Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!xanth!kent
From: kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: the Computer Animation show
Message-ID: <4091@xanth.cs.odu.edu>
Date: 16 Feb 88 09:34:04 GMT
References: <457@mv03.ecf.toronto.edu> <1676@desint.UUCP> <1087@ogg.cgrg.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 45


There are some efforts going on to make input of motion commands
easier, but from the comments it seems like they haven't propagated to
the end user community yet.  I seem to remember some stuff from Norm
Badler about modeling human motion (dancers), and another article
about using Labanotation (sp) (a notation for capturing choreography)
to drive computer generated figures with some success.

As an Amiga user, my heart was gladdened by the posting naming the
Amiga generated portion of the show as one of the two well-scripted
short features.  I saw the show a couple of weeks back, and I did
enjoy the Stumblers (or whatever), too.  It occurred to me, from my
own Amiga experience, that that piece might have been generated by the
Amiga to play in real time (the Amiga can draw that fast, driven from
a compiled language, and allows double buffered screens if drawing at
the frame rate isn't practical), and, while it was noted to have been
captured with a 16 mm camera, could as easily have been captured
directly to videotape, since the Amiga outputs NTSC video directly
(taking, of course, the usual hit in spatial resolution of color
compared to RGB output, which may have driven the choice of camera
capture) and this is being widely used.

Anyway, if such devices as the Amiga can do such a display at real
time speeds, perhaps the improvemnts in scripting called for by the
earlier posting could be achieved by designing the script on the Amiga
with low detail figures like the stumblers, in sort of an animated
storyboard, until the action grabbed the emotions, and then going to
the faster machines to ray-trace a full figured version of the story.

Looks like there is room for a masters project here moving the
existing motion control software onto inexpensive and widely available
hardware such as the Amiga, and providing a really easy to use
interface.

No disclaimers; after I bought my Amiga, I bought stock in the company
based on the performance of my machine, so I have a financial interest
in the machine's success.  Take all of the above with the requisite grain
of salt.

Kent Paul Dolan, LCDR, NOAA, Retired; ODU MSCS grad student	 // Yet
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