What are the limitations of object sequences?

[TheBadger]

Hello

Just want to know if there is a point that object sequences for animation in TG will stop showing results.

Suppose file size is irrelevant for a second. Now think of just one single object... A bird maybe, or a furry animal.

Now lets say you have this perfectly detailed bird and have animated it siting on a twig. The bird is moving, the feathers ruffle. The bird moves back and forth on the branch... perfectly photo real!

Will All of this come in, in an object sequences?

How about in the case of the fury animal? Suppose it has wind animated into it, so the fur blows like in a breeze. What do you think?

I have plans for something like this. But I don't even want to try if anyone knows for a fact that its a dead end.
Are there any concrete facts to this end? Anything I should read? Or have we not seen this here before?

I dont know. You tell me.

Thanks.

[cyphyr]

Object sequences will have the animation information contained in the obj or lwo file in them. So if your model of a furry mammal had all the hairs individually modelled and animated in the wind and as it moved it's head then all of this would be animated. If however the obj file was making use of a procedural hair/fur/feather rendering method then these would not be imported with the obj sequence and not therefore animated.
So fur I think may be a problem but feathers and possibly clumps of hair could be animated with an object sequence.
Hope this makes sense
Richard

[Oshyan]

Yes, but rendering a model with individual geometry feathers would probably be rather demanding, the OBJ would be quite large, and depending on the length of the sequence it could take up quite a lot of space on disk. Just something to be aware of.

Honestly unless there is a lot of interaction between your bird-on-a-branch and the Terragen landscape around, or you want to do some big, dramatic camera move away from said bird, you'd probably be better off just creating an environment map in TG3 and using that for lighting and background in another 3D app to render the bird and tree branch.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

Thanks Oshyan and Richard.

I don't doubt you Oshyan. This will be my first time in both cases. I would like to try it in addition to the traditional way (for lack of a better term)
I want to finally see how this all works my self, and really be able to compare based on hands on knowledge (rather than my theory).

It would also be nice to be able to post the same scene done in each method to have a clear example of the differences in appearance. Right now I really think that the light play on the object (depending on the light in the first place) will be better if rendered in Terragen vs composited.

The trick is that Im not a compositor really. So I don't know how fair this test will be. But Ill give compositing my best shot too.

It will take a while anyway. And in the end, the file size for the object sequence may become impossible to deal with. We'll see.

Cheers.