Subject: Re: VTU Article
From: Stephen Bailey <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 1995 15:41:31 -0500

At 10:57 AM 12/6/95 -0500, you wrote:
>    Thanks for the tuturoial; concisely written.  I was wondering, however,
>if you could perhaps elaborate on the way you managed to create morph
>targets with spline cages while keeping the point order the same.
>
>

We use a patcher.p plugin that was specially written for us last summer. I
think a similar plugin is available now from the Newtek BBS/ftp site.

The basic idea is that you create your spline cage. Then, you select each
patch area, copy it to another layer, and give it a surface name (i.e. quad
1). Keep doing this until the entire cage is copied, with each patch
quadrant having it's own surface name. Splines will overlap, but that's OK.
The autopatcher works (atleast ours does) using a text file as the plugin's
argument. The text file lists, in order, the surface names and the settings
for knots/lengths.

The trick (and it's not so easy) is to set up the cage points and
accompanying text file so that the adjoining points between quadrants line
up point-for-point. This takes a bit of time and hair pulling, but it's
necessary if you want quadrants to patch seemlessly.

Once the patcher is finished, you'll need to kill the splines from the
object and merge points. If you complete these actions IN ORDER each time,
your point order will remain the same for each patched target. We then kill
all polygons, convert points to polys (not necessary), and save as a new
target object.

Hope this makes sense. A co-worker is supposed to be working on an article
for LW PRO outlining this process. He and his wife just had a beautiful baby
boy, so I'm not sure how soon this article will see the light of day.

Anyway, good luck.

SGB

S.G. Bailey
Senior Lightwave Animator
Will Vinton Studios