Subject: Re: Bones!!!!!! 
Date: Wed, 18 May 94 16:22:26 EDT
From: Mark Thompson <mark@westford.ccur.com>

> I have not used Lightwave, but just talked to a user last week who 
> said that bones are assigned an area of influence, which is much less 
> specific than imagine's subgroup-to-bone assignment method.

This is one of the drawbacks of the current LW bones implementations.
If you have an object that has an arm hanging down at its side, moving
a bone that is placed in the arm will create a drag on the object's side
as well (although the force is diminished over the distance from the bone).
Currently, there are a few ways to combat this problem: model appendages
pointing out from the character, use additional pinning bones near critical
surfaces to prevent effects from other bone forces, or specify a distance
for the offending bones beyond which they have no effect. For complex
characters, you almost need a combination or hybrid of bones and deformation
lattices (like in Caligari).
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