control the animation I wouldnt bother doing it. And that no
animation that you say doesnt get exported is actually being paused on one
frame told to play on another and reset on yet another in director. that no
animation, that is, that doesnt exist or gets exported. with your smart ass.
Maybe you should try spending some time pushing the software beyond its
limitations. instead of telling me what the limitations are and to live within
them. That is If your mentally capable of doing that. I have a degree in
computer science and computer animation but Im an artist/animator, Im entirely
too creative to be a programmer. I have been studying the different aspects of
art my entire life. I think on a creative level you simply do not. You are not
my creative equal. which is why I can take a set of bones and have them appear
to be scaling when they are actually being transformed. Dont compare yourself
to me. Dont try and correct me. Try and push yourself beyond what you perceive
to be a limitation of what you can do, at this point. With your smart ass


and if anybody wants to know how I do anything just say so and I will tell
them hopefully it will help push the medium along

[necromanthus]

[q]Originally posted by: tyree_2
well necormanthus that bullshit example isnt anything like mine. [/q]

In fact that bullshit is your work. Here is the runtime version of your "buggy
motion" exported from 3DS Max:
[url]http://www.geocities.com/necromanthus/buggy_motion.html[/url]


Maybe you are a skilled artist.
Maybe you have a degree in computer science and computer animation.
But you're a BEGINNER in Director Shockwave, W3D exporter and runtime
environments.
If you didn't understand anything from my previous posts, you can not pass the
beginner level.
p.s.
Because I don't wanna waste space with another message, something related with
another "amazing" topic of yours:
- havok based animation doesn't exist !
- Havok physics is another fish in another ocean.
- in that demo there're 25 PREDEFINED keyframe animations and one PREDEFINED
bones animation (that girl).
Nice animations btw, but your demo has nothing to do with Havok !
Why ?
Just start learning and you'll find the answer.
cheers

[tyree_2]

I was refering to the cylinder I didnt see the other post you made and in reply
to that. if I wanted it to be completely vertical straight up and down from
every view I would just straighten out the bones, since I control the bones and
the bones are tied to mesh but who would have thought of that. thats just crazy
talk.

and the havok based animation is predefined but I didnt define it thats all
havok animation using reactor from max. I didnt hand animate a single thing in
there. I just adjusted the controls which in turn change how it animates. there
are a lot of people that simply dont know that scene and specifically character
animation that are made using reactor can be exported with a biped to w3d.
Thats an alternative to the actual runtime havok that gives you a different
result everytime it plays. instead of letting havok create the animation at
runtime. a person could export the reactor/havok animations and play them
whenever they wanted them to occur and have more control over them both before
and after they export

[hondo3000]

this discussion is somehow strange in a forum that is dealing more with
techincal problem then "artistic" problem.

@tyree_2:

>something that is not supposed to be possible to bring into a w3d.

Bones can be exported, yes thats not a new feature, what are you talking about
? Who said that this stuff in not supposed to be possible? Where do you find
this kind of wrong informations?

@ necromanthus:

>you can scale the bones, but you can NOT animate the scaling

hm, because i work with Cinema4D i never had any problems with it? Bones can
be keyframeanimated with position, transform, scale.
here a quick test (sorry for the other crap in the scene...ah, and ESC brings
the mouse back...)
[url]http://kisd.de/~lutz/3dtest/test_01[/url]

Is this different from the max exporter?

@all:
what is the point of this discussion? Artist vs. Technocrats?

cheers!

[necromanthus]

[q]Originally posted by: hondo3000

@ necromanthus: >you can scale the bones, but you can NOT animate the scaling
hm, because i work with Cinema4D i never had any problems with it? Bones can
be keyframeanimated with position, transform, scale.[/q]

Hi Lutz,
In 3DSMax, MAYA, SoftImage and LightWave you can NOT animate the scaling.
In fact you can, but the motion is not exported.
Of course, there is a workaround for that: you can use aditional dummies and
create a keyframe motion.

In my first message you can find the algorithm. Try it in Cinema 4D.
If that algorithm works in Cinema 4D, you should study the content of the
exported W3D file.
I think you'll find few keyframe motions there.
In this case it means that Cinema 4D is doing the required extra job for you
....
cheers

[Richard]

Tell it how it is Necro!

;)

Richard

[necromanthus]

[q]Originally posted by: Richard
Tell it how it is Necro![/q]

I can't stop thinking at those two lovely monkeys of yours.
I bet they're full of dummies and keyframe motions (especially
the eyes & mouth areas)
ha ha ha
p.s.
Do you think I'm very interested in this subject ?
No, I'm not.
But I had many requests for a bones / bonesPlayer tutorial, and I don't
know anything about Cinema 4D and few other apps able to export the W3D file.
That's all.

[hondo3000]

>I think you'll find few keyframe motions there.

>In this case it means that Cinema 4D is doing the required extra job for you

....

hm, there is only one motion for the bonesplayer, not more. I am wondering why
other apps do not export animated scaling of bones? But i think the big 3D
software-houses lost their interest in the shockwave3D format. I hope the next
Director release will bring some interest back.

By the way, the viewport of the new Release of Cinema4D supports "enhanced
openGL" features like normalmaps, realtimeshadows and so on... But the Mac
version is not able to export shockwave3D files anymore because no universal
binarie-sdk is available.

cheers!

[necromanthus]

[q]Originally posted by: hondo3000
hm, there is only one motion for the bonesplayer, not more. [/q]
Very strange. Did you follow that algorithm: a chain with 4 bones, no
rotations, no translations, only SCALE for the 2nd bone ?

[q]Originally posted by: hondo3000
But i think the big 3D software-houses lost their interest in the shockwave3D
format. I hope the next Director release will bring some interest back.[/q]
At this moment there is a HUGE interest in Shockwave 3D.
It's up to Adobe ...

[q]Originally posted by: hondo3000
the viewport of the new Release of Cinema4D supports "enhanced openGL"
features like normalmaps, realtimeshadows and so on... But the Mac version is
not able to export shockwave3D files anymore because no universal binarie-sdk
is available. [/q]
Thanks for all these infos.

cheers

[duckets]

Tyree_2, your animating skills sound pretty impressive. Maybe the demo you
posted of your big purple growing bone doesn't really show off your true
talents. Got any other demos we can see?

[q]"and while skilled duckets may be he is a skilled programmer. Im a skilled
artist"[/q]

Actually I've dabbled in a little 3d animating too! here:
[url]http://www.robotduck.com/models/?footballer[/url]
[url]http://www.robotduck.com/models/?golfer[/url]
Modelled, textured, rigged and animated by my own fair hands. Not amazing I
know - I'm sure you could show us something better!

[q]"Im entirely too creative to be a programmer"[/q]
LOL! That's pretty funny. And to me, it sounds similar to "I'm entirely too
creative to be a novelist. That's why I'm a painter".

[q]"and if anybody wants to know how I do anything just say so and I will tell
them hopefully it will help push the medium along"[/q]

Sure, I'd like to know. and actually I thought I asked already, when I said
"it would be more interesting if you gave some details of how you're doing it".

Let's all push the medium along together!

- Ben

[hondo3000]

@necromanthus:

this time i am sure that i followed the instructions. no translation, no
rotation only scaling.
[url]http://kisd.de/~lutz/3dtest/bone/[/url]
if you want to see the w3d file:
[url]http://kisd.de/~lutz/3dtest/bone/bone.w3d[/url]

But i have to say that bones animations are a foreign terrain for me, so i
can't say if i did everything correct.

@duckets:
Nice animations! I am only able to animate simple things like maggods or worms
that behave unnatural :)

cheers!

[necromanthus]

[q]Originally posted by: hondo3000
this time i am sure that i followed the instructions. no translation, no
rotation only scaling.
[url]http://kisd.de/~lutz/3dtest/bone/[/url]
if you want to see the w3d file:
[url]http://kisd.de/~lutz/3dtest/bone/bone.w3d[/url]

But i have to say that bones animations are a foreign terrain for me, so i
can't say if i did everything correct.[/q]

If that's what you did what can I say ... send my best wishes to the MAXON
staff.
The 3DSMax W3D Exporter is known as the best W3D exporter.
I'm not so sure anymore ...

Thanks for your time.
cheers

[hondo3000]

sorry for using this thread again for a question about the max w3d exporter.

The Cinema4D w3d exporter is quite good, but has some bad things in it.
1. The complete scene is scaled with vector (1,1,-1), this leads into problems
when using modelsunderray (all normals are flipped) and some other stuff
related to havok
2. Exports for every Model a modelresource, this makes files bigger
3. when sending the first ray into a scene, it needs some time to process
something, i am not sure what it is, but if you have large polycount (100.000)
it can take some seconds to minutes (depending on the number of polys). After
this initial process rays work normal. Does this happen with models exported
from max?
4 not possible to Export different scaled texturelayers.
5. If all possible Texturelayers are exported (there are seven channels), only
four texturelayers will be exported. Three of them will be copied together into
one texture. Not sure at the moment what exactly happens there...
6. Seems to be impossible to export lights with a maximum distance. (i did't
get it to work, the documentations say that it is possible...)
7. not possible to fill informations into the "userdata" of models

some of these things made me really think about swiching over to another
software with better exporter :(

>The 3DSMax W3D Exporter is known as the best W3D exporter.
>I'm not so sure anymore ...

Ok, scaling bones seem to work, lol! Never needed bones with animated scaling,
but now i will do something with it :)
think the 3dsmax exporter will stay the best one.

The absolute big advantage about Cinema4D is the very easy to use/learn
interface, the renderer and the fantastic options to bake textures.

I know the 3DsMax exporter is very good, but does it have some problems too?

cheers!

[Dean Utian]

duckets wrote:

> Actually I've dabbled in a little 3d animating too! here:
> [url]http://www.robotduck.com/models/?footballer[/url]
> [url]http://www.robotduck.com/models/?golfer[/url]

Hi Ben,

Looks good. But, found a bug. If you click the 'Textures' tab, then click back to
'Viiewer', then back to 'Textures', you get an error message:
Property not found
#spritenum

Happens on both footballer and golfer. I did get that error another way, clicking
other buttons but always appears when foing to teh Textures tab.

regards
Dean

Director Lecturer / Consultant
[url]http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/learning/director[/url]
[url]http://www.multimediacreative.com.au[/url]