Creating stickers

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

Hi
I usually create stickers to my instructions with sticker generator.
Does anyone know if there is another piece of software that can generate stickers - preferable at a higher quality than sticker generator?

Thanks

[Johann Eisner]

Hi
I usually create stickers to my instructions with sticker generator.
Does anyone know if there is another piece of software that can generate stickers - preferable at a higher quality than sticker generator?

Thanks

Hi
Maybe this will help

https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-22776-po...r#pid28349

Regards Johann

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

Hi
I usually create stickers to my instructions with sticker generator.
Does anyone know if there is another piece of software that can generate stickers - preferable at a higher quality than sticker generator?

Thanks

Hi
Maybe this will help

https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-22776-po...r#pid28349

Regards Johann

Hi Johann
Thaks for the reply.
I have looked into this program but I couldn't see how I Import a picture and convert it to a .dat file??

[Johann Eisner]

Hi again

There is no way to import pictures. You have to draw the pictures yourself. You can set a picture as a background and then you have to draw, draw and draw. ;-)

Regards

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

Hi again

There is no way to import pictures. You have to draw the pictures yourself. You can set a picture as a background and then you have to draw, draw and draw. ;-)

Regards

With my drawing skills that will not end up with anything good

Is there no program that has a similar functionality as sticker generator ?
But with a better end result

[Roland Melkert]

Is there no program that has a similar functionality as sticker generator ?
But with a better end result

I'm not sure if you are currently using my sticker generator or the one from Scott, ether way here are both links

http://www.melkert.net/test/stickerGen.html
http://scottwardlaw.com/sticker_generator/

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

Is there no program that has a similar functionality as sticker generator ?
But with a better end result

I'm not sure if you are currently using my sticker generator or the one from Scott, ether way here are both links

http://www.melkert.net/test/stickerGen.html
http://scottwardlaw.com/sticker_generator/

Hi Roland

I am currently using Scotts.
I have tried yours now but it doesn't look like MLCad og LPUB3D supports your program.

[Roland Melkert]

Hi Roland

I am currently using Scotts.
I have tried yours now but it doesn't look like MLCad og LPUB3D supports your program.

Textures are a fairly new LDraw feature so not all software supports it (yet).

LPub should support it trough LDView though.

MLCad doesn't support textures as it is not maintained anymore.

[Johann Eisner]

Wanted to try Scott's program. But no matter what I do, I always get the error when starting the .ocx file is missing. Although I have already copied them to the system32 folder. :-(

[Travis Cobbs]

Wanted to try Scott's program. But no matter what I do, I always get the error when starting the .ocx file is missing. Although I have already copied them to the system32 folder. :-(

If you are running 64-bit Windows, you probably need to copy any ocx files to the SysWOW64 folder instead of the System32 folder. Also, you probably need to run regsvr32 from the command line:

http://www.ctimls.com/Support/KB/How%20T...er_dll.htm

[Johann Eisner]

Wanted to try Scott's program. But no matter what I do, I always get the error when starting the .ocx file is missing. Although I have already copied them to the system32 folder. :-(

If you are running 64-bit Windows, you probably need to copy any ocx files to the SysWOW64 folder instead of the System32 folder. Also, you probably need to run regsvr32 from the command line:

http://www.ctimls.com/Support/KB/How%20T...er_dll.htm

That was the solution.
Many thanks.

Best Regards
Johann

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

Hi Roland

I am currently using Scotts.
I have tried yours now but it doesn't look like MLCad og LPUB3D supports your program.

Textures are a fairly new LDraw feature so not all software supports it (yet).

LPub should support it trough LDView though.

MLCad doesn't support textures as it is not maintained anymore.

Hi  Roland
I have now started using LDCad instead and it looks lige it supports textures.
But I have run into a couple of problems I hope you can help me with.
the first one i whitespaces in the image path. How fo I get it to handle this?
I have tried both:
T:\folder\My Folder\sticker.png
and
"T:\folder\My Folder\sticker.png"
and
'T:\folder\My Folder\sticker.png'
but it will not accept the path if there is whitespaces.
If I copy the sticker to C:\temp\Sticker.png then there is no problem

The other issue is that when I open the sticker.dat file in LPub3D with sticker in C:\temp it does not show the sticker, only an empty square.
The renderer in LPub3D is set to LDView.

Sticker in LDCad

Sticker in LDView:

Sticker in LPub3D

LDView 64bit version is 4.4 Alpha 2
LPub3D version is 2.2.2

[Roland Melkert]

the first one i whitespaces in the image path. How fo I get it to handle this?

I checked the sourcecode and you're right it will only use the first "word" as the filename, this because it can be followed by other stuff.

This is a bug, and will be fixed in 1.6c.

The other issue is that when I open the sticker.dat file in LPub3D with sticker in C:\temp it does not show the sticker, only an empty square.

Are you sure lpub is using the same LDView exe as when you run it standalone?

Secondly I'm not sure the current LPub3D version copies the texture files to its temporary output location (from where LDView generated its images). You might need to do that manually.

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

the first one i whitespaces in the image path. How fo I get it to handle this?

I checked the sourcecode and you're right it will only use the first "word" as the filename, this because it can be followed by other stuff.

This is a bug, and will be fixed in 1.6c.

The other issue is that when I open the sticker.dat file in LPub3D with sticker in C:\temp it does not show the sticker, only an empty square.

Are you sure lpub is using the same LDView exe as when you run it standalone?

Secondly I'm not sure the current LPub3D version copies the texture files to its temporary output location (from where LDView generated its images). You might need to do that manually.

Hi Roland
Thanks for the answers.

I will look forward to the fix in 1.6c

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

the first one i whitespaces in the image path. How fo I get it to handle this?

I checked the sourcecode and you're right it will only use the first "word" as the filename, this because it can be followed by other stuff.

This is a bug, and will be fixed in 1.6c.

The other issue is that when I open the sticker.dat file in LPub3D with sticker in C:\temp it does not show the sticker, only an empty square.

Are you sure lpub is using the same LDView exe as when you run it standalone?

Secondly I'm not sure the current LPub3D version copies the texture files to its temporary output location (from where LDView generated its images). You might need to do that manually.

the next problem is to get the stickers shown when rendering in POV-Ray.
Is this possible???
Currently this is the issue.
Stickers in LDView (4.4 a):


Stickers in POV-Ray (3.7)

[Travis Cobbs]

LDView's POV export does not support textures. I think LDCad's POV export does support textures (although I'm not 100% sure of that). I have spent a fair amount of time trying to support textures in LDView's POV export, but haven't had any success. I haven't totally given up, but I'm not willing to promise anything at this time.

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

LDView's POV export does not support textures. I think LDCad's POV export does support textures (although I'm not 100% sure of that). I have spent a fair amount of time trying to support textures in LDView's POV export, but haven't had any success. I haven't totally given up, but I'm not willing to promise anything at this time.

Hi Travis

thanks for the reply.
I am using LDcad .6b
I cant seem to find an export option in any of the menues??

[Roland Melkert]

I am using LDcad .6b
I cant seem to find an export option in any of the menues??

view/edit views/export
or
alt+e

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

I am using LDcad .6b
I cant seem to find an export option in any of the menues??

view/edit views/export
or
alt+e

thanks
does it have a problem with whitespaces?
when i try to export LDCad creates the folder but then shuts down without creating the pov file.

[Roland Melkert]

thanks
does it have a problem with whitespaces?
when i try to export LDCad creates the folder but then shuts down without creating the pov file.

For the pov export all needed png's are copied into the pov export destination using generated names so spaces should not matter.
But if LDCad crashes during the export it might be the cause of it on that side, I'll have to look into this some more.
It would help me, if you send me your model so I can test it myself using similar input.

You can prevent the space in folder names by using relative filenames only (place the png in the same folder as the .dat)

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

thanks
does it have a problem with whitespaces?
when i try to export LDCad creates the folder but then shuts down without creating the pov file.

For the pov export all needed png's are copied into the pov export destination using generated names so spaces should not matter.
But if LDCad crashes during the export it might be the cause of it on that side, I'll have to look into this some more.
It would help me, if you send me your model so I can test it myself using similar input.

You can prevent the space in folder names by using relative filenames only (place the png in the same folder as the .dat)

Hi Roland
It helped copying the png files to the same location as the dat file.
Then I tried exporting the model using the below settings.


Then I commented out this line in the generated file for better comparison:
//background { color srgb 0.4 }
After rendering the stickers are show so that is great but I am not happy with the result in the colors.
try comparing the DBG with my export from LDView 4.2 (without sticker)
I think the DBG looks very "flat" compared to mine??
Any idea why it looks like this??

[Roland Melkert]

After rendering the stickers are show so that is great but I am not happy with the result in the colors.
try comparing the DBG with my export from LDView 4.2 (without sticker)
I think the DBG looks very "flat" compared to mine??
Any idea why it looks like this??

Not sure could be a couple of things, like:
- Light position
- Camera position (you can't really compare to different views)
- LDCad using srgb and LDView using rgb (I think) in the .pov.

You can tweak the colors by copying the
default
folder to e.g. "MyColors" in
%appdata%/LDCad/povray
Then edit its colors.pov to suit your needs.
In the export dialog select "myColors" in the "code donor" field.

You can then also disable the background, you edited out, by default in globalSettings.pov

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

After rendering the stickers are show so that is great but I am not happy with the result in the colors.
try comparing the DBG with my export from LDView 4.2 (without sticker)
I think the DBG looks very "flat" compared to mine??
Any idea why it looks like this??

Not sure could be a couple of things, like:
- Light position
- Camera position (you can't really compare to different views)
- LDCad using srgb and LDView using rgb (I think) in the .pov.

You can tweak the colors by copying the
default
folder to e.g. "MyColors" in
%appdata%/LDCad/povray
Then edit its colors.pov to suit your needs.
In the export dialog select "myColors" in the "code donor" field.

You can then also disable the background, you edited out, by default in globalSettings.pov

Light position is the same.
cameraposition is - almost the same.
no matter what position I have used it is the same difference.
I did the export to pov file directly from ldview in both versions .
I did not use LDcad for the export.


Editiing the colors like you suggest is a bit over my underrstanding of POV-Ray im affraid


I think I found the differnce.
in ldview 4.2 and 4.3 the color section starts with
#include "lg_defs.inc"
#include "lg_color.inc"
This it doesnt in the 4.4 export.
I tried replacing this section from the above includes to down just before this line:
#ifndef (LDXColor494) // Electric Contact Alloy

that seems to correct the difference in the colors.

Could I put this in the colors.pov file - would that work??

[Roland Melkert]

I tried replacing this section from the above includes to down just before this line:
#ifndef (LDXColor494) // Electric Contact Alloy

that seems to correct the difference in the colors.

Could I put this in the colors.pov file - would that work??

No LDCad uses macros for colors while LDView/LGEO uses individually defined colors.
You can use the non macro way in LDCad but it will need some high level POVRay 'magic'.

I think the main reason of the difference is the fact the LDView export uses LGEO which comes with its own color defs while LDCad uses the RGB colors as supplied in the LDConfig.ldr file.

Also LDCad's pov export was designed mainly for animations so I sacrificed quality over rendering speed at some points.

If anyone with deeper knowledge of LGEO inner workings know the basic differences and point them out to me I could make an alternative colors.pov implementing it.

[Roland Melkert]

thanks
does it have a problem with whitespaces?
when i try to export LDCad creates the folder but then shuts down without creating the pov file.

For the pov export all needed png's are copied into the pov export destination using generated names so spaces should not matter.
But if LDCad crashes during the export it might be the cause of it on that side, I'll have to look into this some more.
It would help me, if you send me your model so I can test it myself using similar input.

You can prevent the space in folder names by using relative filenames only (place the png in the same folder as the .dat)

I've tried to replicate the pov export crash you experienced.

I've tried using a .dat with an abs png file name with and without spaces used from a mpd inside a different/same folder etc.

All works for me without a crash.

Could you mail me your model and the used sticker/png files?

[Knud Ahrnell Albrechtsen]

For the pov export all needed png's are copied into the pov export destination using generated names so spaces should not matter.
But if LDCad crashes during the export it might be the cause of it on that side, I'll have to look into this some more.
It would help me, if you send me your model so I can test it myself using similar input.

You can prevent the space in folder names by using relative filenames only (place the png in the same folder as the .dat)

I've tried to replicate the pov export crash you experienced.

I've tried using a .dat with an abs png file name with and without spaces used from a mpd inside a different/same folder etc.

All works for me without a crash.

Could you mail me your model and the used sticker/png files?

Hi Roland

I have just tried to do an export again with whitespaces but cant get it to crash this time.
When I encounter the problem again, I will send the files to you.
Is this ok??

[Simone]

Hi all
for parts with curved faces like 93606:
https://www.ldraw.org/parts/official-par...rtid=93606
what type of Projection Methods should i use? Planar, Cylindrical of Spherical?


Thanks
regards

[Philippe Hurbain]

for parts with curved faces like 93606:
https://www.ldraw.org/parts/official-par...rtid=93606
what type of Projection Methods should i use? Planar, Cylindrical of Spherical?

Clearly planar, since you most probably start from a photo which is basically a planar projection. Anyway, here curvature is low, so difference between planar and cylindrical is very low!

[Simone]

Clearly planar, since you most probably start from a photo which is basically a planar projection. Anyway, here curvature is low, so difference between planar and cylindrical is very low!

Thanks

I'm just trying so but obviously I didn't understand how to use the Melkert code generator. 

I followed the instructions on the site. Since the 93606 is a 2x4 I set width 40 (ldu) and height 80 (ldu)
I entered the PNG name and pressed Generate.

I copied the code into an empty dat file and saved it in the ldraw / Unofficial / customparts / parts folder (which is correctly read by Lpub3D and LDCad).

Opening it with LDView it is correctly rendered but I don't understand how to use the sticker just created on the curved surface of the piece in question (93606).

Could you give me a hand?
thank you

[Magnus Forsberg]

This tool will give it the wanted shape:  https://brickhub.org/i/apps/pf.htm

[Simone]

This tool will give it the wanted shape:  https://brickhub.org/i/apps/pf.htm

Thanks Magnus. Now 93606 is ok.

Now I'm trying to do the same thing with 3040b Slope 45 ° 2 x 1 but although I thought it was easier I have some problems.
I'm trying to put a sticker on the sloped surface of the piece. As you can see from the attachments, I managed to fix it but it's the image in flipped.
It is true that I could flip the original PNG, but I would like to understand my mistake

Where am I doing wrong?


thank you

[Travis Cobbs]

Thanks Magnus. Now 93606 is ok.

Now I'm trying to do the same thing with 3040b Slope 45 ° 2 x 1 but although I thought it was easier I have some problems.
I'm trying to put a sticker on the sloped surface of the piece. As you can see from the attachments, I managed to fix it but it's the image in flipped.
It is true that I could flip the original PNG, but I would like to understand my mistake

Where am I doing wrong?


thank you

This fixes it:

0 !TEXMAP START PLANAR  -10 0 -10  10 0 -10  -10 20 -30    slope_1_sx.png

(I swapped the X coordinates.)

[Willy Tschager]

This tool will give it the wanted shape:  https://brickhub.org/i/apps/pf.htm

Why isn't that tool on the PT or at least a link to it? Wasn't aware of!

w.

[Magnus Forsberg]

Why isn't that tool on the PT or at least a link to it? Wasn't aware of!

w.

Please note that it will only create a correctly folded top surface. The backside "box" is not correct (but it makes a good attempt).
It looks like the top surface is folded, but then the box is projected down, to the brick top surface...
You will also need to clean away many "new" vertices created at the folding lines.

[Lasse Deleuran]

Why isn't that tool on the PT or at least a link to it? Wasn't aware of!

w.

I'm not sure if I created a topic for it in our forum. I have been maintaining a host of tiny tools like this and have made an overview here: c-mt.dk

Right now I'm working on making LDCad generated content show in the Web viewer, but once done, I should have a look on the documentation and references to the tools here - unless someone else would like to link them.

[Simone]

This fixes it:

0 !TEXMAP START PLANAR  -10 0 -10  10 0 -10  -10 20 -30    slope_1_sx.png

(I swapped the X coordinates.)

thanks man!

now it's all clear!
regards

[Simone]

This fixes it:

0 !TEXMAP START PLANAR  -10 0 -10  10 0 -10  -10 20 -30    slope_1_sx.png

(I swapped the X coordinates.)

ps: on LDcad or LDView works perfectly but when i open with LPub3D i got this (attached) strange transparent behavior.

[Travis Cobbs]

ps: on LDcad or LDView works perfectly but when i open with LPub3D i got this (attached) strange transparent behavior.

What renderer are you using for LPub3D? If it is LDView, LPub3D has a privately built LDView executable included with it. That executable isn't based on any official (or even Beta) LDView release. That could be causing the problem. If you're not using the LDView renderer, switching to it might fix the problem (although it will slow things down by a lot, AFAIK).

[Simone]

What renderer are you using for LPub3D? If it is LDView, LPub3D has a privately built LDView executable included with it. That executable isn't based on any official (or even Beta) LDView release. That could be causing the problem. If you're not using the LDView renderer, switching to it might fix the problem (although it will slow things down by a lot, AFAIK).

Yes sorry, i forgot to mention. I'm using internal LDView render. Could it be a setting inside it?

[Travis Cobbs]

Yes sorry, i forgot to mention. I'm using internal LDView render. Could it be a setting inside it?

I'm not sure how it would produce such an image. You might try tweaking the "Offset" setting in the Textures section of the Primitives tab.

[Simone]

I'm not sure how it would produce such an image. You might try tweaking the "Offset" setting in the Textures section of the Primitives tab.

Same result.
I think i will use a custom part with box5.dat and the image to show the sticker applied over the part instead of directly replacing the oblique face of the part with the image file.

Thanks