3DC 6.0 Wish List

Richard,
Since my only use of 3DC Pro so far is with train simulator I have to say that it does nearly everything that I could wish.
I would agree with Ian that it would be useful to be able to see what the distance models look like.
The only other thing I would like to see is more control over the background. ie :-
The ability to scale and move the background individually in each view.

cheers
Kevin

Ok, one more point:

1) An unweighted system does not permit any sharing of points between bones. This is significantly inferior to what 3DC provides.

Make that two points: I experimented with auto-weighting with 3DC and I didn’t like the effect. It was too much of a andquot;bendandquot; for my liking. If I were to implement a user-weighting system as well as auto-weighting it would no doubt be better, but I just feel it makes the process too complicated.

Oh, and your English is excellent. It took quite a few posts before I realized that English was not your first language. I think if we are miscommunicating it is due to the difficulties of andquot;bulletin boardandquot; coversations.

So our skeletal conversations are done until 7.0? Or until I figure out a really clever way to weight vertices without making it difficult to use?

Richard

andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp;hi Richard,

ok just one more , andnbsp;i like the ability to add pictures for the side,back and front

how about in 6.0 to have the ability to put background pictures all around the scene??

And finally…

The first image (from the left) is a replication of your demonstration of how andquot;weakandquot; the 3DC’ bone system is. The second image is the same object with properly set up bones. Not perfect obviously. There is too much creasing on the inner part of the joint. The third image shows the effect of adding a andquot;floatingandquot; bone. This andquot;floatingandquot; bone can be moved based on the orientation of the joint as needed to improve the appearance. The fourth picture is a smooth shaded version of the third image.

So, I would say that 3DC’ bone system is not andquot;greatandquot;, but pretty versatile. And I have no immediate plans to change it.

Richard

1) On the contrary is shows that the 3DC bone system produces the results one would expect from a joint: Localized deformation. And it is not andquot;unweightedandquot; it just uses different concepts.

2) This is supposed to show superiority and it doesn’t. Your example is completely out of the range of normal so it doesn’t really show me anything. (and of course your 3dc example andnbsp;does not properly use 3DC bones, as demonstrated above). Perhaps you have a better example made with cfx? Can you send me a cfx file that shows this? Also, I can’t figure out how using cfx one would produce a muscle bulging effect and other arbitrary skin deformations.

3) This is just a matter of being a tad clever in your model design and your approach to attaching the skin. I would still choose this method over vertex asignment since I find vertex assignment tiresome. Probably there are better systems out there. Maybe a blend of the two techniques. But since for the vast majority of models this is more than adequate there is no need to change it.

So… perhaps in ’03.

Richard

Here is the same thing in 3DC. In my opinion this better shows how a andquot;jointandquot; should look. This is especially true when you view the shaded version on the right.

Alex,

I have been looking at bones in more detail. I did a lot of thinking yesterday about the requirements for a more sophisticated weighted bones system for 3DC. After thinking about it for a while I realized that there were real problems with bone systems that exclusively use andquot;weightingandquot;. I’ve decided that 3DC’ bone system is actually superior to the one you have demonstrated. But perhaps you convince me otherwise.

I’ve attached a picture from a program you recommend. The unweighted skin on the left is obviously skewed and look wrong. However, the skin on the right that is supposed to show how a sophisticated weighted bones system is superior, to me, shows the exact opposite. This is not a proper look for a boned object. It is more like a deform. There should be a crease not a continous curve. And based on what I see, it could be quite difficult to produce a proper look using this style of weighting.

If one were deforming a spine this might be a good look. For example a dolphin deformed using this technique would look good. If you were deforming an object like this with 3DC you would use the Bend operation.

Richard

Thanks Richard, the 3DC Pro is getting better and
I am pleased of the tools it provides.

I’d like to see more features for groups, like someone
upstair said, flip a group instead merged. For me, I
think the group should be able to be copied, flipped,
added to library, etc, while users still have control
over it (to flip one object or the whole group).

Also, the chamfer tool is great for modelling, would you
please make it as the scale tool, so that user can
choose the amount he/she wishes to chamfer over the
edge, instead of chamfering it and adjust it?

Till now I’m missing an align or center function. For example: to align the center of a sphere in the center on the top of a cube.

Yours Seravajan

I have been thinking about what can be added, some of this might be a little dreamy but oh well this is what we want right.

I have been working on character animation so here is my suggestions for that.
Hair- I think that this is a very intense oporation but it is the cutting edge. andnbsp;And I think that Direct x (Corana) might help with this but don’t quote me on that. andnbsp;Also the new GeForce 4 handles this really well(Not that I have one just that I looked at some of their samples).
Cloth- Very helpful for realistic character animation. Check out GeForce 4

When using the surface tool a tool to help shape like the deform tool.

A tool that will allow you to create cirlces on the surface of a object for extrustion.

A tool that will let you morph from one object into another.
ex. A cube into the letter C and then into a something else.

There you go let you know more when I think of them.
Thanks for all the new work. andnbsp;I tried out the new turtioral wow that was great I had alot of fun and learned alot too. andnbsp;I am very impressed with this program.
Ken

My 2p worth…

Like Seravajan – the ability to align objects would be a big step (unless it is already there ?)
The ability to view some objects in wire and some in flat at the same time.
The ‘tab’ between boxes to overwrite the old values.
Hidden line in wire mode.
To be able to split 3dc over multiple monitors / desktops ?

Hey richard, for the solid rendering outline thing, couldnt you just act like every edge on the entire thing was selected? Just a thought.

Simon

Simon,

Unfortunately not. The performance woud be very poor.

Richard

<!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –> one more small hope for future 3dc

many different special effects..

later…

Just a thought, but i think a cool feature for rendering would be to be able to right click on an object and select like andquot;Render in wireframeandquot; or andquot;Render flatandquot; or something like that. You could do some cool effects with it.