"break modifier" type warp for Kineme3D

I was looking at this blog about a fellow who wrote what he calls a "break" modifier for warping single collada meshes in Papervision 3D.

The gist of it is that they can be placed at various points on an object, and from that point, rotation can apply to a selected group of vertices. So, a break modifier can be placed at a knee, and then the lower leg can be made to move back and forth. In this blog, the guy talks about placing a modifier at each hip, and a modifier at each knee, then making a pair of jeans look like it's walking.

This is fairly similar to the bend box... except a bend box works over an entire mesh and doesn't bend stuff quite in the same way.

I thought this was a pretty cool concept/cheat way of doing character animation that might be quicker/faster than integrating full on skeletal animation into QC. Maybe something like a Bend Box, where you could configure coordinates that something should "break/rotate" at in x/y/z, then have controls for x/y/z rotation of the part that should be rotated, and a boolean for whether the part "above" or "below" the break point would get the rotation. Then, the patch could be configured in settings to add more break points.

Just a thought as to how something like that could work reasonably... I wonder if anyone else thinks it would be as cool as me? There are loads of single mesh people models available.

http://www.everydayflash.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/09/making-things-wal...

cybero's picture
Re: "break modifier" type warp for Kineme3D

definitely an interesting idea

jersmi's picture
Re: "break modifier" type warp for Kineme3D

Quote:
I wonder if anyone else thinks it would be as cool as me?
I'm not sure I'd think it's as cool as you are, but it sounds like a good idea for animation. And I was just contemplating again the "growing" 3D stuff -- this idea would apply there, too, at least in my brain.

gtoledo3's picture
Re: "break modifier" type warp for Kineme3D

Hahaha, I meant "cool as I do"....very funny.

By growing do you mean procedural stuff, like growing vines, trees, building scapes and stuff?

Seeing this is so tantalizing. Don't get me wrong, it's not as if it's an answer for really slick animation, but if one could bend arms at elbows, and shoulders, some knees, etc, there is a great deal of possibilities.

The other thought of a reallllly cool way to implement this, that I'm not even sure makes sense in QC, goes something like this...

In Blender, there is an ability to draw a line that becomes a skeleton. Then one can place points on that line where stuff can bend, and you can model a mesh around that drawn skeleton line.

What would be another take on a similar idea for a deformer for meshes in QC, would be to be able to have a modifier patch that had a preview mode that output to a GL Line struct, which would allow you to actually preview as you draw a line on top of a single mesh (dae...K3D?) through a struct input on that modifier/warp patch.

Then, through another input (structure?), one would place "points of interest" on that line structure/skeleton.... those would be like the break points. Then, maybe one would feed the patch a structure of rotations, instead of having a ton of input ports, like I was describing earlier.

So, if you clicked on the elbow, or placed your first break coordinate where an elbow is, that rX, rY, rZ, would apply to that joint. There would have to be a boolean, or some value to say whether it is the place below that joint that rotates, or above.... which would be the difference between a character moving it's fore arm up and down, or the fore arm staying stationary, and the rest of the body rotating. If not a boolean or something in the structure, there still would need to be some way of handling that issue, I would think.

There are really a ton of ways that some decent animation could be extended into QC... probably multiple approaches are needed to best cover all scenarios. This is just a thought that I was having as looking at the Papervision stuff.... which isn't as extensive as what I'm describing.