New Director 2003-12-17 - By Thomas Higgins
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Simon,
> I'm sort of new to the list, so I'm still just learning who's
> who.
Ok, well for starters I'm Tom Higgins, Product Specialist and QA engineer
for Director. Along with a few other folks (notably Christophe Leske, a
regular on this list) I was one of the key feature testers for 3D in
Director 8.5. I'm a long-time Macromedian (just over 5 years, if you count
that as "long-time" I s'pose) and I think Director is one of the greatest
things since sliced bread. One might even say Director is "de lekkerste"
(see my sig, it means something like "the tastiest").
> I want to create characters in max, combining multiple morph
> targets for facial animation and character studio for all the
> other animation.
>
> Currently I can't because there is no morpher modifier in
> shockwave 3D. I tried to write lingo that would manually
> interpolate between two meshes, but it doesn't work because
> the w3D exporter from max randomizes the vertex order when
> it exports meshes.
As you've surmised the exporter just doesn't allow this as you can't get
predictable vertice results that would allow you to use the meshDeform
modifier to animate between nor a morph modifier that would support this
exporting natively. :(
> Also, very knowledgable and helpful people (on this list)
> have informed me that you can't do mesh deforming stuff on
> things that are set up with bonesplayer.
And they're right. The bonesPlayer and meshDeform modifiers can in fact both
be added to a single model, but the problem is that the bonesPlayer modifier
wants to constantly set the location of all the vertices in all the model's
meshes. Thus, the bonesPlayer modifier would stomp on any changes you made
via the meshDeform modifier and so it's really pointless to try using them
together.
> Is there anything that can be done to talk macromedia into
> developing some sort of morphing modifier that would work with
> the bonesplayer? Just think how great the workflow would be,
> and the results it would allow you to achieve in director...
I think that long before we worry about doing a morphing modifier we'd worry
about: pixel shaders, bump maps, real-time shadows, performance
improvements, hardware anti-aliasing, improvements to ray casting, etc.
There are *many* things that folks want implemented in SW3D, not that a
morphing modifier is a bad idea, it's a *really*sweet* one, but if I or you
can convince anyone to get 3D changes in then I believe there's a rather
large laundry list of things to take care of first (z-depth sorting on
semi-transparent models anyone?)
In general I think a release of the SDK/XDK for 3D would allow 3rd parties
to begin adding these types of features so it wouldn't be all up to
Macromedia. The trouble is that we haven't yet released that to the public
(again, the contract with Intel and other technological concerns have
prevented Macromedia from doing this yet) and until it is the task is left
to us (MACR) to handle such requests. Ugh.
Have you considered using a skeletal head to make your character "talk"?
Create a bone cage with a jaw and facial points of control, then to "speak"
you determine the phoneme(s) required and then move your bones between those
positions? Have a look at something I put together during D8.5 for
reference:
<http://www.directordev.com/learning/demo_movies/3D/modifiers/bonesPlayer/li
ngobones_player/default.htm>
Or you can take a look at what the folks at IMS3D have done:
<http://www.ims3d.com/>
There are a few other solutions out there, hopefully something will spark
the idea that solves your problem.
I hope that helps!
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Macromedia
DIRECTOR, de lekkerste!
...
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