CompuServe Thread

You are right, I wrote a paper last year (published at Feb. 1994 SAE in Detroit) dealing with how an animation should be documented. In general, the committee I chair in SAE has the point of view that every animation has "primary" and "secondary" objects. The difference is in how important they are to the opinion being presented. For instance, in a two-vehicle intersection collision…the cars are certainly primary objects, the building on the corner is probably a secondary object…only used to help orient the audience to the intersection. However, if the opinion concerns how this building was a visibility obstruction, then the building becomes a primary object too. The primary objects should be documented thoroughly, any motion should be documented with x,y,z,yaw,pitch,roll for EVERY frame…NOT JUST KEYFRAMES (there was actually some disagreement in the committee on every frame..). The secondary objects have a different level of documentation, because they are not the key elements in the animation/visualization.