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Carmack on D3 on Linux, and 3D Cards
drfalken writes "Despite recent reports from id management indicating that releasing for Linux is more trouble than it's worth, John Carmack has reaffirmed his commitment in his recent .plan: "It is still our intention to have a simultaneous release of the next product on Windows, MacOS-X, and Linux." This is his first .plan update for months and coming hot on the heels of his MacWorld Tokyo appearance." Actually this part is secondary after his
discussion of 3D cards. Interesting stuff.
When I originally discussed what features we wanted in the animation system with the animator, I suggested adding controls for parametric facial animation, and he was basically horrified. His response was that he could do a much better job by hand. "This (animation) is what I do.", he said. After seeing the results of what he can accomplish by hand, I tend to agree.
I've looked into the research that's been done on parametric facial animation, and while it's impressive, I haven't seen anything that approaches the quality that an animator can do by hand. Even when the set of expressions it uses are manually created, the expressiveness doesn't compare to the subtlety an animator can put into it.
While the generality of a parametric system would be great for generating massive amounts of facial animation, as well as animation for dynamic content (such as net-based voice communication), if the animator is willing and able to handle to workload, I am more than happy to stick with hand animation. The technical challenge would be quite enjoyable, but in the end, I'll take a limited amount of high quality hand animation over an unlimited quantity of mediocre computer generated animation.
Jim Dosé
id Software
One of the reasons why Linux is so hard to support is that every distribution of Linux has a different set of standards. They have different directories to put config files in, and different formats for the config files. Distros come with different versions of libraries, some which break binary compatibility between versions. Different shells and window managers make it difficult to help a user install or configure something.
Linux distros need to start following some set of standards, mainly configuration standards that will allow people to help new users better at installing libraries and configuring the system. Until then, Linux is just fighting with itself and preventing commercial software from coming in.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
We don't have any technology specifically directed towards character features. The animation was done pretty conventionally in Maya.
Our new animator comes from a film background, and we are finding that the skills are directly relevent in the new engine.
John Carmack