CompuServe Messages

Some time ago I started an "IPAS Suggestions" thread for people to post ideas for IPAS vendors to develop. One of my own suggestions was for a 3D Studio .AXP or .IXP that could cause rendered objects to have cartoon-like outlines, thus allowing the full power of 3DS to be used for cartoon-style animation. The .AXP approach would be harder to implement, but would be the most flexible. Basically, it would figure out where the camera is and the orientation of the object to the camera (by analyzing the face normals) and, where the normals/camera angles approach perpendicular, cause those pixels to have an "outlining" material applied (the concept is the same as that used in Transparency Falloff). The .IXP approach would be simpler to implement. It would use the new Z-Buffer feature in 3DSr"4" so that edges of objects could be easily determined from the rendered output. Those objects could then simply be "traced" with an antialiased outline of desired thickness. The main problem here is that objects seen "through" a transparent object would not be outlined as they do not have Z-buffer pixels. The suggestion drew a lot of support on the board, but to the best of my knowledge, no vendor has taken up the challenge. Somebody should. I know _I'd_ buy one! 🙂 — Joel Rea @ M&M Communications Concepts