Seamless

Hi Isa Nice to see you here again. Thanks for the postcard from your holidays and for thinking of me and Bribri I hope you had a pleasant time.

Gosh I just realised Alain should be back today from his holidays in Kiev! It is the 17th here but still the 16th in France. How times flies! At least I have got seamless's new animation interface done just in time for his arrival

2.107 is ready for download from:

www.seamless3d.com/download

The goal for this version has been to make animation more intuitive. The previous way involved using a global FreezeTime control panel to control TimeSensor nodes but this was prone to the user forgetting which TimeSensor was either enabled or under the control of the FreezeTime. These 2 control panels have been replaced by a much simpler and more intuitive Anim node specifically designed for seamless.

The Anim node does not compromise versatility yet it can be related easily to Avatar Studio:



Unlike av studio, a pose is not automatically captured. Each pose has to be recorded by clicking capture. Automatic capture will be added in the future if it is a better way to go.
The Anim node lets us add more programmable steps than av studio's interface making it possible to create Wallace and Gromet type Movies and lets us copy and paste poses too. Also seamless of course is not limited to animating one preset structure of parts.

Soon as I get the chance I will make this window more specialised graphically, like for example, replacing the slider field with a slider bar specifically designed for animation.

To make seamless have less obstacles for beginners just to create an av with some gestures, I have made 2.107 so that there is no need to add an avatar Proto manually or even have to deal with one in the scene tree. Instead all the user has to do is drag a GestureGroup node to the scene node and Seamless will automatically output the wrl containing an Avatar Proto. If an Anim node is moved into the GestureGroup node it will be triggered by contact in multi user mode. The order of the gestures is determined by the same order they are contained in the GroupGesture node. (1st Anim = gesture1, 2nd Anim = gesture2 etc)
If you want an animation not to be triggered by a gesture, leave it outside the GroupGesture node.

The setUpAnimation feature now adds script instead of ROUTEs to connect the animation nodes together because I have for sometime now, not been able to justify why a beginner should learn ROUTEs, when the equivalent script instructions are at least as intuitive. Being familiar with scripts can lead to much more exciting results. ROUTEs will still work the same as before except for when capturing a pose. If this is a problem for anyone who has used the old FreezeTime to do key frame animation, please let me know via the forum or by email. I will be happy to convert any file or perhaps add a feature to convert ROUTEs to script. This will not be a big task for me so please don't hesitate to speak up

I have updated the tutorial:

www.seamless3d.com/tut/immediate_av/animation.html

As a result of rewriting some of seamless's output code I have broken the output Pov-Ray feature which I hope to fix soon

Many thanks to bumpy for fixing the mouse wheel for zoom control for the 3d window (I have no mouse wheel, he does) and finding and helping me fix a bug (that apparently was a problem in some systems) that made the mouse misbehave when clicking in the 3d window.

was back yesterday night but it took me hours to check 350 mails and 90% shit ( pardon LOL )

but I downloaded lats version and will try it

yipiiiiiii

I had a sort of "contest" to do this summer ( summer in France LOL Thyme )
it is about thema "detail" ( better than the "Nude" one LOL , last year ...)
but I have no idea and indeed I spent time on seamless ....
It was / is nice and "funny" ....may be better LOL

today I was searching one thing on the site and found that :



and also that :

Quote :

I love what you are doing. Will You collaborate with us on our great project that is going to revolutionise 3d in an awesome way?

Sorry because I am committed to the development of seamless3d and because I have many of my own exciting projects that have been left unfulfilled for over a decade I can not afford the time that would be needed to commit my self to anyone else's project. If you only want some help with your project or just want to inform others of it, instead of emailing me please post to the Seamless3d forum where it will be welcome.

))

vive seamless3D !

ps : I wonder how you made the shadow on the pirate av

I begann to read the talk between jacinto and Thyme and mcfly and fab ,

scuse to say that I am proud that it is on Louise , LOL

nice to share , nice to have such guys here ,

pity is our english , poor frenchies

Hi Alain, thanks so much for all your support in regard to seamless, I don't get paid for my work in money, only praise, so its much appreciated Sorry to hear the drive home was a long ordeal but at least you did not get lost on your way back and you are now safely home in France

How did I make the shadow for Lilly Sophie on my gallery page?
This has to be my image I am most proud of that I made using seamless all those hours spent studying the female form finally paid off

The model was output as a Pov-Ray file instead of a wrl and so was rendered by a Ray-Tracer instead of using real time hardware.
Ray-Tracers are just fantastic for generating things like shadows and reflections and I can't wait to make a seamless movie using one. You can think of the Pov-Ray output feature as much the same as capturing a screen-shot (except the quality is superior) because seamless will output a Pov-Ray file containing the exact pose you see in the 3d window.
I added this feature to seamless this last Christmas time but sadly I have broken it for the last 2 versions of seamless I will soon fix it and hope to write a tutorial showing how to utilize Pov-Ray to render animations. This is something I much want to do but because bumpy has only a week left here and I have not yet done any work to make seamless able to run his maze game, I must focus most of my attention for for remaining week on getting his game to work in seamless which is also something I am very excited about

Quote :

I added this feature to seamless this last Christmas time but sadly I have broken it for the last 2 versions of seamless

it is not a problem , I have all the versions since 4 years
ahahahaha

to try the new anim way

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/reanimseamless180806.wrl
http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/reanimseamless180806.smls
http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/reanimseamless180806.TXT
http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/reanimseamless180806.jpg

Thanks much for showing you were able to get the new Anim node to work Alain. It might seem silly but the smls file confirms it works outside of my computer and that it is comprehendible for others
You can never have to much verification in this modern world

Quote :

it is not a problem , I have all the versions since 4 years
ahahahaha

Most things stay the same in each version and many of the features today like the immediate vertex joining for example have not changed since the "techuelife triangle editor" back in about 2002 or perhaps even earlier than this. I try to update the tutorials as fast as I can after I have made any major changes like I have for the animation recently. I need to make a few changes to how Pov-Ray movies are now output as a result of introducing an Anim node. I think it would make more sense for outputting a Pov-Ray movie to have it so that this is in someway done through the Anim node rather than the Scene node because we are really outputting an animation rather than a scene in concept. I will get the new Pov-Ray output feature working soon Alain I promise
Sorry if the changes to the animation messes up your previous animation tutorial a little Alain. You can still get a TimeSensor from the menu but I decided not to have it in the bar as well because I thought having both a TimeSensor and an Anim node there would make seamless unnecessarily complicated and an Anim node can do what a TimeSensor can as far as I can see. Updating tutorials for seamless can be a bore but I feel its worth making the changes if they make things so much easier to comprehend. It makes the tutorials easier to write too so I get more pleasure from it than pain, hope you feel the same
The Anim node seems pretty much self explanatory to me and it seems practical so no more drastic changes should need to be done in the future for animation (fingers crossed)
When you consider most work for seamless has centered on modelling, not animation, Its not surpirsing that seamless has undergoone some more growing pains in this area but hopefully the worst is now in the past

Quote :

and an Anim node can do what a TimeSensor can as far as I can see

but I am a bit lost to have translations and scaling ,
the set up animation ...."do it" ...makes only the rotations ,

or am I false using it ??

Hi Alain thanks for asking

I made it so you have to add PositionInterpolators manually because most parts are only rotated but perhaps I could make it so there is an option to add PositionInterpolators for translation and/or scale for each part too if this is useful.

Please see this example:

http://www.seamless3d.com/img/position_interpolator.smls

I added this PositionInterpolator manually after the OriantationInterpolator was added automatically using the setUpAnimation command.
The PositionInterpolator is being used exactly eh same as you would for VRML except an Anim node is used to generate the local variable v (the slider) which is the equivalent of the fraction_changed field from a TimeSensor

I can see the "capture" pose is not working for position so I will fix this for the next version but you will know how to program a PositionInterpolator manually.

The 2 instructions I added in the script:

part_t_hello.set_fraction = v
part.translation = part_t_hello.value_changed

are the same as VRML ROUTEs:

ROUTE timeSensor.set_fraction TO part_t_hello.set_fraction
ROUTE part_t_hello.value_changed TO part.translation

You have to add each line of script correctly before you press enter or seamless likely crashes so I will try to make this a lot friendlier soon.

I am going to the city this morning with bumpy and Ep in bumpy's car. I don't think I have been to the city since I have been on the internet! (since the end of 1997)
Its going to feel strange seeing humans walking about again lol

arghhhhhhhhhhh I searched where you hided that "bumpy car" you had on some site
( if I remeber well )
was a nice car , I hope it is alive still to travell

Quote :

Its going to feel strange seeing humans walking about again lol

LOL Thyme , watch how they walk , it could be useful for animation ...

will look tomorrow at your answer ( nite here now )

be carefull in the city

enjoy !!!

and you will be more happy to come back home LOL

)

ok I got it ! it works !

never saw before that it was possible to write a CodeLine there LOL




ps : to day

exploring all that.......

I tried some living bones for Hermetic .....

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/pirateos2.wrl

need a skull

( at the end I finished with vrmlpad )

ps

I got the skull now !

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/pirateos222.wrl

just with seamless

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/langueskull.wrl

We are all back home safely on the farm again Alain A bit stressful for me having not seen civilisation for so long but on the whole it was a welcome change to my normal everyday recluse existence
No we did not drive in bumpy's Seamless car unfortunately Alain lol. I am sorry bumpy's seamless car is not currently on my site but I want to add it to my gallery along with a number of other classics made by seamless soon. Bumpy's new blue maze monster is definitely going to be another such classic, which I have just added to my gallery



I love the fat baby like legs and clawed feet bumpy recently added
I was quite surprised to see this Pov-Ray rendered image on his computer, generated by the current version of seamless because as I told you just a few days ago Alain, I had broken this feature!. Was a nice surprise usually its the other way around, where I think I have fixed something and later find I have not.

I love too the way Miranda's Haloween cat came out in povray please check it out on my gallery:

www.seamless3d.com/gallery

Good work on the Skull Alain

Quote :

never saw before that it was possible to write a CodeLine there LOL

I wondered if people might wonder if the script you see in the scene tree was just for decoration Alain I am very happy to hear you added a few lines yourself, you are now a C++ coder! and you can now see for yourself, just because a language has many options that lets you write ugly complex code, it does not mean it has to be any more difficult or ugly to do scripting.

Your loyalty is very touching Alain but there is no crime using vrmlpad I still use a text editor to edit smls files to fix things from time to time but I always try to edit the smls file rather than the wrl because if you then want to make more changes to the source smls file, you don't have to keep fixing the output wrl each time. I am not sure what you did in vrmlpad but I can see you have some DirectionLights that are not positioned in the file the way seamless outputs nodes, If this is all you changed in a text editor, it might have been easier to have dragged these nodes from the new node bar to the scene using seamless?
DirectionalLights don't function correctly yet but they can still be edited in the scene tree.

kind regards

Quote :

there is no crime using vrmlpad

yes , LOL

abd indeed I have no probs with lights in seamles ,
but I have some to copy a seamless node when it had been animated ....
like that bone , for instance ...
http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/onebone.wrl
How to have a second one , the same one ??
( I wanted to make a crosswith 2 bones LOL )
May be my tree is not good ....was a bit lost to copy the bone ......

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/onebone.smls

In witch city you where , Thyme ??

wow ! I wondered how to "edit" a *smls ......as you tazlked about

hours after I found that :
http://www.seamless3d.com/tut/smls_vrmlpad/index.html

I dit it and .....it works ! LOL

The city we went to alain was Lismore which is in northern New South Wales. Lismore is closer to the coast than our farm.

You can copy all the triangles from one part to another part Alain by simply copying a part (right click on node in scene tree, select copy) and then paste the triangles to another part using the command

F10 menu/ paste/ part


This file http://www.seamless3d.com/tut/smls_vrmlpad/seamless3d_nodes.wrl needs updating Alain, some fields and nodes have been added since I last uploaded this file. Ep made her first world using seamless 2 using vrmlpad instead of using the scene tree interface because the scene tree was only for editing Part nodes then. I am afraid vrmlpad has lost most of its value for seamless since I added scripts because vrmlpad will always show seamless's scripts as illegal. The reasons for this is because I simplified the way you add scripts to how it has to be done for VRML. You don't have to USE a node to access a node from a script in seamless. I cant say I have ever understand what use a USE is to a Script node so I did away with this rule. Also I cant see why an extra script node is needed just to add a function. In seamless a function can simply replace a Script node and the code is not contained in a string either, simplifying things further. If you save files unzipped in seamless you will find there is little advantage in using vrmlpad over a good general purpose text editor

LIsmore ))


http://www.scottishradiance.com/light/lismore.jpg

http://svc005.wic028p.server-web.com/view_doc.asp?id=72&cat=134


))


hummm OK to copy a part to a part .....

but to

Quote :

..copy a seamless node when it had been animated ....
like that bone , for instance ...
http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/onebone.wrl
How to have a second one , the same one ??

scuse to bore you with seamless LOL

The jpg of Lismore does not open for me Alain
but the second link works, yes that's the place I went to and it shows where bumpy lives too (Brisbane)

No one has yet bored me with questions about Seamless Alain I want seamless to be practical, therefore questions like this which are encountered from actually using seamless are very much welcome.

To make a second bone exactly the same as the first including the animation, I would probably still use the same Seamless node and copy the triangles from the existing parts to the news ones, like I described before. This would mean parts would have to be copied one at a time and any parts that are joined to other parts would break the vertices at the joins. However seamless has a button that lets you join them back easily which is a lot faster than joining them one vertex at a time.

Then I would copy the animation nodes (containing the script) and rename the names for the references to the new copied nodes, however, currently seamless does not copy the code in the scripts (which it should soon I hope) and doing some operations like renaming references can not be done one at a time for complex scripts without causing a crash because the scripts are always live and running! Perhaps a temporary return could be inserted at the beginning of the script to prevent such an ugly event happening but this is the sort of thing where it might be easier to use a text editor (if you are at home with them), taking advantage of search and replace and other text editor features.
Sorry for sounding negative about vrmlpad, I don't want to knock this program because its one of those really great little programs that's well designed and it was well suited to seamless for a while. I spent much of yesterday thinking how could I keep smls scripts legal for vrmlpad and can think of a few ways like adding the option of having the script inside a string but I can see also a special node would have to be added for the string if you wanted to insert script in a proto. At the end of the day I came back to my conclusion I had arrived at before that seamless has now outgrown vrmlpad. Seamless does not really need vrmlpad for syntax checking for nodes because seamless prevents the user from putting nodes in illegal locations and it takes care of things like square and curly brackets automatically. Fot text editing its going to be mostly the scripting we will need a text editor and vrmlpad 1.3 at least does not do syntax checking for this so a general purpose text editor should be just as usefulll for seamless. However vrmlpad is convenient how it opens zipped files and its one of the few text editors that lets you put lines of code as long as you like all on one line which is good for seamless same as it is for vrml

perhaps in the future I will write a smlsPad one that does syntax checking for both the nodes and the script. Some of Seamless3d's code could be utilised for making it a specialised intelligent text editor but for it to be as good as vrmlpad, it would have to be more stable than seamless is currently. This is the other thing I like about text editors, they rarely crash on you

oula sa spoke english ici

LOL the scotsih Limsore was just a joke :
homonym and lighthouse


LOL Thyme :

Quote :

..This is the other thing I like about text editors, they rarely crash on you

ok will try the
http://www.seamless3d.com/tut/join_close.png

now.......

pity I have to open Firefox to see *.png LOL


pssssss hey Thyme , the Lismore map was LouiseLog to day !!! LOOOOLL


here is the stupid thread fot these logos , I change often


http://louisedesavoie.forumactif.com/viewtopic.forum?t=1109

( how to spend time with stupid things ?? LOL

hummm :

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/ganttete.wrl

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/ganttete2.wrl

but don't know how to use the "join close" thing

LOOL I found a stupid way ( with vrmlpad and 2 different outputs from the elebird who was in the "showcase" ( Thanx Gillian ! )

to animate the bird
( but without the eyes LOL

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/eleBirdcoordanimated.wrl

Oher thing :

I understood how to join close a pert and his mirror part :

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/joinclose.wrl

I wrote that little tuto :

http://dumenieu.free.fr/louiseforum/join_close.TXT



I wanted to copy all that in seamless Forum ,
but sometimes I have probs to login , there , and it never keeps me logged
....may be my fault with "alain" and "Alain" , dont know , sorry ...

will retry later ......

I liked your hands and before I could reply you now made a skinned mesh cat and tutorial

Thanks You Alain

Lol in regard to animating Ep's ele bird Alain Ep has wanted to animate it for a few years now but has not yet found the time!
Before your last post I had started on this simple tutorial:

www.seamless3d.com/tut/join_close_vertices

and thought I might as well complete it since I had taken all the pics and written most of it.
Yes I explain how to use the join close vertices already in my immediate tutorial:

http://www.seamless3d.com/tut/immediate_av/joining_mid_parts.html#JoinNeck


But this short tutorial is dedicated to just how to join close vertices.


There are alternative ways using build nodes I could write about too.

The JoinVertex node can be used for immediate editing if it is deleted after it has joined the vertices. The advantage of using this node, is it lets you set the distance for how far they can be away from each other to join them.
The other way is to use a CopyPart node. The advantage of using this node is it can copy the 2 parts in one go without ever breaking the parts but I found it will crash if you attempt to copy a single part that is joined to another so perhaps this node needs to be made more crushproof before I explain how to use it this way.

Bumpy has gone back to Brisbane in his car. here is a photo of it



You can see other angles he took of it on my new gallery page, page 2

http://www.seamless3d.com/gallery/page2.html


PS the map of Lismore I took from your logo Alain and added it to my last post just to mark the occasion