Alright, here's my graphics quandary.

Sephil Saga includes ships called exosuits, which are, to be concise, flying robots. Kind of like gundams.

There are about 4 of them, and I only made one myself. The rest are meshes purchased from Renderosity, for those who know what that is. The only problem is that for sprites I need banking and stuff, but I use Bryce 5 and there's no way to change the pose of the robots, because they're meshes and Bryce only likes primitives. Is there any (preferably free) program, such as strata, that I can do this with?

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Quote

Originally posted by Neon Soldier:
**Alright, here's my graphics quandary.

Sephil Saga includes ships called exosuits, which are, to be concise, flying robots. Kind of like gundams.

There are about 4 of them, and I only made one myself. The rest are meshes purchased from Renderosity, for those who know what that is. The only problem is that for sprites I need banking and stuff, but I use Bryce 5 and there's no way to change the pose of the robots, because they're meshes and Bryce only likes primitives. Is there any (preferably free) program, such as strata, that I can do this with?
**

Well check out the mondo super awesome Gundam 0083 teaser for the (long since) defunct TC ;).

Here's the problem. The cheaper the program you get, the lower quality the skinning you're going to get. Strata might support skeletons and the skinning of said skeleton, but I have absolutely no experience with the program. Well let my correct myself. Strata might be difficult for fully animating an object, but I suppose that you could use it to directly modify the mesh itself to make the pose that you want. Of course, this means that you'll need three copies of each mesh, one for each pose, and then you just stick one sprite set below the next, but that would be the easiest way to do it with a cheap program.

Matrix

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To the best of my knolidge, to accomplish this easily without direct mesh editing, A program on the order of Lightwave, Maya, or C4D would be required. Blender or Anim8or may be able to do it as well (both free) but might require some juggling to get the files into a compatable format.

Good Luck,
Joe

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-John Wayne

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Originally posted by jdh545:
**To the best of my knolidge, to accomplish this easily without direct mesh editing, A program on the order of Lightwave, Maya, or C4D would be required.
**

Easy is a very relative term. Making a good character rig is very tough. I mean very tough. Or how about very very tough. Although it might just simply be very very very tough. In any rate, for the simplicity of the things that you want to do (three poses only), editing the mesh itself is far faster and more easily controllable.

Matrix

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"Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought -- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things." - Woody Allen

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There is a free cut down C4D 6 CE version.but you can only get it of a 3D world CD.don´t know if bones are included though. And yes creating a good skeleton is really diffucult.

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And then there were silence.................

Strata 3D 3.7, or whatever the latest is, has inverse kinematics, or bones, but I haven't played with them too much. I just recently dug up my old Gundam models, made in Strata 3D 3.0.2, I could send one to you if you would like. It uses my method of posing the model, which worked pretty well, but wasn't perfect.

Of course, this was made from normal objects in Strata 3D, not meshes. As far as I've tried, Strata can only move around the individual polygons, or groups of them, so it isn't really feasible to modify the pose, or color it by hand. Also, Strata 3.7 does indeed allow skinning, but that is only a demo.

~ SpacePirate

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Try getting one of the early versions of Poser which are available from time to time on the front of magazines.

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Quote

Originally posted by what_is_the_matrix:
**Easy is a very relative term. Making a good character rig is very tough. I mean very tough. Or how about very very tough. Although it might just simply be very very very tough. In any rate, for the simplicity of the things that you want to do (three poses only), editing the mesh itself is far faster and more easily controllable.

Matrix

**

I agree, a good character rig is a pain, but a basic skeleton w/o an IK tree (all that would be required for a limited number of poses) is actually quite simple, all that would be required is basic bone placment and movment. Nothing more than that would be necessary. Honestly, I think it would be a good deal faster to do this than direct mesh editing, with all the juggleing that it would require. That is just I see it though.
Joe

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"Life is tough, but it's even tougher when you're stupid."
-John Wayne

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**Try getting one of the early versions of Poser which are available from time to time on the front of magazines.

**

point me to one.

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Quote

Originally posted by jdh545:
**I agree, a good character rig is a pain, but a basic skeleton w/o an IK tree (all that would be required for a limited number of poses) is actually quite simple, all that would be required is basic bone placment and movment. Nothing more than that would be necessary. Honestly, I think it would be a good deal faster to do this than direct mesh editing, with all the juggleing that it would require. That is just I see it though.
Joe

**

True, but there's stil the matter of getting an accurate skinning, and getting all of your parts to move like you want them too. Which is a pain in the --- yea. If the mesh isn't too complicated, then just moving the arms and legs shouldn't be too difficult.

Matrix

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"Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought -- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things." - Woody Allen

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