[LPub] Detail View

[David Lang]

Hi,
I am very new to LPub3D. I have built a big crane, and now am trying to make an instruction of it. So far I have studied all tutorials I could find, and they helped me a lot. But one for my project important information I could not find:



How is it possible to make a detailed view of only an specific area of the whole model?

I would like to make some steps on only a small area of the big crane, and therefore it would be great to zoom in, and crop the rendered image to see only the important area. So I could make a multi step with for example 4 steps on one page, showing only the area where I add parts with higher scale.



Does anybody know a posibility to do this with LPub3D? (On studio I know how to do this, but unfortunatelly not for LPub3D...)

I am using LPub3D 2.3.13.0.1511 (because 2.4 crashes all the time).



Thanks for some help!!!  

David






I have added some examples from official Lego instructions.

[Milan Vančura]

How is it possible to make a detailed view of only an specific area of the whole model?

AFAIK there is no direct way in LPub3D. I use these two methods:

1. when it's possible, I use submodels - this makes exactly a focus on the related part of the model and I do not need to fiddle with any cropping, frames etc.

2. I make a copy of the model in LDCAD, open it also in LPub3D where I set higher DPI resolution. Then, when I need a special view, I prepare such (rotation) step in LDCAD and take the corresponding rendered image from LPub3D cache. Then I use such image (even after some edit like crop, arrows, notes...) in the main/original model LPub3D, as an external image.

Of course, the second case is time-consuming a little. It helps if you save your work at several points. Like the alternate model in LDCAD, graphical layers in gimp etc. Then, when you modify the original model, you can do the same modification in the model copy, make new snapshot at that step and just exchange the base layer in gimp.

[David Lang]

Well, now I fiddled a lot to get some good results, but I have not found a solution to show only a specific area of the 1m tall tower of my crane...

Usage of submodels is unfortunatelly hardly possible for the crane structure.
And the second suggestion (useage of pictures) is possible, but very time consuming and the result didn´t look anyhow handsome...  

When I set the scale factor to high values, the parts are clearly visible, but unfortunatelly LPub3D centers the rendering to the middle of the structure and crops the borders at the edges of the page.
Is there somehow a possibility, to define which part of the assembly should be focused and centered on when rendering too big scales? So that the rendering will show the top of the tower and not the middle of the tower? Somehow as shown in the second picture would be nice...

Really frustration, I thought this should be possible somehow in LPub3D...

[Merlijn Wissink]

Well, now I fiddled a lot to get some good results, but I have not found a solution to show only a specific area of the 1m tall tower of my crane...

Usage of submodels is unfortunatelly hardly possible for the crane structure.
And the second suggestion (useage of pictures) is possible, but very time consuming and the result didn´t look anyhow handsome...  

When I set the scale factor to high values, the parts are clearly visible, but unfortunatelly LPub3D centers the rendering to the middle of the structure and crops the borders at the edges of the page.
Is there somehow a possibility, to define which part of the assembly should be focused and centered on when rendering too big scales? So that the rendering will show the top of the tower and not the middle of the tower? Somehow as shown in the second picture would be nice...

Really frustration, I thought this should be possible somehow in LPub3D...

Apparently it is in the new 2.4 version: https://github.com/trevorsandy/lpub3d/issues/412
But that feature is still a bit buggy and doesn't work very well, at least in my experience (also 2.4 in general is buggy and I would wait for 2.4.1 or later).

[David Lang]

Apparently it is in the new 2.4 version: https://github.com/trevorsandy/lpub3d/issues/412
But that feature is still a bit buggy and doesn't work very well, at least in my experience (also 2.4 in general is buggy and I would wait for 2.4.1 or later).

Thanks for your reply!
Does this mean, at the moment there is no workaround to change the center or focus of a rendered assembly image?

[Merlijn Wissink]

Thanks for your reply!
Does this mean, at the moment there is no workaround to change the center or focus of a rendered assembly image?

Well, the feature I linked to generates some camera command and you can apparantly manually edit it to a position you like, it just doesn't always generate very good initial command. I haven't tried that out myself yet though.

In the past, I did some tricks with buffer exchange and placing a ('hidden') part very far from the model, which in turn moves the center of the model and thus moves the assembly image. It worked (and still does), but it was a giant pile of extra work and I'm eager to see if that new feature works better.

[David Lang]

[quote pid="39479" dateline="1605701254"]
In the past, I did some tricks with buffer exchange and placing a ('hidden') part very far from the model, which in turn moves the center of the model and thus moves the assembly image. It worked (and still does), but it was a giant pile of extra work and I'm eager to see if that new feature works better.
[/quote]


Great idea!   I love this way to think around the corner...

But for my beginner knowlege of LPub3d it is too complicated, I didn´t even use the buffer exchange (which I often used in studio) because I´m afraid of even more unwanted effects. At the moment I am struggling with very strange behaviors, such as that the position of the multistep views on the page seems to be linked with each other, across several pages...   When I move one of them, the others move too...

Hope that the new 2.4.x will improve things in LPub3D, once it will run stable on my system! The new camera feature sounds promising!

[Merlijn Wissink]

But for my beginner knowlege of LPub3d it is too complicated, I didn´t even use the buffer exchange (which I often used in studio) because I´m afraid of even more unwanted effects.

Yeah, buffer exchange is old and annoying. LPub3D 2.4 apparantly has a replacement for buffer exchange called build modification, as explained here, but I haven't tried it out myself yet because I LPub 2.4 keeps crashing here (and LDCad doesn't have support for the new meta commands I assume).

At the moment I am struggling with very strange behaviors, such as that the position of the multistep views on the page seems to be linked with each other, across several pages...   When I move one of them, the others move too...  

Yes. That's a big pet-peeve of mine and something that stud.io does so much better. There are things I really don't like about stud.io, but gotta give credit where credit is due and the page-layouts is one of them. So much better and more intuitive and easier in stud.io. I happen to have recently shortly discussed it here. Now, I get that LPub3D has a long history and legacy which causes some things to be outdated compared to current views on things and Trevor has done a tremendous job adding new features to LPub3D last years, but multi-step page layouts is one of the key areas where LPub3D still can improve a lot in my opinion.

[N. W. Perry]

Yeah, buffer exchange is old and annoying. LPub3D 2.4 apparantly has a replacement for buffer exchange called build modification, as explained here, but I haven't tried it out myself yet because I LPub 2.4 keeps crashing here (and LDCad doesn't have support for the new meta commands I assume).

Neat, I hadn't heard about this. It sounds fairly similar to my "FLOAT" idea, so I'm glad to see something along those lines being pursued.

Biggest difference I can see is that BUILD_MOD still relies on duplicate part refs, so any software that doesn't support the meta will still give the unwanted effects. With FLOAT, type 1 lines are only coded in their fixed position, so the fallback always shows the finished model, at least.

On the other hand, FLOAT is only imaginary and BUILD_MOD is real, so there's that. ;-)

[Orion Pobursky]

Perhaps the "next gen" BI maker should do a clean break from the old syntax and come up with a new, modern set of BI metas.