#New InterChange Ideas
11 messages in this thread
We are now in the process of upgrading the InterChange system. We are
making a number of improvements to the entire system. We've got our own
plans, but I'd like to make sure we've considered any and all suggestions
from our present and future users.
We're going to put InterChange on its own screen, and we'll have a way that
modules are run automatically… this mechanism might require that modules
are stored in a specific directory or on a certain disk, eliminating the
present "feature" that created objects will land in the directory where the
module was started… We're also going to expand the way that Tool
Modules work, allowing you to pass a 3D object through a series of modules
and out to a different format.
Any wild-eyed suggestions will be considered. What, in your wildest
dreams, would you like InterChange to do?
We're also expanding the number of modules that will be available, as well
as changing the way we bundle modules with InterChange and InterFont.
John Foust
President
Syndesis Corporation
In my wildest dreams, I would like a module which would subdivide objects,
so those terrible faceted curved characters I create by hand can be
smoothed out. Now that I'm working in 24bit all the time, faceting really
has to go. Happy Holidays, John! –Rick
What do you mean by this? A module that can magically determine which way
to pull the centers of those subdivided faces? In other words, if you've
approximated a 3D space curve, and I subdivide those faces, I need to
algorithmically determine which way to "smooth" the curve by pulling out
the new faces. Is this what you mean?
As an alternative, how about better ways of making curves? Like Bezier
patches that can be subdivided to any degree needed: coarse for distant
objects, fine for near objects?
The latter would be nice and I would welcome any improvement in this area.
However, what I was asking for was a simple feature found in Sculpt which
Impulse has yet to adopt. By subdividing these stubborn curves, I can go
back in and work with the tools I now have to create less jagged objects. I
would just like to avoid going to Sculpt to accomplish this. Merry
Christmas and Happy New Year, John! –Rick
Rick,
I'm curious as to what features in sculpt you use that are not found in
imagine. I have made a serious effort in the last few weeks to model in
imagine but still find myself going back to sculpt. It might be a matter
of familiarity ; I would like to hear your feelings on the subject.
Shalom
Ah, I see… you want to be able to perform the Sculpt "SubDivide"
operation on any object. Sure, we can do that, easily. Hmm. For
triangle-based objects, would you like to see a six-sided polygon, or three
new triangles? I'd guess VideoScape users would want the former, and
Sculpt/Silver users the latter.
When you said "characters", did you mean alphabetic characters, or
human-like characters?
Alphanumeric characters. It must have been late when I made those
comments. Sorry for being unclear. –Rick
Are you using InterFont to make these characters? If not, check out the
sample objects in the library here. With InterFont, you can adjust the
number of extruded edges generated when you make text. Just bump the
"Smoothness" setting to 9 or 10, and it can't get much smoother than that.
dear john – re: ideas for the upgraded Interchange – your improvements
sound great ! How about an imagine converter ? How about a simple
3d preview window so i can see which files are which without entering into
a program, maybe an intermediate stage, with simple wireframe or polygonal
representation ? It would help me organize my 3d objects !…
We've heard that request more than once… Maybe I should make a utility
that could make an icon that showed the wireframe, or a quick viewer
module. Actually, it was prototyped once. We called it InterView. 🙂
Eventually, it got out of control, and looked more like a rendering program
– we wanted to add a dozen different ways of rendering beyond wireframes,
like X Specs and red-blue anaglyph glasses, etc. Maybe I'll resurrect it.