[LDPatternCreator] Release 1.6.2 (Primitive Fix)

[Nils Schmidt]

Hello,

I fixed just one critical bug in my pattern creator program (took half an hour).

Download and install the latest LDPatternCreator release directly from sourceforge.net.

Change log:

Fixed bug:

• Fixed that you were not able to add primitives with a different colour than colour 16 (noticed on Win10)!
  

As always, I included a short readme.htm in the installation directory.


Cheers & Leg Godt


Nils

[Willy Tschager]

Nils,

I perfectly know that your focus is on LDPE and the wiki but since I'm doing mostly pattern these days and LDPC is far better than LDPE when it comes down to draw a pattern I'd like to once again stress on some of the issues - in case you're looking for distraction from coding LDPE :-)

* As a user I wish my settings for the show/hidden settings for the grid, the color bar as well as background and view floating window are saved permanently in order to not having to turn it on/off every time I start the prog
* As a user I wish the position of the background and view windows are saved so that they do not pile up in the top, left-hand corner at launch
* As a user I'd like to hide/unhide primitives
* As a user I'd like select multiple primitives (say, disc+ndis) for copy'n'paste
* As a user I wish I had not to create and merge a vertex with vertices of imported .dat files in order to create a triangle where imported and new vertices are the basic structure for my pattern.
* As a user I'd like that vertices of templates behave like normal vertices when it comes down to use them as waypoint for my triangles (basically speaking templates currently behave like imported .dats
* As a user I'd like to have copy/paste icons also for the x,y lines only in the Vertex-Data box in order to quickly copy just to the x box of the newly selected vertex
* Drawing a curve, it would be useful if I could define the number of vertices right from the start and change the number also once the end point is set. This is most true in those cases where you draw more sections and the number of vertices gets stored in between. This is even more annoying when you finish with say 2 or 3 vertices only and start a new curve - you simply lack accuracy
* As a user I wish I could set the snap via toolbar buttons instead of the cryptic (1/1000 LDU). At least for 1, 10, 100, 1000.
* As a user I wish the end point would be set when creating a spline after aborting the last section (where the first point is identical with the last point of the previous section).
* Finally, as a user I wish I could manipulate help lines

Thanks, w.

[Nils Schmidt]

Nils,

I perfectly know that your focus is on LDPE and the wiki but since I'm doing mostly pattern these days and LDPC is far better than LDPE when it comes down to draw a pattern I'd like to once again stress on some of the issues - in case you're looking for distraction from coding LDPE :-)

[...]

Thanks, w.

Hi Willy,

at the moment, I implement a second render path (with modern OpenGL) for LDPE.
As a result, LDPE will be benefit from modern hardware, but it is still capable of running on old hardware as well (I will keep and maintain the old render path, too).
This task affects about 30.000 lines of code, since I have to re-implement many functions*

The good thing is that I am still able to write some text for the wiki (the new render engine looks the same and I am not implementing new features).
But in the end there is some hope... I will continue my work on LDPatternCreator... just... not now :)


* I do a migration from OpenGL 2.0 to the OpenGL 3.3 Core Profile.

[Bertrand Lequy]

I had to make a custom template for the 1x2x0.667 31° slope brick. It seems to be  good and not implemented for the moment.


Here it is



If not, I apologize

[Nils Schmidt]

I had to make a custom template for the 1x2x0.667 31° slope brick. It seems to be  good and not implemented for the moment.

Thank you Bertrand! I tested it and will include the template in the next release :)

[Bertrand Lequy]

I had to make a custom template for the 1x2x0.667 31° slope brick. It seems to be  good and not implemented for the moment.

Thank you Bertrand! I tested it and will include the template in the next release

You're welcome.

Magnus just submit a subfile  for this part ( s\85984s01.dat), it will make the template simpler.

[Willy Tschager]

Feature request of the day:

* As a user I'd like to able to also rotate a background image in case it is not in balance.

w.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Feature request of the day:

* As a user I'd like to able to also rotate a background image in case it is not in balance.

w.

...and be able to scale differently x and y (if photograph was done at a slight angle). Both issues can be solved with Photoshop, but...

[Philippe Hurbain]

Hi Nils, sorry to disturb you from LDPE work, but...

While trying to create a template for tepee canvas (see this thread) I get precision issues (unmatching surfaces) when projecting on template, as shown on this screenshot:
   
The template and LPC project showing the problem are available here.

[Nils Schmidt]

Hi Philo,

I am aware of this problem. I had to create my own arbitrary decimal data type since the .net framework has no out-of-the-box data types for this kind of task.
It is not easy to find a solution for this precision problem. I will investigate what I can do...

[Philippe Hurbain]

Hi Philo,

I am aware of this problem. I had to create my own arbitrary decimal data type since the .net framework has no out-of-the-box data types for this kind of task.
It is not easy to find a solution for this precision problem. I will investigate what I can do...

Thanks and good luck

[Willy Tschager]

Feature request of the day:

* As a user I'd like to have a slider for the opacity of the colors, rather than just four values to chose from.
* As a user I'd like to have also an opacity slider for the background image.
* As a user I'd like to have LDPE's "Unify triangles into quads" button.

w.

[Willy Tschager]

Feature request of the day:

* As a user I'd like to rotate a selection of vertices with the last selected vertex as rotation point.
* As a user I'd like to align vertices on the left/right/middle/top/bottom/center as I do in PS or IL.
* As a user I'd like to copy-convert say a disc into a ndis (sure I can do it with the matrix but I'd like to have a one-click-feature). I need this mainly to create a disk with the tools I have and then wrap a ndis with the same characteristics around.
* As a user I'd like to have icons for Undo and Redo
* As a user I'd like to have the current drop-down menu for the modes separated into three distinct icons: Vertices/Triangles/Prims
* As a user I'd like to have LDPE's distance meter and protractor

w.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Agree on all these, but special mention to...

* As a user I'd like to rotate a selection of vertices with the last selected vertex as rotation point.

...sorely needed!

[Willy Tschager]

Feature request of the day:

* As a user I'd like to scale just in one direction (x or y) - not sure if this was on the wishlist of someone else.
* As a user I wish LDPC had a better memory management. Loading a 2,6 MB jpg the progs seams to have a some sort of hickup and slows down notably. When I hide the background pic everything is back to normal. Therefore it must be the filesize.
* As a user I wish the file's name I'm working on shows up along the title in the very top bar.

w.

Nonetheless - if we didn't have LDPC making patterns would be still a nasty thing, so thanks for the prog!

[Willy Tschager]

Feature request of the day:

* As a user I'd like to have an auto-filler, which fills the room between selected vertices with triangles (trying to avoid long, small triangles as much as possible).

w.

[Willy Tschager]

Feature request of the day:

* As a user I'd like to have an auto-filler, which fills the room between selected vertices with triangles (trying to avoid long, small triangles as much as possible).

w.

Ha, ha, ... looks like I need such a tool desperately: http://forums.ldraw.org/thread-21935-pos...l#pid24086

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

Hi Nils, sorry to disturb you from LDPE work, but...

While trying to create a template for tepee canvas (see this thread) I get precision issues (unmatching surfaces) when projecting on template.

I found out what was going wrong here...
Based on your tepee files, I created a small testcase with only two triangles and two projections...
The four points from the 3D space projections were not exactly on the same plane, e.g.

Code:

{148.9761 -244.3164; -130.5928 -136.1805; -129.882 -133.6628; 155.3681 -225.7627} {119.01 -5.000004 91.32; 15.868 -275 12.176; 14.142 -275 14.142; 106.065 -5.000004 106.065}
{155.3681 -225.7627; -129.882 -133.6628; -129.3147 -131.1094; 160.6992 -206.8793} {106.065 -5.000004 106.065; 14.142 -275 14.142; 12.176 -275 15.868; 91.32 -5.000004 119.01}

are two projections which were not able to map a common point from the 2D space to [14.142 | -275 | 14.142].
Therefore the resulting projection matrix was "incorrect".
Normally, LDPC fixes this, by splitting the non-coplanar quad projection into two triangles, but the threshold was too low in this case.

However, I attached a corrected version of the tepee test template and the corresponding LPC file. I hope this helps for now.

Last but not least, I could implement another approach*, without the calculation of the projection matrix, but I am currently not sure if there are any caveats.
I could calculate the UV coordinates in 2D and transform them into 3D... but this wont work if you want to project a whole primitive or subfile from 2D to 3D (this requires a projection matrix).

edit: * I will implement this new UV-based approach. But, I need time and a rainy day first

[Willy Tschager]

Feature reuqest of the day:

* Layers (with a management as in PS) for background, the pattern itself and help lines, triangles, curves, cylinders you need for construction but not in the actual pattern, with the chance to blend them out/in with a mouse click once you don't need it any more. Current I color them differently and move them to the border but it's not ideal 'cos selection with CTRL is a pain when they overlay.

w.

[Nils Schmidt]

Feature request of the day:

* As a user I'd like to have an auto-filler, which fills the room between selected vertices with triangles (trying to avoid long, small triangles as much as possible).

w.

Hi Willy,

this feature is going to be implemented on the long run. I even want to take one step further and automatise the whole colouring process.
However... my whole concept is designed for isolated vertices (which are still placed by humans, of course, unless you want some noisy A.I. mush)

I implemented the Lines2Pattern tool in LDPartEditor months ago as a complex case study for LDPC.

Leg godt,

Nils

[Nils Schmidt]

Feature reuqest of the day:

* Layers (with a management as in PS) for background, the pattern itself and help lines, triangles, curves, cylinders you need for construction but not in the actual pattern, with the chance to blend them out/in with a mouse click once you don't need it any more. Current I color them differently and move them to the border but it's not ideal 'cos selection with CTRL is a pain when they overlay.

w.

I like the idea. But, I have no perfect answer for the layer management. Are all vertices shared between every layer? Are triangles exclusive to a layer? What happens if you "merge down" a layer considering that you'll have a triangle overlap?

[Willy Tschager]

Feature reuqest of the day:

* Layers (with a management as in PS) for background, the pattern itself and help lines, triangles, curves, cylinders you need for construction but not in the actual pattern, with the chance to blend them out/in with a mouse click once you don't need it any more. Current I color them differently and move them to the border but it's not ideal 'cos selection with CTRL is a pain when they overlay.

w.

I like the idea. But, I have no perfect answer for the layer management. Are all vertices shared between every layer? Are triangles exclusive to a layer? What happens if you "merge down" a layer considering that you'll have a triangle overlap?

I would keep, vertices, triangles and prims separate between layers. I'll do my pattern on the main layer and would use the rest as design aid ... Currently I cannot think of any case where I would share vertices or merge triangles with the layer below.