CompuServe Messages

Sanford, Regarding the construction of Humanoid, it was all done in Imagine some 2-3 years ago. I'm using Animation Master now to do the basic modelling on my new line, KineModelz. I'm sorry if this was confusing at the meeting. It was the end of the day and I was rather tired, so I probably didn't go over things carefully enough. AM is proving to be an excellent tool for the kind of work I'm doing now though. There must be a way to get the meshes across from AM > 3DS for Boning. It may involve some translation programs and a little clean up work. I actually run my models through 5 different applications (AM, Lightwave & Pixel3D on the Amiga, Imagine and Interchange) before they're ready to be used in 3DS. I use a rather complex range of different tools in each program to `clean up' the geometry, and by the time I'm done most of the problems get flushed out. These procedures are not just to fix flaws on the AM models, I used many of them on Humanoid as well. AM doesn't export very `clean' polygonal geometry, some of the polys are not oriented right, and overlap each other, and they come over mostly as quads. BonesPro probably needs triangular polys, because deformation will cause quads to become non-coplanar. As for the other problems, my solution is to save the AM models in such a way that each patch becomes one quadrilateral or triangular polygon, a one to one conversion. This minimizes the risk of any funky polys in the exported object. Then I use Metaform in Lightwave to do my own tessellation (I dislike AM's patch subdivision) which restores all the smoothing that the original spline model had, and also converts the quads into tris. Perhaps some of these procedures could be duplicated with the OPTIMIZE routines in 3DS. Some manual cleanup of the polys may also be necessary as well. I haven't found a better program than Imagine for the this. I'll be uploading some wirefame renders of models created with these techniques sometime next week (I hope), in case you want to get a closer look at the structure of the geometry. It's a lot of work, but the end product is gorgeous. 🙂 -Tim BTW, I was very glad you were able to make it to the 3D Art Forum meeting. I hope you enjoyed it, and hope we'll be able to tap some of your skills at future events. Let me know if there's anything in particular you might want to show or talk about. P.S. Just in case you might think my position gives me some unfair advantage over other users, I want you to know that I own _bona-fide_ copies of all the programs I mentioned using in my development work above. I am not a beta-tester for Imagine or Lightwave. I spent my hard-earned money on both. The version of Imagine I showed with Bones and IK is 3.2 which is available to all, through Impulse's continuous upgrade program. Although as a 3D dev, I'm frequently offered `comps' or `freebies', the only thing I use comps for are `ports' of my models. Not harping, just clarifying. 🙂