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From: Rowan Crawford <[e-mail]>
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Subject: Re: Character Animation Plugs?
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Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 22:06:50 +1000 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]> from "Bruce G. Considine" at Jul 25, 95 01:13:25 am
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> Something that could handle sets of motions graphs for a character?  I could
> sure use a few more tools for character animation.  How does Lightwave compare
> to the other softwares (3DS, Alias, SoftImage, Wavefront...) in ease of use for
> character animation?

Although I'm told that Alias isn't as good as WF for animation of this type,
it's still much more adept than LW I'm afraid.

LW is great for simple stuff, but when it comes to time to edit what you've
don it's hell (sorry Allen). Mainly because you can only see one parameter
of one object in the motion editor at a time (you can see whatever you want
and all together in Alias), but also because changing the spline of one
objects parameter affect ALL parameters at that keyframe. Plus you can't
do some basic spline operation like "step" "flat" etc, or get two different
spline effects on each side of a keyframe.

You can only move one key frame at a time too. In Alias you can drag a box
around a chunk and drag them all around. (I could make a very large list here)

Another area that I find irritating in LW is the way that objects are listed
in the order that they were loaded in. So unless you sit down and try to
work out the exact order they should be loaded in, you can often find the
shin bone is 7 objects away from the thigh etc.

Alias uses a similar concept to parenting called "grouping" except it's FAR
more powerful. My fave feature is "preserve position" when grouping or
ungrouping which means the object stays where it is when grouped even
if it and the other object already have movement.

Secondly is the "SBD" window (dont know what it stands for) which shows
graphically EVERY object in the scene with lines connecting grouped (paranted)
objects. Each object has a "DAG" node (basically a little box) with it's
name in it (you can read the names if you zoom up on them) and if that object
is animated the box is slanted (makes it easy to see what has animation frames
on it). You can select an object just by clicking on it's box.

What I was getting to about this arrangement is that they cursor keys
actually move you through the hierachy of the object in the order that
it is CONNECTED making it very easy to move a thigh, move theshin, tweak
thigh, move foot etc.

The final thing with I'd love to see in LW taken from Alias is the
way you can "attach" bones to a model so that they only affect the
area in their reach. There's no setting up falloff values etc, just
click on "attach" and all the bones grab what they should be affecting
(seems like magic but it does work).

And while I'm at it, I guess the thing right at the top of my wish list
is full NURBS support. NURBS objects are just so much more usable that
polygonal ones :].

But apart from that, LW is great :).

Row

--
Animagrafx

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