#Text Morph Probs.
8 messages in this thread
Hello,
What type of fonts can 3DS support? .FNT is Softkey isn't it? Can it
do TTF? .PFB?
How does 3DS handle morphs? Does it require that both objects have the
same number of vertices/points?
Thanks,
Brad Block
3DS supports URW fonts in .FNT format and Postscript Type1 .PFB
fonts. Morphing does require that target objects have the same basic
vertex list as the source object.
>>Morphing does require that target objects have the same basic
>>vertex list as the source object.
Gary,
I'm curious about vertex lists. I've done my share of morphing, and
ended up with varying results (better as I've progressed <G>). I know
that there is a vertex list associated with each object, but it seems
that it's neither viewable or editable. With thousands of vertices it
would not be practical to try to edit, but still sometimes I'm still
surprised at how an object morphs, and wonder if I couldn't get a
better handle on what's going on (esp. with simpler objects) if I
could see how they're being ordered.
Also, along these same lines – couldn't an IPAS help morph dissimilar
non-concave objects by simply adding the required number of vertices
and then reordering all the vertices of both objects in a predictable
manner (say, polar coordinate sorting).
Yup, an IPAS routine _could_ do that. We actually got about 60% of
the way there, and then found out about a 3rd party developer doing
the same thing. Instead of competing with them, we scrapped our
plans, put our energy into OTHER IPAS effects, and are hopeful that
they come out soon with a robust solution.
Brad brings up a good question about editable ASCII lists of a 3DS
object's insides. Could we have some facility added so that 3DS would
import/export objects as an ASCII file. This would allow to do all
kinds of external things like reorder the vertexs or whatever, with
out having to write an IPAS. This would be great where an IPAS might
be overkill and we just wanted to tweek a few things that were too
involved to do with the 3D Editor. This kind of thing is already
supported in the keyframer for keyframe data.
p.s. I caught a thread between you and another 3DS user about a
Pentium compile of 3DS. You said that the hidden complication to
supporting the P5 was that all parts of the program needed to be
aligned someway, and that included IPAS routines too. Can you explain
what this alignment is? With the newer compilers that are available
with P5 support, I think that it is acceptable to require IPAS
developers to recompile and sell upgrades. Have you tested P5 code in
house? Are the gains in performance worth the effort to support it. I
use a Gateway 2000 P5-60, and I'd like to get all the performance
it's capable of!
Also when 3DS supports Windows, will IPAS routines be in DLL format?
<< cheap look at the insides of an object >>
I'll save this as a wishlist.
jonas[adesk]
Andy,
<<ASCII file read and write>>
3ds can do this today. file-save-*.asc file-load-*.asc..
jonas[adesk]
As Jonas said, the save/load ascii function of 3ds lets you do just
that. Re Pentium optimization… as I mentioned in that email about
it, we're working on a long-term solution to the problem.