Microsoft Playmation?
2 messages in this thread
Thanks for the re-post, John…interesting.
I caught part of Martin's talk at the "Windows Animation Workshop" in
SF mid-June. My impression, too, was that Anjon & Associates would
continue selling Playmation on the various platforms. But Martin was
doing new work…something about building patch support directly into
a future version of Windows?
What I hope is that, no matter what Microsoft does with splines, more
than just one kind of spline basis is supported. From what I
understand, Playmation uses fully-interpolating splines…great for
getting smooth outlines, but because it uses tension & bias controls
instead of adjustable control points (as with Bezier splines), it's a
lot harder for users to control. More thoughts/info?
The "time-based authoring" you mentioned, though, sounds like a whole
'nother kettle of fish…more like ScriptX than 3D…like you said,
"very interesting," and definitely worth watching!
That's a good question. I got the general impression that Martin's patch
techniques would be used in rendering, but more indirectly: rendered shapes
would be part of an ultra-friendly GUI. We're talking friendly chimps pointing
at options, I think, in a consumer-oriented GUI for a video/telecom/Nintendo
device. Or maybe not. 🙂
Another interesting part of his technology is a system of skeletons and motions
that can be adapted to many different actors. That kind of reusability is very
useful to someone who's cranking out lots of animation. It's useful in an
animation production environment. It's useful when you're making a product for
novices who aren't skilled enough to generate their own motions.
As for splines, you're right, there's a lot of different spline types and a lot
of different ways to control them. I think the user interface for simple 2D
Beziers (ala Adobe Illustrator, etc.) is clumsy and foreign to most people –
extending it to 3D only makes it worse.