Didn't have the chance to blog daily for this week. Been sick for this whole week, and even had to go on MC on the 30th (Tuesday).
I worked on creating the animations for the 3D models for the most of this week. First, I worked with Blender. Got the animations up fairly quickly, but they are just some simple mesh animations. However, the frames got lost when the .dae file is being converted to a .pod via the Collada2POD utility. Tried searching on the web to get help, but couldn't find any. I even resorted to posting on their forum, the PowerVR forums for help. Did not get any reply though, even now.
Hence, I decided to try exporting the model directly into a .pod file. But in order to do that, I would have to work with either Autodesk 3D Studio Max, or Autodesk Maya. Plug-ins are only provided for these 2 modeling tools for exporting to a .pod file. Decided to make use of 3D Studio Max since one of our colleagues have the license for that.
Since 3D Studio Max can only be run on either a Windows or a Linux platform, I had to work with Bernard. He is also the one that has the license for the software. Talked to him for a bit and he allowed me to use the Windows PC at his desk, since he would be going for a course for 2 days. It was really nice of him.
But after that, Kevin ran bootcamp on the MacBook Pro and there is Windows installed. So instead of going over to Bernard's desk, I decided to work on the MacBook Pro instead. I got the trial version of 3D Studio Max installed and played around with it. I feel like I am a graphics designer when working with these modeling tools! It’s a whole new thing to me, and I had to look for tutorials to learn the various different functionalities in the modeling tool. Hence, it is another valuable learning process for me.
I worked with Gim Han as well so as to get the heart mesh from him. He sent me 3 different models that have different vertex sets. I managed to get the vertex animations up fairly quickly. We were using a technique called morphing to come up with the animations.
The problem came just when we thought that the animations were complete. When I tried exporting the model into a .pod file, the animations were missing. Then it came back to me. POD files do not support vertex animations. We had a discussion with Kevin, and decided that we should move on to the other components of our project first. While working on the other components, we would have to read up on other techniques that we could use to come up with the animations.
Hence, on Friday, we watched the podcast lectures to find out more on the UI controls for the iPad, namely the UISplitViewController and the UIPopoverView. I played around with these controls, and we discussed on our actual UI layout for the iPad application. Kevin, Zac and I gave our suggestions as to how the interface should look. My experience gained from working on my Major Project, which is also a medical application, helped quite a bit, since I was the one working on the UI then. We managed to derive at one that would give the best user experience.
I managed to get the UISplitViewController working, but there is still a problem when the interface orientation changes to landscape on the iPad. Somehow, the EAGLView cannot be seen at all, even though it is still there. Then we realized that it has got something to do with the animations when we draw the view. If the animation is stopped before the rotation, we could see the view clearly. However, the moment we turn the animation back on, it disappears from our sight once again.
Spent quite some time debugging, but still could not solve the problem. We would have to work on this next week.
I am glad that in TP, we get mant chances to work with others for our assignments. With this experience, I was able to work better with my colleagues whenever I needed help from them.
