Re: question on pfSequence node

New Message Reply Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

Jim Helman (jimh++at++surreal)
Wed, 24 May 95 14:30:23 -0700

pfSequence is for pre-computed animation sequences. Using
one instead of one or more DCSes with instanced geometry is
basically making a time-space tradeoff. Pre-computed
sequences are very cheap to render, but consume memory
because instances are flattened out. It's really not needed
if you have a few animated DCSes, but if you have many of
copies of an object containing many DCSes, it can save quite
a bit of push/mult/popping in the graphics pipe.

In this case, you would create a pfSequence with SCSes as
children (so they can be flattened) and then pfFlatten() the
pfSequence so that SCSes are eliminated and the transformations
are applied directly to the geometry in place rather than at
run time.

However when this would only eliminate a few or few dozen DCSes
in the scene, it probably isn't worthwhile. Instead, you
should directly animate the DCS(es) using callbacks or
application code (at least until we get Engines in Performer).

rgds,

-jim helman

jimh++at++surreal.asd.sgi.com
415/390-1151

New Message Reply Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Mon Aug 10 1998 - 17:51:30 PDT

This message has been cleansed for anti-spam protection. Replace '++at++' in any mail addresses with the '@' symbol.