Framsticks

Thanks for your ideas. Actually, we are close to the idea of Marty; our software is more and more modular. We think it will be possible to plug in code that would output simulation data in any specific format. It would be similar as with the SDK we have released. However, we have much other work to do now; we will think about it when we have time.

I think a very useful general-purpose feature would simply be raw ASCII motion
output. The user could specify a cycle interval, N, and the program would
output a simple ASCII text file that described the positions of all of the
sticks every N simulation cycles (in other words, motion-capture data).
Something like the POV-Ray output, only not POV-Ray specific.

Any programmer could then write a plug-in for the rendering/animation software
of their choice. The plug-in would just import the data from the ASCII file.

Alternatively, the data file could be a more compact binary format, with
documentation available describing the format. The nice thing about ASCII
files, though, is that they're pretty much self-explanatory, and you don't have
to worry about things like byte-order.

--Marty Rabens

ianrawes wrote:

> In reply to Maciej:
>
> I imagine there might well be a demand. Programs like Autodesk 3D studio
> have quite a large user base (around 100,000 in this case). Other programs
> like the Germany-based Cinema 4D (www.maxon.de) are beginning to catch up,
> too. Plug-in and standalone software does exist for the animation of legged
> animals, especially humans. These typically work either by importing
> motion-capture data, or through alignment of a 'skeleton' into a series of
> keyframe postures. Motion capture generally gives better results, although
> the user is, of course, limited to the range of files which are made
> commercially available. One such program I use is LifeForms
> (www.charactermotion.com) in conjunction with Cinema 4D.
>
> Motion capture data for non-human animals is quite hard to come by - I've
> been looking! So you can imagine how impressed I am with Framsticks. Just
> look how something like Klay Williams' Sleeper struggles to get itself the
> right way up, then walks away! The quality of the movement is very, very
> good - it would be almost impossible to reproduce such dynamical realism by
> setting keyframes. Computer animators everywhere would just love to be able
> to get such great quality motion into their work.
>
> Ian