Animation

[Barry]

Added a little more to tutorial 2 on my site plus following screenshot.
No idea if Blender will be of any use for SS5 at present. I can't get vrml2 to carry textures with scsript file from version 2.43.

Perhaps I am missing something but with no replies I have no idea.

Same applies to the forecast obj. files as precise information seems sparse. Obj animation for say 100 frames also creates 100 seperate files.

See previous posts, re Blender plug-in etc.



Screenshot added to tutorial.
Barry

[Barry]

edited

[Barry]

I think it is worth mentioning that although we only used a box in the animation any object can be made to act the same.
I made a seaplane a while ago and included in some of my very early Stentec sceneries. Got it to float in the Stentec simulators OK on 2 the floats.

Just tried it now as an animation the same way as the box tutorial, as keep all the blend files. Animations don't have to be small as animated it over say 300 metres taking off and looping the loop in a circular path (looping the loop was accidental ).

Don't know if small movements of a sailing ship say in port between 2 quays could also be done as a animation for background movements.

However I don't know even if Blender would still work for SS5, as detailed previously, but at least you know how animation can/could be used.

The other methods are the animation can be linked to a path and follow the twists and turns.

With people. horses, etc "bones" are linked to the seperate mesh.

Stentec mentioned a long time ago, years ago now I think, that they were making an animated old style windmill....that would be interesting to try and get working in Blender. , but would need a lot of experimenting to try and get it to work.

Whether any of my animation tutorial are relevant to SS5, some may be, but anybody's guess.

Barry

[Jeroen Schlaman]

The problem with .obj and animations is that this format doesn't support/save keyframe values and times.
Blender 'solves' this by writing a file for every single frame you say. But what we also need to really animate these files are the keytimes itself.
I don't know if and how Blender exports this (?)

[Barry]

Hello Jeroen you can work in key frames or curves

The blend animation is on above page to download.
I can't test it as nothing to view obj in.
If you export as obj. wavefront you can click on animation and other settings in the export panel that pops up.

All the export file types are script files, written by third parties as open source. That is the problem with the vrml2 I mentioned as with not exporting textures.
Possibly the script was slightly changed or line missed out, etc.
I don't know anything about programming/writing scripts, etc.
Possibly the functions have changed in Blender but I think it is just the scripts which are in scripts folder in Blender.

Writing 5th tutorial for creating boat from cube using lattice deformation.
However the conundrum now is will Blender be usable for SS5 even without animation just for objects and boats.

Barry

[Barry]

edited

[Jeroen Schlaman]

Hello Barry,

I've tried to export your animation using Blender. Indeed I got about 100 separate .obj files and .mtl files.
.mtl defines the materials (textures, colors, etc.)
Each .obj contains the faces from the state of the mesh at the framenumber from the file.

In Blender, they indeed use keyframes. But these keyframes are not exported into the .obj files.
The time-information doesn't exist. Information like "how long takes the whole information" or "what's the time between frame 11 and 12" is not available and for playing animations a must.

Greets,
Jeroen Schlaman
Stentec Developer

[stallina]

How long could a human being be kept in "suspended animation"? I read a report stating that it was still completely unknown how long we could keep a human being in suspended animation, but, in another book I read that any longer than 200-300 years would be completely impossible. Obviously we're talking about tomorrow's technology. In both cases they we're talking keeping astronauts in stasis on long term voyages, ie: interstellar travel.