Attached Link: http://ockhamsbungalow.com/PPP/writer1.zip

?? You mean it actually 'draws' in Poser, or do the actuall lines come from a texture or postwork?

It actually draws. It leaves little copies of the "lead" embedded in the paper. The "after" GIF is a little misleading because it keeps looping. The trace appears just where the pencil hits the paper, and then it stays there.

LOL Ockham - you've done it again!! Now how about a "razor" that gets rid of unwanted hairs? (sorry - just a joke..) Cheers, Diolma

Cool! You guys are realy amazing with the Python scripts!!

I recently bought a good book on Python scripting without realizing that it assumes the reader already know quite a bit of Perl, which I don't. I wonder if anyone can recommend a book that would be appropriate for a beginner with minimal programming skills. (Simple Visual Basic and HTML, if that counts.) ...Or does one actually have to learn Perl first? Thanks for any advice. ockham, your work is really amazing!

A pretty good book is "Python and Tkinter Programming" by John Grayson. You're better off starting from scratch, I think; I had a hell of a hard time unlearning long-held C ideas. If you have the feel of Basic, you'll catch Python nicely.

O'Reilly ( www.oreilly.com ) have "Learning Python". There is also the "Cookbook" and "in a Nutshell". They have TOCs and sample chapters for each book so you can get a feel for which ones might be useful.

Thanks very much for the recommendations, I've written them all down. Actually I have the O'Reilly book, it looks excellent, but that's the one I referred to earlier, that suggests you know some Pearl before diving in. Maybe I should just ignore that. :-) Thanks again, I appreciate your advice.

It actually draws? A couple years ago, I gave some friends the zen kit for Japanese brush writing. Dip brush in water, practice the calligraphy on the board which went black as ink, and then the letters dry and vanish. It had much this same feel. :) Thanks! Carolly

O.o Wooow! Just when I though I'd seen everything!! This is STUNNING!!

And... and.. with the script bushi made... you could make the writing animation automatic.. perhaps.. with a character holding the pencil and all

Oh, no! Not the hand drawing the hand drawing the hand?!? Arrrrrrgh! :sound of feet rapidly running:

Adjusting the height of the trace: The Writer script always puts its dots at a fixed Ytran with respect to the item named Paper. I could have inserted a height-adjust slider, but that would require many tries to get the result right. (The adjustment would be "blind" at that stage.) Best way is the good old Carrier trick. Set up your actual paper surface as a child of a simple Box prop, and name the box "paper". Then the Writer script will parent its dots to the platform at its standard height, and you can slide the real surface up or down until the trace looks right. This will be especially important if your real surface has some thickness.

Wow. Just wow. :] Fish

What will you come up with next? Just when I start running out of ideas you come from the left-field and through a new ball into play. Very interesting idea. Thanks.

I find this very interesting and I am trying to get it to work. I have followed the steps and I still can not get anything to show on the "paper". I know I must be doing something wrong. Any help would be great. Thanks skee

First thought: Scaling may be a problem, especially if you've parented the 'Nib' to a pen or brush or something. Look at the three (x,y,z) scale figures after parenting. If they show like 0 or 1% on the parameter dial, try cranking them up a little.

Thanks ,I will try this. I did scale the paper(one sided square) and I did not parent the nib to anything. If I drop the paper to the floor and also the nib, will this not put everything on the same plane? The paper was rotated on the X to 90 degrees so that it was flat on the floor. hope this was right. skee

Another possibility is that the nib might not have been close enough to the paper. The script tries to make lines only where the pen is touching; there's only a little room for error (I think 0.001 poser units). You might try setting a Min limit on the nib's Ytran, so that it can't go below the paper.

I will have to try to figure this out at a later time. I have a dental appointment now. I hope that I can contact you later about this. Thanks for your help so far. I will type at you later. skee

ockham, sorry to have been gone so long. I have tried moving the nib on the y both up and down and nothing shows on the paper. Do I need to have some other py script like tiler on. The writer script runs and the animation works but, still nothing on paper. I have tried it in both poser5 and poser4pro. Is there something I need? If I set the paper to drop to floor and the nib to drop to floor, the nib goes below the paper level. So I tried to set the nib to .001 on Y , still no drawing on the paper. I know that it is just something that I am doing wrong. Still trying skee

ockham, I did it and it's great. The problem was that I was trying to set the point of the nib to the paper,not the wide part. In your instructions tell people to set the upper(wide part of the nib ) to the surface of the paper. I was looking at the nib as the point of a pencil, when it was really a wide drawing tool. Sorry for the misunderstanding. It really is a great script. skee

Great title for this thread! Thanks again. Your ingenuity never ceases to amaze me. :O)