Re: pfFlatten concerns

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Marcus Barnes (marcus++at++multigen.com)
Tue, 7 Nov 1995 10:39:11 -0800

On Nov 7, 11:21am, Angus Dorbie wrote:
> Subject:
> You only need to worry about pfFlatten if it is called above transformations
> & then only if you reference data below a transformation elsewhere or want
> to modify the transformation.
> For most models this won't make any difference, even if you subsequently
> transform the model. You may have to watch out with instancing, or degree of
> freedom beads.
> For the tank example I wouldn't expect you to have to disable
> the flattening unless you used the modeller to instance the tank or unless
> you have DOFs in the model eg articulated turret, if you didn't plan on
> moving the turret relative to the tank you'd still want to flatten.
> Instancing is the real gotcha when flattening.
> Experiment before disabling the flatten & clean modes, you may not have to.
> --
> Angus Dorbie,
> Silicon Graphics Ltd, UK
> dorbie++at++reading.sgi.com
>-- End of excerpt from Angus Dorbie

All good advice ...

pfFlatten() in Performer 1.2 has a number of bugs that can affect this
scenario.
I mentioned the pfSCS - pfDCS one previously. This is likely to bite you since
both node types are present in your model. By moving all your DOF beads to the
right in your hierarchy you can avoid this bug (no right hand siblings).

pfFlatten can also cause pfClone'd pfLightPoint's to core dump. It also fails
to transform pfLightSources ...

These are all fixed in Performer 2.0 :-)

Regards.

--
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