Animation?

[RossageSausage]

Are there any plans on creating an animation editor in the following release or any future releases? AC3D is an excellent modeller and the addition of animation would make it absolutely perfect.

Thanks

RossageSausage

[-WOODY-]

Though I've never done any animation modeling, I would still like to see that option in the future release. It would also be great to have some kind of AC3D model viewer so we could view each other's models on-line in 3D.

[Andy]

Woody - just output your model from AC3D as VRML then download the browser plugin from Cortona:

http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/cortona/

Then you can show us all what you've made :D

Andy

[Andy]

Animation is something we will look at seriously in the near future.

Lots of people want animation but there are different types and uses for it - There are many questions that need to be asked before implementation starts. This forum is the ideal place for us to learn from the users.

Do you want bone or object based animation?
What do you want to do with the animations? Output to a video file? Output to a renderer? Output to a game format?

The correct answer is not necessarily - "yes please, everything would be great.".

Other software has more specific uses (e.g. primarily for games), whereas AC3D is a general modeling tool - used from data visualisation to games models - so we need to determine the best way to go before we go there.

Andy

[Andy]

<embed SRC=/ac3d/vrml/test2.wrl width=300 height=200>

Click on "Study" and spin the model.

You need a VRML plugin installed:

http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/cortona/


all you put on your web page is:

<embed SRC=/ac3d/vrml/test2.wrl width=300 height=200>

[-WOODY-]

Wow that's a pretty cool viewer. I wonder how it would do with large file sizes?

[Andy]

It's very good for large files - try it.

Andy

[andi]

Hi
Let me say this first: I am not really good at 3d graphics - I am the poor coder that has to do that stuff in our project, but I suck at the terminology.

> Do you want bone or object based animation?

Can you explain to me the difference? I can imagine what you mean by "object based" animation, what is "bone" based animation?

.3ds files do it like this: a matrix (actually different values - but you end up in a matrix) is stored for every mesh for every frame.
In every frame you take the mesh-matrix into account (i.e. multiply the current matrix by it) and render the mesh as usual (which means, to the end user, that it appears at a different position with different rotation and different scaling).

On the topic of uses:
Well, I use ac3d primarily for our game project, so my intention should be pretty clear :)
Anyway I think the most generic way is usually the "best" way.
The above way has the advantage that you can animate _any_ mesh in any way you want. The animations from a mesh apply to their child-meshes as well, which allows you to add some "dummy" meshes (that don't contain any vertices) so you can have the animation applied to the entire model using a single matrix only.

I have to admit I cannot really imagine any use that can not be done using this, but this may be due to the fact that I've never really been interested in 3d graphics a lot :-)

> Output to a video file?

This is, in my opinion, definitely mandatory. But also very easy: render each frame to a pixmap, then use mencoder to create the video. Only a small amount of code. We do it pretty similar in our project.

> Output to a renderer?

I have to admit that I'd like to know what you mean by that?

CU
Andi

[Cowboybebop]

Hi Andy it's me the non GS user :D

Well I'm buying AC3D in about 15 minutes :P :wink:

And my vote would be toward bone animation first then object animation later :)

Now since 4.0 is out about that .ase support :twisted:

[RossageSausage]

Hey Andy,

Thanks for questioning me personally....thats cool :) . Anyhow, I use ac3d as my primary modeller for my game developement, so with that said, since i am into game development and in order to stay current with technology, I would more than likely prefer bone based animations....though to tell you the truth, object (limb) based animation support would even be excellent for me. You have such a great product that inclusion of animation in any helpful way would be great. This way I dont have to go through the nightmare of importing files into other programs that have a nasty habit of losing my texture coordinates, just to animate. Like I said, I would be using animation for gaming so a heavy emphasis on exporting 3ds and X files (primarily X files) in the way of compatability and options would be HUGE!


Thanx for the time....hope this helps!

RossageSausage

[Cowboybebop]

"Output to a video file? Output to a renderer? Output to a game format? "

Actually I would need it to output to a game format and to a video file. I'm not sure what the difference is to outputting it to a render but if it means having high quality short render movies then yes I would do that to.

[-WOODY-]

I would even settle for just bones. It would make it a heck of a lot easier to pose your model to make various scenes using bones rather than trying to adjust your model piece by peace.

[Cowboybebop]

So Andy can you tlk about what you decided or is it hush hush :)

[Andy]

Talking to people, it seems like bones is what people really want - especially the gamers.

You guys will be the first to know of any developments - we really appreciate your support.

Andy

[Steven]

I'm using AC3D to develop 3D models for gaming. Animate models for gaming is definitely something I'm looking for. AC3D is very efficient to allow development of simple or more complexe models in no time. I hope the animation that you implement in AC3D will follow the same philosophy. Of course compatibility with other modeling is essential since many 3D engine use only a specific format.

Steven

[gogi]

I am totally for the bones, they rocks.

[LiveWire]

when i make a model in ac3d, its always in a 'nutral' position(no action), if you could make it so i could move him into a set position..... :D and if i could animate him(walking, jumping, ect..), for lack of better words, i would be extremly happy.

but im also a gamer, i use ac3d manly to make game models, it has been just resontly that ive experamentd with sub-devision, and stuff, if you could make it so i could export as a seperate animation file(with bones and such) that i could then learn to load into my game, i would be very happy also.

basicly, bone animation is what i want, you could add in, making a renderd movie, or outputing to a render, later, and it would go over well

i dont rly know the diff between bone, and object animation, bone animation seems like the only useful kind of amination, and to my understanding, you can pretty much do anything with it.

thanx

Philip