Thank you for your interest.
Emmanuel wrote: ↑22 Nov 2021, 15:52
... a
new segment of the selected face at every frame. The object will look like having a growing arm. ... Do you think ptsxpy could handle such an animation ?
Unfortunately, Caligari tSx API seems not to be able to do such sweep animation as far as I tried. We can specify e_tsxKFT_SWEEP to SobjSetFrame() since tSx API for tS5.0 (or 4.3) but the created animation works only in the points selected mode of tS6.6 as the API document says;
e_tsxKFT_SWEEP, // floor move, rotate, and scale (valid only for selected floor of active sweep)
(Besides, unlike move/rotate, key frames are NOT complemented by minor frames automatically for e_tsxKFT_SWEEP and we must calculate the complement to get a smooth animation even if tS can do sweep animation.)
In order to do the sweep animation with tSx API, perhaps it's necessary to make the final form (completely swept to many sections) first, fold all sections like
an old folding camera by moving all vertices to the "root", mark the time as 0, and move all sections other than the floor in a unit time, move all sections other than 1st and 2nd floors in next unit time, move other than three...
By the way, my "Glass Slide (2001)" (the 3rd YouTube image in this topic's 1st page) uses the tSx API's incompleteness of sweep animation. The script makes something like a course of a "roller coaster" by repeating single segment sweep, time frame advancing, and camera rotation/translation to the top face's normal. As a result, the camera runs on the "STATIC" course (i.e. the course has no sweep animation) in the shape of a text "trueSpace".
- Drawing "t" from the viewpoint z=infinite.
- slide_5b.jpg (23.99 KiB) Viewed 2391 times
Emmanuel wrote: ↑22 Nov 2021, 15:52
With metaballs or SubDivision, this may allow to simulate growing organics, somehow the way snail's tentacles/eyes behave !
To submit such "growing" animations to the Caligari "3D Animation Contest" was one of my motive to develop the ptsxpy in about 2000. I soon noticed tS5 (trial version) takes all night to do repetitive hundreds single sweep though. It was not a matter whether it can do sweep animation or not.