Subject: Re: Lightwave convenience
From: [email-masked] (Sean Cunningham)
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 17:54:51 -0800

adrian:

>         What Lightwave supports at the moment, is the ability to accept 
> simple mathematical equations for defining a point, or a rotation angle. 
> What the plugin Gonzalo was referring to is something which can relate 
> the motion of one object to another by a mathematica means. For example, 
> you tell your tire object to rotate, as the body of the car moves, and 
> the wheel will produce a realistic rotation depending on speed and 
> distance of the body of the car. And I think it also lets you 
> mathematically define paths( ie. have a pash to the shape of a sin curve.)

Ever since I started using Prisms I've been waiting for this functionality
to make its way to packages like Lightwave.  It's surprising that even now
few if any of Prisms' highend competition have installed expressions into
their warez.

In addition to doing things like spinning wheels, you can do stuff like
banking and rotations based on XZ, XY, etc. velocities and accelerations.
Add all kinds of cool "secondary" or "overlapping" actions to complex
objects by putting rotational lag on various parts. 

Hopefully you'll also be able to string multiple expressions together and
not be limited to just a single atan(), sin(), rand() or whatever by itself. 
I really suck at math but being able to see an expression graphed out in 
a curve editer makes it possible for even non-mathematicians to get a lot
out of expressions. 

-- 
                                             
  Digital Domain: [email-masked] | "...the whole idea of  politics
  N  e  t  c o m: [email-masked] |  is to  achieve  power  without 
  R e a l  World:   Sean C. Cunningham   |  possessing merit." -P.J. O'Rourke