#Imaging Program Required
10 messages in this thread
Perhaps someone here can help me. I want to be able to take a group
of scanned house photos, and replace the exterior brick, siding, etc.
with a variety of scanned in brick samples to see what different
houses look like with different exteriors. The problem is that the
people using this will be your average salesman, not a graphics or
computer professional. It needs to be 'programmed' so they can just
point and click various house and brick samples and see the results.
If anyone knows of such a product, or knows someone who can create
one please let me know. Oh ya, one last problem… it has to be used
on a typical IBM compatible (386/486) PC.
A simple solution would be to pre-render, or create ahead of time,
all the possiblities (unless there are a prohibitively large amount
of them) and have someone who does multimeda authoring (try the
MACROMEDIA forum) to create a program that will link these images
together the way you want. If this isn't clear, I'll explain more.
Hope this helps some.
Thanks for the suggestion. If the option count was fairly low this
would be the way to go, however I think there would be too many
combinations. There would probably be 50 or more brick samples, a
dozen houses, 6 roofing colors, and 6 trim types. I haven't done the
math but it doesn't look good <g>. Also, if we added a new brick type
it would mean doing a *lot* of new image editing.
Tim.
If you just created the component image elements separately (ie all
roofs, all trims, all sidings), you could use a program like DTA to
composit them on demand. The MM autoring program would simply need
to call DOS and provide the correct syntax for DTA to do the
compositing. The finished image could then be called-up and
displayed by the authoring program.
This has two big advantages: 1) you don't have to have to create and
store all the final combinations — just the components; 2) You can
add component images at any time without having to do a bunch of
extra work.
Thanks for the reply. Sounds like what I'm looking for. Could you
explain your suggestion in a little more detail. I think I understand
the concept you are suggesting but I'm not familiar with DTA or
multimedia authoring tools. What exactly is DTA, who makes it, and
what MM authoring program are you talking about?
> Could you explain your suggestion in a little more detail. <
The idea is that you create each object with either an Alpha channel
or a key color for compositing purposes. If using 3DS for your
modeling, it's straight forward – just render each component of the
house individually (siding, roof, fascia, trim, etc.), with all other
objects as matte objects. Select Render Alpha in the render dialog
and it will generate the alpha channel. If you're using photoshop,
you'll have to manually create a matte for each house component, then
save it as an alpha channel using the channels option. A key color
(like a green background will work, but it's not as clean an can
cause problems with similar colors in the subject of the image.
Repeat this process for each style of each part of the house (ie 3 shingle
types, three siding types, etc.). You might also want to create a simple tile
of the material for use in your MM app for the user to select in assocaition
with the relevant house compenent.
Now comes DTA (Dave's Targa Animator). It's a command line utlity for
converting formats and for compositing TGA files. It may be in the libs of
this forum or if not, look in the GRAPHDEV or one of the other graphics forums.
Because it's a command line utility, it only requires soure and destination
image names and a few parameters — no GUI to interfere with your MM app.
All your authoring program needs to do is give the user a way of identifying
the proper styles and then construct the appropriate command line for DTA to
process the images. This a straight-forward programming concept. The hard
part is getting the authoring program to interface with DOS. I have only
rudimentary knowlege of authoring apps, but the key is to find one that lets
you pass a command to DOS and control the screen output (so the user isn't
looking at a bunch of strange DOS commands flying accross the screen).
Once the command is executed and your finished image is produced by DTA, your
MM app can load and display the image for the user.
At this point, I suggust you download DTA (probably DTA.ZIP) and read the docs.
This should give you a better idea of whether this approach will work for you.
After that, start looking for an MM authoring app that lets you pass commands
to DOS. There are probably others in this forum that could recommend one for
you.
— James — Choreo Motion —
Thanks for the detailed reply. I think I understand the principle
behind your suggestion. I do have Photoshop, however I've barely used
it as of yet. If I'm going to attempt to do this myself, I'll have to
spend a significant amount of time with Photoshop 1st. I'm assuming
if you knew of a particular MM authoring program that would work in
this app. you would have mentioned it, so I'll have to browse for
multimedia related forums and post queries there. Thanks for the
suggestions
>>If you just created the component image elements separately (ie all roofs,
all trims, all sidings), you could use a program like DTA to composit them on
demand. <<
Cool! I didn't realize DTA could do stuff like that. I'll have to look into
that. Thanks!
Best Regards,
Brandon
DesignTec
You might also check out Asymetrix Toolbook for MM authoring. It has
a fully progammable interface that I think is more intuitive than
Director.
iAGREE, YOUR QUICKEST ANSWER WOULD BE MICROMEDIA DIRECTOR.