So, if I was to...

[Kwizatz]

Hi,
probably no one remembers me, but, a while ago I wrote some plugins, SetParent, SetCenter and a PovRay export that simulated skeletal animation, sadly I've lost the code for those .

Nowadays, I dont play around at all with AC3D mostly due to the lack of skeletal or ANY kind of animation support for that matter.
I recently found out a new version is out there, and that I have to pay for the upgrade :shock: , but still no trace of animation support :cry:

Anyway, I need a GOOD reason to upgrade, so I was thinking, is Animation being worked as of today? if not, would anyone be interested on a set of plugins for this particular? If I was to develop said pack of plugins would I be able to charge some money for that? how many people would pay for it? what would you guys think is a good asking price? $20, $15? $10?

Thank you for your help and feedback :wink:

[-WOODY-]

Well I'm a man who believes that a person should be rewarded for the fruits of his labor. I still don't know how much of a demand there is out there for an animation plug-in for AC3D, but if you could do a good job at it and support your plug-in, then why not.

It would only be right that Andy receive royalties for every plug-in that you sell because if it wasn't for AC3D, there wouldn't be a program to make a plug-in for.

You would have to consider price as well because the program itself is around 50.00 bucks so I couldn't see charging 10.00 which would be a fifth of the price of the entire program.

I'm still not sure where Andy stands on making an animation package for AC3D. Might be best to talk to him about it.

[Kwizatz]

Of course!
you made some valid points there, which is why I am even asking,
If there is no demand, why code it? I have also registered Milkshape3d, so coding them just for me to use is something I can avoid.

Coding them and releasing them for free I would consider if the work to be done was trivial or easy to implement (after all, there is a reason why ac3d is at version 4.0 and still no skeletal animation support) or if AC3D was GNU, free or open source (I am also an open source developer aedGUI, so I dont mind contributing to such projects), but thats not the case, so, to me it makes sence to me to get something in exchange.

Charging $10 sounds good to me, I mean, it beats the hell out of buying MilkShape for $25 just to use the skeletal animation support.
The royalty part, well, of course I rather not pay it, after all, I did had to register and would have to pay for the upgrade, but then again, if I had to pay, I dont mind, but I would like to make a profit

Then of course ALL that is just random babble, if there is no real interest.

Thank you for your reply.

Cheers!

PS: I see Ac3d now supports Md2 files, how does it handle the animation?

[Cowboybebop]

I wouldn't mind skeleton animation support as a matter of fact I would love it, my big thing is how well would it be supported/implemented.

[Andy]

I have no objections to people charging money for AC3D plugins and we wouldn't want any commision.

Adding animation requires changes to the file-format and quite a lot of changes to AC3D's internal structures. Something external is probably possible but we are keen that a plugin like this would not appear confusing to users and would continue with AC3D's ease-of-use approach.

So - please do post your ideas here and if you do start developing anything, let us know here so we can help with any queries.

I'm interested to know more about your previous plugins (skeletal povray export?)- please let us know more.

Andy

[figgy]

Easy, $20 if thats what was asked. If you asked for $10 even better.
To compare AC3D with Milkshape, I'd rather have everything in one package.
AC3D is a far better modeller than Milkshape. If it were to include Skeletal animation for just $20, its a bargian.
Lets see it.

Mark :P

[Kwizatz]

Hello guys,

Sorry for the delay, to be honest I kind of felt like the thread was dead, and stopped checking it :? , but I can see there is some interest on this.

Today I got an email from Andy about the upgrade, so I was reminded about this thread, so I came back to check, I have recently bought caligari's new gameSpace package, and I've been writting a Geosphere primitive plugin for it, now I am thinking about an AC3D version.

but I digress, Andy, thanks for your reply, and for letting me know you are ok with using the SDK for profit, I am like you were too one day trying to start to make a living out of my code by myself

Regarding the old plugins:

The Object Recentre was a simple interface that allowed you to set the center of any object to an arbitrary point, so you could later use the center as a pivot point, which is really what the center is... kind of.

The Object Set Parent plugin allowed you to set the parent of an object to be whatever other object, so you could for instance set "Hip" to be the parent of "RLeg" "LLeg",

These helped when exporting to PovRay, since the povray exporter I wrote would use the pivot point and the hierarchy to set the imaginary bones, in effect, the "hand" object would be rotated X,Y,Z around the center/pivot point and then rotated by the X,Y,Z of the "Arm", which was its parent, So basically it multiplied each Object's matrix to form anymation keyframes in PovRay, you had to do most of the actual animation work manually inside PovRay.

I hope I was not confusing there, and if I was, let me know and I will gladly expand on the explanation, I am always eager to help.

Like I said, the code for the plugins is gone my old site went down about a year ago, my hard drive crashed not more than a year ago, and I had no backup, I have learned my lesson tho.
Andy, I asked you for the exporting to PovRay Code, which you kindly provided me with, I did sent you back the changed code, unless you never got my emails, if you do keep a record of your received email, I am sure the code is there, if you find it please feel free to incorporate it into AC3D, I dont want to brag or anything but my code did improved a bit the resulting .pov file. 8)

Regarding the "Would be" animation suite:

Yes changes on the file format would be needed and made, which is why I was thinking about doing an extended ac3d file spec based on the current one, and the Animation enabled files would have to be saved and loaded thru an export/import plugin, and so exporters for animated files such as MD2 would have to be created that make use of the new features, the plugin itself should have exported functions, and a small SDK of its own to allow people to write their own "animated" exporters.

So you guys see, its not a small task

Cheers!

[Cowboybebop]

Well in that case, GET STARTED ALREADY :lol:

taps his desk with money in hand waiting