Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nemyax]

Steve
Right now RMB-dragging an effector moves it towards or away from the user, and MMB-dragging doesn't do anything at all. The RMB behaviour is consistent with the rest of Anim8or (even though it's hardly useful in this case), but how about making the MMB-drag control the IK chain twist? Imagine the MMB-drag modifying the rotation keys on bones so that the entire chain swings about the axis that goes from the chain start to the chain end.
I also think that the Lock Position check box would be more aptly named Animatable position.

[Steve]

johnar:

Does this mean... when you click on the little '+' box ..."

Yes It's more code that I first thought because I never went back and cleaned up all the original track-bar routines after I threw them together - and they're a mess. So I'm still trying to decide the best way to approach it.

daniel99:  Adding a separate IK constraint for the foot should work fine now. There are a lot of additional ways to go with the IK controls. Now that the basic interface is more or less working as I had wanted it to, it's time to experiment with more "features"; things like not rotating child bones, attitude constraints (i.e. orientation) in addition to position, partial constraints (e.g. Z >= 0 to keep an effector from going below the ground, hierarchical  IK chains. If Anim8or had collision detection (maybe someday ...) that would  be an ideal constraint. as well.

Wow, 100000 beers! I'd have to buy a big villa to store it all until it we could drink it

nemyax: Agreed, constraints are very useful. Are there any that you thing are particularly useful? Agreed that we need a way to twist IK chains - the MMB might work but it wouldn't allow all rotational directions.

animaniac: A weighted move tool to deform meshes is a great idea. It is on "the list" of potential things to do. I'll look into it when I get back to the modeling tools. I have a few things to clean up there before I make an "Official Release".

And thanks, everybody, for your encouraging comments

[nemyax]

Are there any that you thing are particularly useful?

Well the usual ones for a start:

• Look at (aim at)
• Parent (child of)
• Orient like (copy rotation)
• Limits (as you mentioned)

Later, all kinds of luxury could be added, like Stick to Surface =)

the MMB might work but it wouldn't allow all rotational directions

Why do you think it wouldn't allow them? Do you mean the limits on bones might prevent them?

[johnar]

johnar:
Does this mean... when you click on the little '+' box ..."

steve:
Yes

Good 1.Thanks steve
 ....still exploring the latest drop....nice one....

[animaniac]

My favorite tip in sketchup is very simple, yet extremely useful: box selecting going from left to right selects everything in the box, while right to left only selects entities entirely in the box. Would enjoy something similar in anim8or.

Another select tool I'd use is a sphere select, where you click hold a point in the 3D, then drag away to show a sphere around this point and select all entities inside. No idea if it has been done before.

[Trevor]

Any chance of adding weighted normals to an8?

I never new this before but found a page describing how to vertex normalise cylinders, but on the page showed a beveled cube.
I have attached the image with a comparison of the same model as rendered in an8.
http://www.bytehazard.com/articles/vertnorm.html

Trev

Results of weighted normals:

[Steve]

Just a note to say that I posted build 1263 with a few IK fixes, etc.

[Steve]

@Trevor - I considered this method for normals when I first started writing Anim8or but rejected it. Instead I decided to use surface sub-division. I think this is a more robust solution though it is computationally more complex.

If you look closely at the closest corner of the cube in the animation sharp edges appear at inconsistent angles as it rotates. Low-polygon schemes do this because the normals are inconsistent with the geometry when they are interpolated. Surface subdivision effectively eliminates this inconsistency.

Another way to fix the problem is to use quads instead of triangles.

Here are some screen shots of 3 cubes. The left one has a thin bevel, the middle one a thick bevel, and the right on is the thick bevel subdivided.

[Trevor]

Is this surface subdivision temporay or permament?
As you know, I make low-poly models and by low poly, I truely mean low-poly and not 1,000's of faces. It would be nice to render as it will look ingame and still export the normal mesh

Its probably areas like this where low-poly and high-poly moddeling clash, one needs a hack, the other is technically correct.

Trev

[Steve]

Surface subdivision keeps the model low-polygon. The detail is added for rendering. Also note that cleaning up a model to use quads instead of triangles can improve all 3 methods: Anim8or basic, subdivision and weighted normals.

Anyway, no promises, but I'll look into adding some form of weighted normals, maybe as a parameter each mesh.

[AlecJames]

1258: Track Ball: display only one trackball at a time, the most recently clicked. Showing them all can be too cluttered.

Steve, when selecting bones prior to key all selected bones the track ball used to show which bones where selected.  With only the last selected track ball displayed its hard to know which bones are selected when switching views.

If I grouped my bones into folders and gave them sensible names I can see the selected bones in the time track so this isn't big issue. What if the selected bones were a different colour?  Or is there another way to know which are selected?
Thanks

[johnar]

Hi AlecJames. 

The selected bones are, or should be, actually   a silvery-grey color when they are selected, while the non-selected bones remain a darkish blue. (default color).

 One way, if you're having trouble seeing which bones are selected, is to temporarily hide the mesh/objects. Shortcut 'O' (shift -> 'o').

 If this method is still unsatisfactory, maybe it is?, then i agree that it could be a good idea if the selected bones were to be a more easily visible color. Maybe even the 'orange' that you see when hovering over a bone with the cursor...?

[AlecJames]

Hi johnar
 
Thanks - Problem was that I couldn't see the selection through my semi transparent object.  Shift O is the perfect solution
 

[Steve]

One last drop before New Years! build 1264

[JSmith_DumDumDumDumDum]

This new version is great! I'm loving it so far with very little to no complaints.

The one thing I would like to inquire is: is there a feature that would make zooming in/out smoother in this newer version? In the older version, zooming was done by opening the view rotator and alt+right click. While It took a little more effort to do it that way than the simply mouse role of this newer version, it (older version) did include a whole lot more zoom views; that was one of the features I valued most when using Anim8or.