If you love something, set it free (TAFA)

**MacReiter** · 01-08-2020, 01:33 AM

So, um, I've been pretty out of touch and swamped with Real Life (TM). A friend of mine just pointed out that people are still using TAFA and still trying to buy it, even though I let my website die of neglect...

Well, it's a new decade, so let's try this: https://macreitercreations.com

It's the same old version. But it still seems to get the job done

I would also like to say that I am _incredibly_ flattered by the support and reviews of my users. So sorry that I haven't been able to get TAFA2 going.

I hope some more of you find TAFA to be useful, and I'm always excited to see what people produce!

Thanks for everything!
Mac

**OnlineRender** · 01-08-2020, 02:54 AM

Legend ... cheers!

**TheLexx** · 01-08-2020, 03:54 AM

Oh isn't that great.

There is a chapter of instructions in Chapter 20 of the Timothy Albee book Lightwave 3D 8 Character Animation.

Thank you Mac.

**allabulle** · 01-08-2020, 04:10 AM

Nice!

**fishhead** · 01-08-2020, 05:13 AM

What a generous move!!
I purchased TAFA a few years back and have to say it still is the absolute go-to piece of software when it comes to morph/blendshape based animation. Pure joy to work with!!!
If you decide to release a TAFA2 you surely can count me in!
All the best and a great 20220 to you, too.

**lardbros** · 01-08-2020, 06:06 AM

Oh wow... those were the days. I remember using the demo and was astounded at the ease of getting lovely animation out of TAFA.

Can't say thanks enough for releasing this into the wild. Is it something you'd consider "githubbing" and opensourcing? Or is that going too far?

Thanks again... and can't reiterate how nice this tool was! Yay.

**Oldcode** · 01-08-2020, 06:24 AM

Please allow me to look like a total fool when I say I've never heard of TAFA. May I ask what is does? Some type of morph animation tool?

**TheLexx** · 01-08-2020, 06:44 AM

Originally Posted by Oldcode

Please allow me to look like a total fool when I say I've never heard of TAFA. May I ask what is does? Some type of morph animation tool?

Many years ago....
http://ta-animation.com/FA/

**raymondtrace** · 01-08-2020, 08:48 AM

Thank you!

**ianr** · 01-08-2020, 10:06 AM

Mac U always where a gentleman in my book.

One small point, where do we dig in to make Lwo3. loader ?

Have a good new Year & May the Road rise up to meet You !

**MacReiter** · 01-08-2020, 10:50 AM

Originally Posted by ianr

One small point, where do we dig in to make Lwo3. loader ?

That's a bit embarrassing, actually... But first, a little history

So, TAFA is C++, and was developed using MS VC6 and STLport (because VC6 had garbage for STL support). Unfortunately, STLport (at least, at the time) was not entirely compatible with what STL ended up being, so trying to move forward from that code base is made difficult. And then there's the problem of it being very, very low level Win32 SDK programming, so kind of bleah.

I tried to fix both of those issues, various times. Tried to port to "real" STL when VS 2005 came out. Even tried porting to Mac OSX (twice). Turned the core morphing engine into a Qt class at one point for a client...

And that's where things went sideways. I had Source Safe for revision control (hey, it was a long time ago). But somehow in the multiple update/rewrite branches, computer crashes, divorce, etc, things got muddled. I can't put my finger on a pile of source code that I can definitively say "this builds TAFA 1.2.2.8". Actually, at this point, I'm not sure I could find a coherent pile of code that would build any working version of TAFA. And I don't know if it matters. The real path forward needs a rewrite to take advantage of everything that's happened in the last 15 years. My rendering code was fast for the time, but it had some UV mapping issues, and free game engines abound. Starting with something like Unity would give me a lot of asset file format support out of the box, and hopefully still be low-latency enough to handle audio-sync work.

I dunno. If I can find something close, I guess I could github it and let it take on a life of its own... No promises, though!

**lardbros** · 01-08-2020, 11:37 AM

It's weird, it says you have 6 posts here at the Newtek forums, but I remember "back in the day" you were quite active on the forums....

Then I think I remembered... it was probably over at SpinQuad? Maybe?
I used to go there more than I did here, it was such a lovely place to hang out.

Well, whatever your plans are, and whatever you are doing now, good luck! Thanks for the extra info, I always find it really interesting to hear about the history of stuff like this.

**raymondtrace** · 01-08-2020, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by ianr

... One small point, where do we dig in to make Lwo3. loader ?...

Lack of LWO3 support is not terrible. Save out a copy from LW Modeler 2018 or 2019 as LWO2 to use in TAFA. The MDD from TAFA can be applied to the newer LWO3 object in Layout 2018 or 2019 (or LW 2020 as of next Tuesday).

Some other nice benefits...

TAFA seems to install and run well in Ubuntu with Wine.

It also runs well portably in Windows from a USB thumb drive, just like LW.