dhenton1000 opened this issue on Oct 05, 2004 ยท 19 posts
dhenton1000 posted Tue, 05 October 2004 at 7:17 PM
Attached Link: New Toon Figure from MDP
xoconostle posted Tue, 05 October 2004 at 8:07 PM
She's practically made for Inkulator images. :-) Yours looks great. Thanks again to you, too. I love Inkulator.
Veritas777 posted Tue, 05 October 2004 at 8:34 PM
When is the Inkulator Color version coming out?
dhenton1000 posted Tue, 05 October 2004 at 9:16 PM
The new version, known as InkMaster, will be out in January (I hope). The only question is closed or open source.
mateo_sancarlos posted Tue, 05 October 2004 at 11:07 PM
Good work. The lines are superior to what I've seen done using Poser4 or 5.
Staby posted Wed, 06 October 2004 at 2:28 AM
Looks cool! Can't wait to check it out! Thanks
FishNose posted Wed, 06 October 2004 at 5:04 AM
Wonderful!!! :] Fish
steerpike posted Wed, 06 October 2004 at 5:27 AM
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.
Kenmac posted Wed, 06 October 2004 at 5:50 PM
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?
estherau posted Wed, 06 October 2004 at 6:50 PM
Looks great. Will there be a mac version? Love esther
I aim to update it about once a month. Oh, and it's free!
dhenton1000 posted Wed, 06 October 2004 at 8:02 PM
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?
estherau posted Wed, 06 October 2004 at 8:36 PM
i think so - there's a pluggin in my java folder caled Java 1.4.2 Plugin Settings
I aim to update it about once a month. Oh, and it's free!
Eternl_Knight posted Wed, 06 October 2004 at 9:12 PM
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...
dhenton1000 posted Wed, 06 October 2004 at 10:49 PM
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.
Eternl_Knight posted Thu, 07 October 2004 at 1:17 AM
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...
dhenton1000 posted Thu, 07 October 2004 at 3:05 AM
you're right. The color stuff isn't there yet. But what's there still can use some help.
Eternl_Knight posted Thu, 07 October 2004 at 6:52 PM
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...
dhenton1000 posted Thu, 07 October 2004 at 7:56 PM
Sounds cool. That PZ3 reader wouldn't be open source by any chance????
Eternl_Knight posted Thu, 07 October 2004 at 9:47 PM
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.