#Numbered-grid map-maker
58 messages in this thread
All you marvelous 3DS tex map making maniacs…
I uploaded a little AniPro POCO program (GRIDN.ZIP) to Lib 3 that may be useful
to someone. In support of the amazing David Stinnett method of painting
texture and bump maps…
(map a grid onto an obj, render several
views, use the views as a reference while
hand-painting a texture map)
.. GRIDN.POC will automatically create numbered grids at any resolution that
AniPro will support. You can set it for any NxM array of cells, numbered or
not. The cells are numbered (er, labeled) "A1, A2,…, B1, B2,…". You can
vary the grid line thickness and color, and the font and font color.
One note: for flexibility, I didn't force the ink to "Opaque" so beware if you
change it to "Scrape" or something.
I wrote (er, hacked) this to build maps for an optics simulation, where I
needed to cylindrically map a numbered grid of resolution (PIxD)x(D) directly
onto a conical object. It occured to me that it would be useful for all of us
Stinnett wannabe's. (It also might be useful as an example of a way to make
nested POCO menus with program-modified menu elements.)
Feel free to send any comments, bugs, or suggestions my way.
JKJ
John,
<< poco..>>
Looking forward to using it.. 🙂
jonas[adesk]
Whatta gent, JKJ!
-Alan
It's just so rare that I do anything even remotely useful. <g> I must admit,
with all the forum intensity over the last couple of months, I looked at my
upload with a virtual magnifying glass to make sure I wasn't sending anything
too controversial. <g><!>
JKJ
PS. I'm looking forward to some fun – you still in? Current plan: Bruce
McGlasson and I will be driving and arriving late pre-Sig Saturday, returning
the next Sat. Hey, could you possibly e-mail a phone # where I could send you
a message, mouth to ear?
Check your E-mail.
-Alan
John
Very useful routine! Thanks for reminding us to reach for AniPro now and
again.
TedB
!^NavFont01F0007MGHHG4BDF74
AniPro forever. Fuzzy faces of the world, unite. JKJ
jhon:
i downloaded the grid maker but for some reason i can not access it through ani
pro. i get strange messages that it cant be accessed. is there any thing
special i have to do in ani pro before i can load this poco.(i have never used
this option in anipro so i am lost)
any kind of advice would be very helpful
please let me know
tanks
ara
>>running POCO programs…
There is nothing special you have to do.
You might check your manual under "POCO MENU" for detailed instructions on
running POCO programs – pg 3-50 in my manual. If you can run one of the POCO
programs included with AniPro, and cannot run the grid program, you might have
a bad download. ???
JKJ
>> If you can run one of the POCO programs included with AniPro, and
>> cannot run the grid program, you might have a bad download. ???
Are there any differences in the POCO implementation between 1.0 and 1.3?
David,
<< Are there any differences in the POCO implementation between 1.0 and 1.3? >>
Yes… There is a POCO Version 1.3 addendum reference manual which is in
addition to the to the POCO 1.0 reference manual. Publication #101269. Nov.
1992.
jonas[adesk]
>>POCO implementation differences, 1.3 vs 1.0…
If you're wondering whether 1.3 POCO programs will have any problems running on
1.0, I have no idea. That's a good question, but I've deleted 1.0 long ago and
can't test. In the grid program, I did use one new menu function that came
with 1.3. If GRIDN.POC won't run under 1.0, I think I could easily rewrite
without that function.
If you're asking about the feature difference from a programming perspective,
1.3 adds lots of new stuff. Some function names should give you an indication
of the depth, so from the index…
for User Interface Library
Qedit()
QmenuWithFlags() [nice!]
QeditFile()
PhysicalWaitClick()
PhysicalPollInput()
PhysicalWaitInput()
PhysicalRubMoveBox()
for Graphics Library
GetBoxBevel()
SetBoxBevel()
SetCluster()
GetCluster()
HLStoRGB()
RGBtoHLS()
ClosestColorInScreen()
SqueezeColors()
FitScreenToColorMap()
for Text Library
CanScaleFont()
ScaleFont()
SetFontSpacing()
GetFontSpacing()
SetFontLeading()
GetFontLeading()
WordWrapContLines()
and
for the Cel Library, 2 new functions
for Screen Library, 6 functions
for String Library, 9 functions
for Mem Manager Lib, 1 function
for new Title Library, 12 functions
for new Tween Library, 19 functions
for new Flic Library, 12 functions
plus new PSTAMP and PDRACCES libraries, whatever they are.
All this comes documented in a 50-page manual addendum.
JKJ
>> Some function names should give you an indication of the depth, so
>> from the index…
Whoa! Far more of an answer than I expected. I can see from that vast list of
functions that programs written for POCO 1.3 probably won't run under 1.0.
General compatability was the main reason for my question. Thanks.
thanks john.
i will download again and read the manual as well.
take care
ara
>>running the grid maker…
David Marks raised the question of whether a POCO program written for AniPro
1.3 would work in AniPro 1.0. Are you using 1.0? If so, I think I could
rewrite it to strip out 1.3 functions at the slight expense of some function in
one menu.
JKJ
john:
i am using 1.0. i dont use anipro that offten so i never upgraded it to 1.3. is
this an important upgrade?
also if you would be kind enough to upload a ver. that works with 1.0 i would
really be thankfull.
take care
ara
hey ara, GRIDN1 beta tester…
I rewrote GRIDN just now to use (i think) only AniPro 1.0 calls. I sent it
(GRIDN1.ZIP) directly to you by email, so perhaps you could check it out and
see if it runs on 1.0. Let me know if I missed something. The only real
difference is a small sacrifice on the way the menus work.
I remember AniPro 1.3 as a worthwhile upgrade. I think there is a
description of the new features somewhere in the libs here.
john: thanks a billion. this is really super nice of you to react so
fast to one individuals need. i hope someday i can be of help to you.
i will test the product and let you know how it goes. thanks again
and again. ara
Very cool. I'll grab it and have a look soon. Thanks.
David
Ha!!! I just loaded your grid maker and I LOVE it! The first grid I
made for mapping purposes took something like two hours to do (don't ask). If
only I had this back then… Thanks.
David
>>grid maker…
Good, and you are most welcome! As creator of the whale image (that I often
display on my spare machine for inspiration) you are hereby granted priority
for any wishes or suggestions for making the thing more useful.
>>1st grid took two hours…
I understand! When faced with making a single grid, I figured it would be
easier (and a lot more fun) to write a program than to build the grid manually.
Then, when I (inevitably) wanted to change it a little, it would be no problem.
As it turned out, it was fairly simple to write, even though I hadn't done any
POCO programming in at least a year.
(One thing you might want to do immediately: edit the program and zap the silly
opening message by deleting the "char zs[]…" and "Qtext(zs)" statements.)
Hope to see you (and your whale in action) at Siggraph.
JKJ
>>…suggestions…
Well, now that you mention it…. I do alot of odd size maps, so it
would be great to be able to punch in any size instead of just the usual Apro
resolutions. However it's not much trouble to resize and or crop the saved
file, so its no big deal.
Regarding Siggraph, sorry to say I can't afford it at the moment (too
many things on my wish list, a desparately needed second machine being first on
that list). I'll have to wait till next year when I can just hop in the car and
drive across town instead of flying cross-country.
David
>>odd sized maps…
I'd thought before about adding a user-drawn box or control which will set the
image size, so I'll probably go ahead and do it. Then a Cel/Clip,Save would
save the map as a Cel file. However, I try to avoid Cels when possible, since
only Autodesk products seem to be able to work with them.
BTW, if you haven't tried it, it's real easy to set any odd-sized resolution in
AniPro. What I do is set the screen size to the max (1024×768 with my VESA
driver) in the Extra menu, then use Reset in the Flic menu to set any odd
_logical_ screen size I want. Smaller sized images will be be constrained to a
box on the screen. Any operation that fills the logical screen [like grid
making] will fit the box exactly. When you save the pic, you get a GIF at
exactly the resolution you want without having to crop or resize and take a
quality hit.
(Ack! After taking pains to ensure grid lines of exactly, say, 3 pixels, at a
given resolution, my inner-purist cringes at the thought of resizing the map.
<g>)
In fact, when working on 640×480 images in AniPro, I often keep the physical
screen at 1024 with the logical screen at 640. This gives me more screen room
so the menus & such don't obscure the working area. (It helps to have a 20"
monitor!)
(Sorry, David, if I'm spelling out what you already know, but this may also
provide lurker benefit. <g>)
>>Sig gig…
I understand about the trip – when I went for the first time last year it was
cross-country for me – this year I get to drive (not quite across town, but a
trifling 12 hour drive). I got the biggest kick last year pinning faces and
voices on forum names. Maybe you should have animated your virtual self
swimming with the whales to send as proxy!
JKJ
>> in the Extra menu, then use Reset in the Flic menu to set any odd _logical_
screen size… Sorry, David, if I'm spelling out what you already know…
Hey, that was easy. That was new to me – I really don't know anipro
that well, in fact, I almost never use it (mostly because I don't know it!).
I'd probably get more use out of it if I would just sit down and read the
manual sometime.
>>should have animated your virtual self swimming…
Not to worry… My purty mug will be in the upcoming "3d Studio –
Special Effects" book, along with a little surprise for you whale fans (you'll
get to examine the thing up close and personal).
David
PMJI
> I really don't know anipro that well, in fact, I almost never use it<
AniPro is really one of the most powerful features of the MatEd, IMHO,
especially for use of opacity, hilites, reflections, etc. animated or
otherwise. The use of flc's is very flexible as maps.
Wade,
I mostly use Photoshop and Painter for maps. I just can't deal with 8
bit painting tools (and I find anipro's painting tools really awkward), even
when using 8 bit maps, I always create them in 24 them drop them to 8 when
they're done. this way I can keep the softness and subtler shades/gradients
that aren't possible when starting in 8 bit. However I'm sure there are plenty
of things I would find Anipro ideal for (accessing it directly from 3ds is a
BIG plus, rather than having to quit, start win, etc…), I just need to take
the time to learn the program a bit. I wish I had time…
David
Really, the best thing about Ani Pro for me is the optics and sprites tools. I
do most of my image creation in Fractal and Photostyler, then bring .gifs into
Anipro for animating. I'm doing something like that right now, and it's really
pretty easy (I don't know diddley about Ani Pro either <g>). I just can't wait
until Fractal comes out with their 2D animation suite. That'll be
great!!!!!!!!
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
John,
Would you give a little more info on FD's 2D animation suite?
Thanks.
You can ask about it in the FDC section (GO ULTIMEDIA)
ana /krazy images
>>FD 2d anim<<
I can't give you any info, because I don't know a thing about it, other than
that there were some threads about X4 here a few months ago.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
And lets not forget about the 3d painting features due out in the next
Painter. There's some pretty cool stuff on the horizon.
David
Yeah, the 3D painting stuff should be great for maps (I would think…) and
stills.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
Apparently, there is an ad for Painter v3 in the August issue of Wired (I
checked the newstand Friday, but they still had July's w/ a v2/x2 ad).
However, someone in the Painter forum called the number in the ad, and the
woman on the other end didn't know ship dates or upgrade pricing or anything.
He kinda flamed Fractal for placing an ad, obviously months ago, in a mag,
knowing that an August issue comes out 2-3 weeks before August 1, without being
ready, at least to give their operators some info w/ which to answer callers.
This is, no doubt, why Autodesk doesn't talk about products until they KNOW
they're ready to ship.!
Dave
Quite right for texture maps or any maps that require color.
For any animated opacity maps, a 256 grey scale does the job and the one flc
file is much easier to work w/ than dozens or hundreds of tga files.
It depends on the map. The other packages allow for anti-aliased lines
and soft edge tools such as airbrushes as well as advanced selection tools
(even in greyscale). as far as I know, anipro does not have these tools. Of
course you can't animate in these other programs, but you can do the initial
work and then later bring in it into anipro to animate and output as a flic.
David
Good point; antialiased edges are an achilles heel in 8bit/AniPro. Just depends
on the job.
Great idea, John… Cool!
– G
Thank you, this is going to be really useful.
BTW – where's the whale? I'd like to download it also.
GAyle G de N
Gayle,
<< BTW – where's the whale? >>
Search the Images/Animations section and the 3D Studio section of the lib with
the keyword whale.
You're most welcome. Check out WHALE1.JPG, WHALE2.JPG, WHALE3.JPG and
BKWIDW.JPG in lib 5 and become an instant Stinnett fan.
JKJ
PS: Hey, what is 'G de N'?
JKJ
Sounds great! Now only if I had ANIPRO!! I'm considering Corel Draw 5, and
would love any input on the pro's /con's of these programs. (I can't get both)
I think that C Draw would be good for importing into the 2d shaper for more
advanced shapes, etc. and C Move would be good for making animated flic files,
etc of this or that. It comes with oodles of fonts and clip art, and I'm not
sure what you all would suggest.
Also, I have access to Rio Animator 5.2, and I (personally) don't really like
it that much. I think something like corel, or anipro would be easier to use
for someone like myself who is not too acclimated to targa based programs.
What is best for animated 2D stuff, for either flat art, or animated maps? Is
learning Rio my best bet, or would upgrading to a different product be better?
Thanks all,
JNJ
JKJ-going to Siggraph?
>>Corel vs AniPro…
For a 3DS companion, there is no contest: AniPro wins (my opinion of course).
AniPro will let you build maps (still and animated), work with 3DS flics (edit,
join, title, etc.), and extract and edit palettes for flic rendering. It also
comes with a CD-ROM with 100 fonts and a bunch of other stuff. Get both Corel
and AniPro eventually, but I'd recommend AniPro first if you're low on money.
(You can generally find it for around $500)
I've been using Corel for years and it's great for the kind of graphics it's
known for. For 3DS use, however, I only occasionally use it to draw a logo or
edit some text or something to .AI to the 3DS shaper. (The spline editing
tools in Corel are much better then those in the shaper, but you can get by
with the Shaper.)
More opinions: CorelMOVE is a waste of disk space. Their paint program? – I'd
rather use Photostyler or FDPainter. Their Trace program is a nice idea but in
practice, you can generally create a new outline quicker than you can trace and
fix. The clipart and font collections on the CD are pretty good, but far more
useful in desktop publishing than 3DS. I have on occasion used a specific font
from the CD to match what someone wanted wanted in a animation or model.
AniPro also has an amazing amout of untapped potential, hopefully about to be
unleashed by the likes of Ed Kellerman. It's also an easy way to fool with
C-programming, with graphics to boot. It's not too hard to do some 2D
animation with it either. <g>
JKJ
PS. My current plans are to Sig from Sat to Sat.
>>Their paint program? – I'd rather use Photostyler or FDPainter.
Have you tried the 5.0 Photopaint? From what I (briefly) saw of it when I
looked at it on a friend's system at tech. pubs., it's really been upgraded. He
does almost all 2d, and he stated that 5.0 is better than Photoshop 2.5. My jaw
dropped when I saw the quality of an images when reduced from 24 bit color to a
Microsoft 16 color palette.
John Stetzer
JWS
PS. I agree. For 3ds, AniPro first, Corel second.
PPS. When we tried to duplicate some of the bugs that were posted on the Corel
forum, found that we couldn't duplicate the problems. Go figure.
>>tried Corel 5 Photopaint?…
No, with memories of 4.0's debacle, when Corel called me this year and asked if
I wanted to upgrade, I said "fool me once, shame…" I decided to wait till
they got the first few revisions out. <g>
Does Corel still change all your custom Window's bitmap Associations "for your
convenience" to point to Photopaint every time you fire up Photopaint?
JKJ
>>Does Corel still change all your custom Window's bitmap Associations "for
your convenience" to point to Photopaint every time you fire up Photopaint?
Don't know. If you mean when you double click on a bmp, does it fire up
photopaint as opposed to another program, he says it does. If thats not what
you need, lemme know more spefically and I'll pass it along.
>> I decided to wait till they got the first few revisions out. <g>
Wise decision. I'm doing the same. I was suprised, though, that it (Draw and
Paint) didn't crash during the demo my friend gave me. Esp. since we tried some
things that were claimed to have caused problems.
John Stetzer
JWS
>>Corel associations…
I have associations set up such that if I click on a .GIF file, for example,
PaintShopPro fires and loads it. The Corel PhotoPaint developers were so
consumed by ego that I guess they couldn't imagine anyone ever wanting to use
anything else.
Every time PhotoPaint(4) ran, it changed all file associations for bitmap files
to point to itself! This made me unhappy. I erased PhotoPaint from my disk.
If the new version doesn't do this, I might consider trying it again. Thanks
if you can ask about this for me.
JKJ
Just talked to my friend regarding the association question, and you may rest
assured that their (Corel's) egos have not dimished ;^). Still changes
associations to itself, apparently.
John Stetzer
JWS
Ack!! I was afraid of that. That makes it even easier for me to wait for Corel
to stabilize. Thank you for checking for me. JKJ
Hi, JKJ. I have a question about AniPro. A few months ago, I attempted to
copy a large animation and it's title sequence to AniPro from 3DS to JOIN them.
No problem with the title sequence (about 5 MB), but when I attempted to PLAY
the large animation, it wouldn't animate…just showed the 1st frame as a still
(this .FLI file is about 62MB). Could the problem be it's size?
Regards, Connie
>>big ani…
Hello Connie. I'm afraid I'm no AniPro wizard, just a simpleminded software
guy. <g> Could you step thru your animation manually? Could you save it out to
disk? Would it play with AniPlay?
Do you have enough memory, and are you using a good memory manager? Before I
got all my memory conficts worked out (knock on wood <g>) I remember all kinds
of problems. Adding a bunch of memory helped too.
Did you try asking Ed Kellerman [71532,3255]?
JKJ
Thanks for your comparison. I'll look into AniPro some more. I guess I
haven't given it much consideration. (sorry guys!)
Corel Move a waste of disk space?? Hmm.. interesting. Why? Also, are you
running Corel Draw 5?
A friend and I are Sigging from Friday to Sat or so. (With a quick stop at my
uncle's cabin, and Cocoa Beach.) I finally get a real excuse for a vacation!
See you there.
JNJ
>>Corel Move?…
When I first looked at it, it seemed too limited in function to be useful.
Perhaps I didn't give it enough time to judge it fairly, but I with all the
bugs and crash problems in Corel 4, I was perhaps already biased against it.
Also, with 3DS and AniPro, I could already do any kind of animation I could
dream up. On Corel 5: as I mentioned to John S., I have decided not to buy the
Corel update this time until I've heard good testimony that they've made
everything work. I have had THREE different Corel 4 versions and all is still
not right. (I simply don't have time to beta test 5 for them.)
JKJ
Hmm.. Does ANIPRO do keyframed 2D work? I'll need to do some basic font/image
moving around. I assume it does, but just wondering..
How does anipro compare to Rio Animator 5.2? I don't really like working in
such a low resolution (targa +64 board). Targa stuff just doesn't work with
me.. Am I giving it a bad rap? I guess I'm spoiled with 1024×768 capable
Windows programs..
JNJ
>>does AniPro do keyframed 2D?…
Not in the way 3DS does keyframed 3D. AniPro is a pixel-based animated paint
program, not an obj oriented graphics program. Anything you lay down on a frame
is painted down. You have some flexibility with Cel animation, and something
called Optics that lets you do all sorts of motion, scaling, and rotational
stuff. AniPro will work in 1024×768 or any other resolution you have VESA
drivers for.
I've never seen Rio.
JKJ
thanks.
Does Corel move have keyframe type stuff?
Thanks again.
JNJ
JKJ,
Finally got a chance to check it out. Wonderful. Thanks!
JDH
You're most welcome – I'm glad someone can use it. "Brainplay", huh? Sounds
interesting! JKJ