Attached Link: New Toon Figure from MDP

Gotta love this place! There was this disussion in the forum (see link) about a new figure from MDP. Its a great looking toon figure, which inspired me to try out the Next Generation Inkulator program, which supports color. Attached is a sample render. It's now what you know, its who you know... This is a fabulous figure!!! A tip of the hat to MDP and all the great folks here and their talents!!

She's practically made for Inkulator images. :-) Yours looks great. Thanks again to you, too. I love Inkulator.

When is the Inkulator Color version coming out?

The new version, known as InkMaster, will be out in January (I hope). The only question is closed or open source.

Good work. The lines are superior to what I've seen done using Poser4 or 5.

Looks cool! Can't wait to check it out! Thanks

Wonderful!!! :] Fish

Open or closed source... One option would be to keep the executables free, but make the source available commercially. A lot of Delphi stuff is distributed in this way.

You've clearly put a lot of work into Inkulator/InkMaster, and it would be good to see you benefit from it.

You beat me to it. I was thinking of doing an Inkulator render with her. I can't wait until your colour version comes out. Will animation still be available?

Looks great. Will there be a mac version? Love esther

Animation will still be a part of it, and as far as the Mac version, does your machine run java 1.4.2 by any chance?

i think so - there's a pluggin in my java folder caled Java 1.4.2 Plugin Settings

Hmmm, java-based inkulator grin That being said, I would prefer open-source for two reasons. First and foremost, I'm a programmer and I'd love to dabble with the code. You'd be amazed at just how much I fiddle with the internals of when given the chance grin The second being, if (as I assume from your above "java 1.4.2" comment) it IS coded in Java, it would not be too hard to reverse engineer the code. Don't believe me? Run the DJ Java Decompiler (http://members.fortunecity.com/neshkov/dj.html) on the compiled class files. You'll be amazed at how readable the result is. While I understand you wish to make money from the work you've done (after all, it is how I make a living) - Java is not the langauge to distribute executables in if you wish to keep the source a secret. Due to the whole byte-code format and restrictions on the class files made for security & compatibility reasons - it is too easy to reverse engineer...

Eternl_Knight: Yeah, even after all these years and obsfucators, one can still reverse-engineer java easily enough. Currently, I'm in C++ now, and would only go to Java if I go open source 100%. Open source also has the appeal of being less of a hassle: I wouldn't have the contract support issues that you do with paying customers. BTW, if you really want to dabble in the code, its up at sourceforge: http://inkulator.sourceforge.net, I would love any suggestions or whatever.

Are you saying that the "colour inking" (not a spelling mistake - it's 'colour' in Australia grin) code is up at sourceforge? I was under the impression that it was only the black & white inking code up there...

you're right. The color stuff isn't there yet. But what's there still can use some help.

I've already got the code to that. Thanks though. I'm looking at a PZ3 reader/parser for another project I'm working on, and should that pan out - I'm going to see if I can (a) import camera settings, (b) calculate approximate inking settings from the first light in the file, and (c) see if I can automate animation without having to export a tonne of OBJ's. The final bit is going to be the hardest as (let's be honest) the technique Poser uses for joints & skinning is a little wierd. Perhaps a Python plugin would be easier...

Sounds cool. That PZ3 reader wouldn't be open source by any chance????

Unfortunately, no. The project on which I'm working is commercial - I wouldn't feel right open-sourcing something that I am selling to a client. That said, the PZ3 reader is not the hard part of the project. One could probably write a simple PZ3 parser in a day with knowledge on how to lex/yacc (flex/bison, Antler, any of the "compiler compilers" out there). All you would need to do is write up a basic "grammar" for the file. The hard part isn't reading it in - the hard part is using the data once you've got it structured. For example, it's (relatively) easy to extract the setup data for the joints, etc from a PZ3/CR2... the hard part is replicating Poser's skinning technique.