The Underscore Archives

On 3 Jun 2008, at 16:54, Ben Reed wrote:

> One more thing to add that I forgot to mention first time aroudn is  
> that 2D avatars offer all that a 3D avatar can, and are much easier  
> to produce / edit for the average person. I have just finished a  
> degree course and my dissertation was on 3D for the Web and why it  
> hasnt taken off, its because 2D (eg a 128 x 128 image)  can get  
> across 95% of the message that a highly detailed 3D model (3D human  
> avatar  for example) could, even though the former takes a tiny  
> fraction of the time to create.


I always explained it by pointing out that if 3D was so much better  
than 2D, the bestseller lists would be filled with Pop-Up books.

Disney just figured this out too.  Back in 2004, they rashly ditched  
all their 2D animation resources, convinced that Pixar-esque 3D  
animation was the only way to go.  Ironically, pretty much the first  
thing they did when Pixar acquired Disney [ ;) ] in 2006 was back away  
from that position, and are now producing a new 2D film:

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_and_the_Frog


On 3 Jun 2008, at 16:51, Richard Davey wrote:

> It's extremely fast, and (I'm sure Tom will like this part) - the
> quality of the coding is mostly excellent

I thought it was closed source... Have you seen the code?

Anyway, all I've seen from Alternativa are those static demos:  while  
the camera can move about, the objects stay stationary.  That makes a  
*huge* difference.  Of course, I'm not saying it only does static  
stuff, but comparing Alternativa to PV3D using the demos alone isn't  
really fair!

PV3D, on the other hand, is all about moving objects, with even  
stationary stuff being treated as moving (which is the dumb part)

To be honest, writing a generic 3D engine like PV3D isn't hard... it's  
just a BIG job.  Alternativa obviously has some pretty neat  
optimisations, which I suppose aren't hard either, but take a lot of  
work => commercial budget.

It's not rocket science:  all of the ground covered by Alternativa,  
PV3D, Away3D, etc. has been gone over time and time again over the  
past few decades.  It's just a question of sitting down, reading  
enough SIGGRAPH papers, and writing the code.

Tom

-- 
Tom Gidden
http://gidden.net/tom