CompuServe Messages

<< I'd like to be able to animate characters without using joints– using SKIN.AXP to fill in with render-time deformations. I read the thread (and checked out the mesh) from M.G. Batchelor, re the wishbone guy. Then I tried making hands with multiple SKIN cylinders >> << How were the joints hidden there? >> Sorry, I don't have a lot of time now to elaborate, plus I've posted some info here on this subject before. The entire female mesh as well as the little wishbone guy doesn't use cylinders…well, yes they do. But they're vertically-squashed cylinders (EXTRUDED PLANAR SLICES). Skin.axp only uses one set of vertices from the 3D slice object. Anyway, the whole seamless joints thing is quite contrived & doesn't work in all situations. It's a combination of: 1) Create a dummy skeleton for reference which will be hidden at render-time. 2) Lay out & form your CS-Slices using the skeleton reference. 3) Lay them out & scale them in such a way as to have "inner loops" hidden by the outer surface. This allows you to conceal breaks & very obvious seams. Sometimes you will have slices at the exact same point in space, with one perhaps being a smaller diameter than the outer visibly-skinned one. It's very important as to the direction of the "path" that Skin.axp takes when fitting the spline surface to the lattice defined by the CS's. 4) The staging, framing, lighting, & material definitions must be very contrived to minimize the obvious seams, cracks, flaws, etc.. For instance, making a skin material's Ambient color darker than the Diffuse color will just accent the seam flaws due to the shading. Avoid this, fill in with lighting, choose appropriate camera & lighting angles. The model construction really dictates the framing & motion to a degree in this case – in order to produce the "misdirection". 5) Once it looks acceptable, assign CS's to the already-linked skeleton, animate it, then hide the skeleton for rendering. I can't begin to get in to the actual construction techniques, as it is different for every subject. Just bear in mind that you can hide inner loops of skin as I said. Hands are very tough if viewed close-up.