ICP Ideas
2 messages in this thread
1. A good idea, I'll drop of the characters. I've been trying to think of
ways to address these limitations and incompatibilities. 2. Again, same
question. I've pressed the creators of LightWave and Modeler to make the
name requesters the same length. The old InterChange had a fixed list of
about 64 colors, which most people regarded as a limitation. The new ICP
has a stupendous number of color names, generated by an algorithm, not a
table of pre-made values. 3. Yes, it's in the manual. 4. Yes, this
would be a good feature. 5. This would require artificial intelligence,
which means that no matter what we'd do, it wouldn't work right all the
time. 6. Yes, it would be easier to remove exact duplicate polygons. 7.
There's no absolute scale for object size. No one program says "1.0" means
"1 meter" although LightWave gets close. 8. LightWave requires a single
point in an object, even if it's not part of any polygon in the object.
Since the Imagine sub-object had no points then the LightWave object is
given a single point and no polygons. 9. One man's extra point is another
man's work-around for a bug in a rendering program. Maybe, someday. 10.
Our InterFont product uses spline curves to make 3D text, and it uses an
algorithm similar to this. However, in a polygon-based object, how could
you regenerate the spline-knot information? 10b. Yes, this is exactly how
InterChange Plus's Surface files work, except for the part about "vary this
surface by 10 percent."
Thanks for your responses to my suggestions. As I had guessed, some are
already implemented in your software – I WILL have to buy Interchange Plus
someday :^).
The incompatibilities amongst the 3-D package interfaces IS vexing for both
user AND developer. I don't blame you guys for making names longer than the
field it fits in, and actually find the extra information useful
(somtimes).
When I sent my list of comments, I realized that some things I wanted
implemented were not possible (at least easily), so thanks for at least
looking at them.
As for the use of a spline algorithm to add points to an object: You
probably could just use defaults for the spline-knot info. Though the curve
might not fit perfectly, it would be a decent simulation. The user could
then touch up the curve in a modeling program. A case in point was the
Fender Stratocaster object – I just about doubled the number of points
along the curved outlines. This was an involved process of creating the
points, then adding them to the polygon, then double-checking to make sure
the curve was correct. It would have been nice to automate the first 2
steps – which I had to repeat some 50-80 times.
I like the fact you have Surface files for Interchange – it would be useful
if it was tolerant of variances in the input surface values, then the user
wouldn't have to worry if he/she had tweaked the surface since the library
was created. Though it might already work that way.
Thanks Again,
Erik Flom