@unknownuser said:

I have a problem with these Motion Capture type movies because they never quite work and come off just looking creepy.

then you should really give Avatar a chance to convince you otherwise. this movie transports motion capture to a completely new level, seriously
in the past the technology has mainly been used to capture the body movements. facial capture was very rudimentary and basic, leaving a lot of work for digital artists to interpret the footage of the actor's performance to create the final image.
with the technology used for Avatar this is a completely different matter, for the actor's facial expressions have been translated almost one to one to the digital character (not for nothing the WETA guys spent almost a year with each character, fine tuning the rigs to the actors faces...).
I actually put Avatar to the test and forced my mother to watch it. she has always refused to watch any cg movie (because she doesn't want these "horrible computer monsters" in her head). but she did like Avatar (and cried a lot - an indicator that she forgot about the blue guys not being real...)

@Remus:
yes, you can trigger several animations with one click by separating them with ;
but all these animations start and end at the same time. therefore the 'Time Line' approach is more suitable for some models.

@Chris:
damn! I dimmly remember your ping pong component. so there was no need to figure it out on my own
on the other hand. it was a lot of fun

@Thomthom:
my goal is a bit more humble - an armada of robots cleaning up my flat is enough for the time being.
and I should be careful with 'taking over the world' plans. I am German and I dimmly remember this moustached guy...

@gaieus said:

Well, I like fantasy films, I like Sci-fi, western and action.
This is all in one (after all, those aliens are just masqueraded Indians...)

don't forget the little bit of love story - to please the female customers!
(although I have to say, I found the 4m high, blue-skinned, long-tailed Na-ví to be quite attractive... )

@mike lucey said:

Like Tom, I'm not into this type of film much but would enjoy the 3D experience. Anyway, I checked my local cinema and they are only showing it in 2D!!! I wonder is it that they have not got the special 3D glasses of is there a special projection system involved?

actually, you need a digital projection system to show these movies in 3D. and they are rather expensive still - something around 100 000 $ as far as I know. so not every cinema will be able to invest that sort of money.

but for several reasons all movies (2D and 3D alike) will be projected digitally eventually:

• one copy of a 35mm film is several hundret bugs (depending on the quality even something like 1000$ as far as I know). so if the producers want a movie to start at many cinemas at the same time, thats a lot of money just for copying the movie.
  with digital projection the cinema just has to download the movie (or get it via post on a hard disc).
  and the projectionist doesn't have to drag huge film reels around, that easily measure 1m in diameter (and isn't in danger of dropping it - to have a kilometer of film in a mess on the floor )

• the digital copy doesn't lose quality during usage. it will always maintain the same high quality, whereas the analog copy will gain scratches over time.

• 35mm film has been around for quite some time now and probably is as good as it can get by now. the resolution of this sort of film is equivalent to 3000 lines on a digital image. but during the process of making the movie (cutting, copying, etc.) the quality is reduced to about 2000 vertical lines. therefore most movies, that have a lot of digital effects, get scanned with a 2K scanner (which is 1080 lines), digital effects are added in the same resolution and it is finally printed again in the same resolution.
  digital cinema projectors however can already cope with a 4K resolution (4.096 × 2.048). therefore a digital image can already seem sharper and crisper, than an analog one.
  (I hope I have got the numbers right here. but I've seen digital projections of 2D movies on a big screen. and it is very crisp and colourful)
  and bear in mind, that the age of digital projection only just began. so we can await huge improvements on that front.

• the job of a projectionist will become a lot easier. he just has to assemble commercials, trailers and the main movie to a nice programm on a computer and assign it to a projector.
  he can't make any mistakes when initially preparing the movie (the analog copy arrives at the cinema in several little reels, that the projectionist has to glue together to one big film).
  and the projectors having no moving parts appart from the cooling system means a lot less maintennance and little danger of the lens getting out of focus.

(of course there are downsides as well to this technology. when I watched 'New Moon' for instance there were several interuptions, when image and audio froze for seconds, like with a scratched dvd)

ok. I answered some of my questions myself. I found a way to actually trigger animations at different times.

I did it by understanding the one onClick-animation as a Time Line. the variable is animated from 0 to 100.
the different "sub-animations" then decide when they want to 'jump on' the timeline and when to 'jump off' again.

I redid my robot, so that every separate movement can be changed in its Extend (how far does it go), Start Point and End Point (on the time line).

I added the new file in the first post...

please have a go with it and tell me what you think.
I should mention that there is quite a big number of variables, which made the animation very slow and choppy...

merry Christmas everyone,

while learning the workings of Dynamic Components, I just started building a little tripod robot.
this device resides in a compact shape, not unlike a flying saucer, with it's legs wrapped protectively around it's body.
when activated, it unfolds it's legs and moves into a standing position. therefore several motions are required, which I managed to control by building a joint hierarchy and rotating the different elements, all triggered by one animated variable.

that however results in the 'feet' of the robot temporarily vanishing beneath the ground surface. in order to get it right, these different movements can't be executed at the same time or same speed.

therefore I just wanted to ask, if you've got any ideas how to do it (without switching to a different software - for this is all about mastering DSs ).

as I understand it, it is not possible to trigger different animations - one after the other - with one onClick, right?

but it is possible, to trigger different animations - at the same time - with one onClick, simply by separating them with a ";"

so on a first glance: would you think that is somehow possible, getting the motions right, so that the tips of the robot's feet will always stay on the same spot on the ground?
is there any way to mathematically/geometrically calculate the timing? pretty complicated, huh?

for your comments, suggestions, ideas, I would be grateful.

TripodRobot_02.skp

brilliant! another Christmas Present! thanks a lot, Chris

wow, thats fantastic, Fredo! just yesterday I went through welding dozens of curves, just to polyline-divide them afterwards. now that would be sooo much faster! what a great christmas present! THANK YOU

and I see you've implemented some of the visual stuff of the 'round corner' plugin as well (like the green cursor when in edit mode). I like it a lot!

I've got one question though, that I wanted to ask you for quite some time now:
when I transform a polyline (or now just a series of linesegments ) into a Polyline Arc Corners, sometimes the distribution of vertexes is a bit strange, showing some corner with very high polygon detail, leaving others almost unrounded... is there a way to influence that? like to tell the plugin to distribute the vertexes evenly per corner?

unfortunately that doesn't seem to be working for me.
imagine the following situation: you have got a 'onClick' function assigned to a subcomponent. the function animates a Variable. and now I want this variable to multiply the length of another subcomponent (or even the daughter of another subcomponent).
somehow I don't seem to get this to work...

[Edit] I just checked again. the value of the subcomponent's variable isn't passed on to the parent component. neither does it reach another subcomponent. to me it seems values can only be passed down the chain, but not up.
unless you have to use a different way of referencing it, than 'subcomponent!variable'...

I just made a Dynamic Component of a folding door, that opens/closes, when clicked. it can be scaled to fit any opening, without changing frame with and such (you can set these via the component options). in order to get this working, the code became rather complicated (for me anyway).

and now, when I 'nudge' the component, the open/close animation doesn't run smoothly anymore. is it only my computer or is it because the DC got too complicated?

(the attached file is the DC itself. so please don't open it directly, but place it into a scene)

foldingDoor_4Panels_Frame.skp

Gaieus: off to Budapest then... they've got an IMAX!!!

@marian said:

... for more than two hours you'll be in another world.

actually, I don't think I so much as twitched a muscle during the whole movie

I've just got another question.
now I know that I can get a parent component's value to a subcomponent by using 'ParentComponent**!**Variable'.
but is there a way to transfer the value of a subcomponent to a different subcomponent? didn't seem to be working for me...

I just went to see James Cameron's new film Avatar, produced in 3D and IMAX format (but also showing at normal cinemas).

I had rather high expectations, with all the news and rumors about it being something completely new. I just couldn't help joining in with the hype. that probably is why I sat on a monday morning at 0:20 in front of Britains biggest screen - expecting to be impressed...

but I was blown away! literally swept off my feet. the images were so fantastic, the world of pandora so incredibly detailed and beautiful, that I instantly forgot I was watching a film, where half of the images are computer generated.
I had always thought of 3D films as a fancy little gimmic for 20 min IMAX shows, where the audience "whooo"s once for the effect, when someone throws a ball towards your eyes. but here on pandora, with the insects buzzing all around you and the characters right in front of you, so that you want to grasp out and help them up, when they fall... that was a completely new, immersive experience.
but even more than the 3D experience and the fantastic landscapes, designed with loving detail into the last leaf and pebble, was I impressed with the character animation. imagine seeing gollum - but twice as realistic. and hundreds of them. these blue creatures, that in the trailer seemed a bit... well, blue and too alien somehow, are of such grace and beauty, that after only a moment you admire them, can't take your eyes off them (well, partly because the screen is too vast to look anywhere else... ).

but even the story (which I won't reveal here of course) on its own as well as the actor's great performances would make a thrilling movie of it's own.
what James Cameron did with Avatar is truly leading the way into a new era of cinema.
of course there are minor things, like the fact that the camera dictates the depth of field and you have no choice but to focus on the object you are supposed to (although you are constantly tempted to have a look at the detail of the background). but you'll get used to that quickly and be rewarded with a film experience, as intense and gripping as never before.

I left the cinema, lost for words. and before I went to bed to get some three hours of sleep, I went to the IMAX website to book new tickets for Avatar (unfortunately shows are almost sold out, until the end of january).

I might be biased, because I am just fond of special effects and like sci fi. but if you have the chance to see avatar - ideally in 3D and on an IMAX screen - do it! you won't be disappointed. I will definitely try to get my hands on another set of IMAX tickets. but in the meantime I will most certainly watch it in a normal cinema too; for it is a great movie.

thank you James Cameron! thank you for making such a great masterpiece of cinematography - in every respect!

uuuh. tricky one. never would have thought about that. but its true, compatibility is a good thing.
although its probably more important for SU 7.1 to read a SU 7 DC properly than for SU 7 to read a SU 7.1 DC properly...

therefore in that particular case, I, too, would say: "who cares! people can get a free upgrade!"

we are not short of choices then...

@chris fullmer said:

So we'll be expecting you to show up in the developer's section soon Chris

uff, the pressure!
well, who knows, maybe I will find that Ruby actually is what I've been looking for my whole life. always so many ideas in my head and no means to get them out of there... after your pep-talk I actually feel like getting started...
but first things first. DCs still keep a lot of secrets from me that want to be discovered...

are you serious? you started with ruby only a year ago???
and now you are one of the most active writers out there, having produced many invaluable scripts...
wow. either you are smart as hell or ruby is truly easy - or both

aaaah. I looked at it the wrong way around.
so the way to go is actually animating the variable as opposed to the variable triggering the animation... thank you very much Jim.

Chris, cool trick with just clicking the parent component. that was what I was looking for.
but now I ran into another problem... how can I animate a child component, when a variable in the parent component is changed from lets say 0 to 1?
is there a function like an onVariableChange function, similar to the onClick function?

just that you understand what I want to do, I attached the door I want to animate. once clicked, all the door elements should slide to the side...

and Howard: sorry, your problem is far too complicated for me to follow

sliding_door.skp

just a quick one. I dimmly remember that there was an option to use Variables of parent components - somehow by adding a $ sign or something - in order to trigger several reactions of nested dynamic components, when onClicking the parent component.

but I just can't remember, how it is done (haven't done anything with DCs for a loooong time )

you are welcome, Marcus. oh, and if you read the document Remus suggested, you will find many more useful search commands...

by the way, Remus: when I read the guide and they mentioned that the name was inspired by the Firefly series, I was sold. after that I am absolutely convinced that Wave is the future!
(and who knows, maybe that will trigger the production of a second firefly season...)