 | | | | | | |
| |
|
I’d like to announce the availability of a little script I wrote that converts
small bitmap images (JPG, PNG, GIF) to “stickers” that you can use in your LDraw
models. The script is called Bitsticker and there’s nothing to download: just
visit http://anoved.net/bitsticker.html and upload your image!
Precautions: I’d like to make clear that by its very nature this script
produces very large and inefficient LDraw files (it renders each pixel as a
quadrilateral). It’s an abuse of the format, frankly, but it can be fun to
tinker with, even if it isn’t appropriate for serious part authoring. I do
recommend using placeholder parts instead of these stickers until you’ve
finished arranging a model, as such complex parts can be cumbersome to
manipulate.
Size: There are a few scaling options. You can specify the size of each pixel
in LDraw units, or you can
specify the desired overall size of the sticker and have Bitsticker stretch or
scale the image to fit.
Color: By default, Bitsticker uses hexadecimal color codes to preserve the true color of the image. Since this
color format is not a standard convention, Bitsticker can also be made to
substitute the most similar official color for each pixel. Colors can be
substituted from the original set of 15 LDraw colors, a typical ldconfig.ldr
file, or an ldconfig file you upload containing custom color code definitions.
You can also specify the color of the sticker “paper” (the back and side
surfaces) as an LDraw color code or in 0x02RRGGBB fashion (it defaults to
white).
Layout: In rough accordance with the specification for real LDraw stickers, the image is rendered parallel to and
-0.25 units above the XZ plane. It is centered over the origin, so the middle of
the back surface of the sticker lies at 0,0,0. The back and side surfaces are
the last five lines output, so if you just want the image you can delete those
lines.
Let me know what you think, and in particular, please let me know about any
cases where the script appears to malfunction without identifying the error. I’m
also curious what programs do support this truecolor format; it works with
LDView, but I need to use regular LDraw colors for Bricksmith and ldglite.
Haven’t tried anything else yet.
If you’re curious, you can download the LDraw files for the “art gallery”
example shown above. There are two versions:
one that uses
true colors (1.4 MB) and
one that uses
basic LDraw colors (1.3 MB). If you’re real curious, you might be wondering
just what those minifigs are staring at: John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X”;
Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”; Francisco de Goya’s “Saturn devouring his son”;
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”; and lastly, one of my own doodles. Notice which
piece seems to be the most popular tonight. I’ve got nothing to do with that.
Honest!
Be well,
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.announce, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
I’d like to announce the availability of a little script I wrote that
converts small bitmap images (JPG, PNG, GIF) to “stickers” that you can use
in your LDraw models. The script is called Bitsticker and there’s nothing
to download: just visit http://anoved.net/bitsticker.html and upload your
image!
|
That is very cool. I’m even going to spotlight it to get it above my post about
getting pretty things on the NXT... ;-)
Actually, if I upload the graphics I used on the NXT to your script I can make
them appear on the display screen of Philo’s LDRAW model of the NXT..!
Jason R
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Jason J Railton wrote:
| |
In lugnet.announce, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
I’d like to announce the availability of a little script I wrote that
converts small bitmap images (JPG, PNG, GIF) to “stickers” that you can use
in your LDraw models. The script is called Bitsticker and there’s nothing
to download: just visit http://anoved.net/bitsticker.html and upload your
image!
|
That is very cool. I’m even going to spotlight it to get it above my post
about getting pretty things on the NXT... ;-)
|
That is pretty clever, by the way. It reminds me of grayscale on graphing
calculators (like this or this).
That gives me a silly idea. LDraw on a TI-92.
| |
Actually, if I upload the graphics I used on the NXT to your script I can
make them appear on the display screen of Philo’s LDRAW model of the NXT..!
|
Cool! That is a great application for it. Let me know how it goes.
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
You might want to add the following two lines to the tops of your generated
files:
0 UNOFFICIAL PART
0 BFC CERTIFY CW
Adding the above two lines will enable BFC processing. The first line is needed
because most models don’t contain a 0 BFC CERTIFY line in them.
--Travis
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
You might want to add the following two lines to the tops of your generated
files:
0 UNOFFICIAL PART
0 BFC CERTIFY CW
Adding the above two lines will enable BFC processing. The first line is
needed because most models don’t contain a 0 BFC CERTIFY line in them.
--Travis
|
No sooner said than done! Thank you for the suggestion. I figured it would be
good to wind the polygons consistently but I didn’t think to declare it with
BFC. Doing so is clearly beneficial.
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
You might want to add the following two lines to the tops of your generated
files:
0 UNOFFICIAL PART
0 BFC CERTIFY CW
Adding the above two lines will enable BFC processing. The first line is
needed because most models don’t contain a 0 BFC CERTIFY line in them.
|
Thanks for pointing this out, I just realised
txt2dat does not
include any header at all. I’d better fix that :)
ROSCO
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Ross Crawford wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
You might want to add the following two lines to the tops of your generated
files:
0 UNOFFICIAL PART
0 BFC CERTIFY CW
Adding the above two lines will enable BFC processing. The first line is
needed because most models don’t contain a 0 BFC CERTIFY line in them.
|
Thanks for pointing this out, I just realised
txt2dat does not
include any header at all. I’d better fix that :)
ROSCO
|
Hey, txt2dat is cool! It looks like it should build on the Mac, too, so I’m
puttering with rewriting the Makefile to make that happen. (The triangle
library builds fine with the -DLINUX switch turned off.) It’s part of my new
crusade to get every LDraw program on earth ported to the Mac. Any other LDraw
utility authors - watch out! You’re next. ;-)
More seriously, as I was just searching through the Lugnet archives for further
incriminating evidence that I’ve sort of been
reinventing the wheel with
Bitsticker, I came upon this thread by Tim Gould from 2005:
Automatic sticker creation. That is
clearly a more practical implementation of an image-to-LDraw converter! Has that
been released? More to the point, I’m simply curious about how the vectorization
is achieved. This comment in particular is right on:
| |
The advantage this has over BMP2DAT (from what I can gather, haven’t really
used it) is that my program finds the lines and then triangulates the
resulting polygon rather than turning pixels into quads (correct me if
this is not what BMP2DAT does).
|
Does it use a library like potrace or did you
write your own vectorization code? (I’ve done a lot of work with remote sensing
and GIS so vectorization is just a fascinating topic to me.) Hopefully I have
just overlooked some more recent announcement pertaining to this project.
Thanks,
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad, Ross Crawford wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
You might want to add the following two lines to the tops of your generated
files:
0 UNOFFICIAL PART
0 BFC CERTIFY CW
Adding the above two lines will enable BFC processing. The first line is
needed because most models don’t contain a 0 BFC CERTIFY line in them.
|
Thanks for pointing this out, I just realised
txt2dat does not
include any header at all. I’d better fix that :)
|
Hey, txt2dat is cool! It looks like it should build on the Mac, too, so I’m
puttering with rewriting the Makefile to make that happen. (The triangle
library builds fine with the -DLINUX switch turned off.) It’s part of my
new crusade to get every LDraw program on earth ported to the Mac. Any other
LDraw utility authors - watch out! You’re next. ;-)
|
Hey, that’d be great! The makefile is a bit of a rat’s nest, because I borrowed
it from the freetype library, and modified it. The main reason I did that was
for cross-platform compatability, but I’ve never had a Mac to try on. If you can
get it to build on the Mac, I’d be happy to work any changes into the official
version.
ROSCO
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Ross Crawford wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
Hey, txt2dat is cool! It looks like it should build on the Mac, too, so
I’m puttering with rewriting the Makefile to make that happen. (The
triangle library builds fine with the -DLINUX switch turned off.) It’s
part of my new crusade to get every LDraw program on earth ported to the
Mac. Any other LDraw utility authors - watch out! You’re next. ;-)
|
Hey, that’d be great! The makefile is a bit of a rat’s nest, because I
borrowed it from the freetype library, and modified it. The main reason I did
that was for cross-platform compatability, but I’ve never had a Mac to try
on. If you can get it to build on the Mac, I’d be happy to work any changes
into the official version.
|
Hi Ross,
It works! I just built it by hand, so I’ll write a simple makefile for it
tomorrow. Only issue is that the version of Freetype 2 that comes with OS X
doesn’t seem to know about FT_Orientation, so I just ifdeffed out the few
bits that referred to that, possibly at the expense of handling certain cases
(Postscript fonts which are wound the other way, perhaps? I dunno).
I have a proposition: working out a Mac build is great, but what would you say
to adapting txt2dat to run on the web (like Bitsticker)? Even more than my Mac
crusade, I like the idea of making all these LDraw tools more accessible to the
casual user, who may not be so keen on the command line or even just installing
lots of little programs. I’d be willing to work on that, when possible, and I
could even host it since my web server supports compiled CGI “scripts.”
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad, Ross Crawford wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
Hey, txt2dat is cool! It looks like it should build on the Mac, too, so
I’m puttering with rewriting the Makefile to make that happen. (The
triangle library builds fine with the -DLINUX switch turned off.) It’s
part of my new crusade to get every LDraw program on earth ported to the
Mac. Any other LDraw utility authors - watch out! You’re next. ;-)
|
Hey, that’d be great! The makefile is a bit of a rat’s nest, because I
borrowed it from the freetype library, and modified it. The main reason I
did that was for cross-platform compatability, but I’ve never had a Mac to
try on. If you can get it to build on the Mac, I’d be happy to work any
changes into the official version.
|
Hi Ross,
It works! I just built it by hand, so I’ll write a simple makefile for it
tomorrow. Only issue is that the version of Freetype 2 that comes with OS X
doesn’t seem to know about FT_Orientation, so I just ifdeffed out the few
bits that referred to that, possibly at the expense of handling certain cases
(Postscript fonts which are wound the other way, perhaps? I dunno).
|
Hmmm, interesting. txt2dat is currently compiled against 2.1.9, I haven’t tried
upgrading since txt2dat is the only thing I use it for. But the API doc at the
freetype site still documents
the FT_Orientation API. Also, version 2.3.1 (which I just downloaded to
check) seems to include it. What version do you have?
It also documents
the FT_OUTLINE_REVERSE_FILL flag, which I do vaguely remember from when I
originally wrote the program, and can’t remember why I didn’t use it. Does your
version support that flag? If so, I’ll look into using that instead. Type 1
(Postscript) fonts are wound the other way (at least the ones I have are) so we
do need to take it into account.
| |
I have a proposition: working out a Mac build is great, but what would you
say to adapting txt2dat to run on the web (like Bitsticker)? Even more than
my Mac crusade, I like the idea of making all these LDraw tools more
accessible to the casual user, who may not be so keen on the command line or
even just installing lots of little programs. I’d be willing to work on that,
when possible, and I could even host it since my web server supports compiled
CGI “scripts.”
|
That’s also a great idea, but I’ll still continue to maintain the stand-alone
executable separately, so it’ll be up to you to incorporate any changes I may
make to the original :) Either way, I’m happy put a to link on my page.
ROSCO
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Ross Crawford wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
Hi Ross,
It works! I just built it by hand, so I’ll write a simple makefile for it
tomorrow. Only issue is that the version of Freetype 2 that comes with OS X
doesn’t seem to know about FT_Orientation, so I just ifdeffed out the
few bits that referred to that, possibly at the expense of handling certain
cases (Postscript fonts which are wound the other way, perhaps? I dunno).
|
Hmmm, interesting. txt2dat is currently compiled against 2.1.9, I haven’t
tried upgrading since txt2dat is the only thing I use it for. But the API doc
at the freetype site still documents
the FT_Orientation API. Also, version 2.3.1 (which I just downloaded to
check) seems to include it. What version do you have?
|
I believe it is freetype 2.1.4 (based on the major/minor/patch definitions in
freetype.h). The headers are last dated 2002, and a look at more recent
freetype changelogs suggests that predates the introduction of
“FT_Orientation.” It’s annoying that the preinstalled libraries aren’t more up
to date.
| |
It also documents
the FT_OUTLINE_REVERSE_FILL flag, which I do vaguely remember from when I
originally wrote the program, and can’t remember why I didn’t use it. Does
your version support that flag? If so, I’ll look into using that instead.
Type 1 (Postscript) fonts are wound the other way (at least the ones I have
are) so we do need to take it into account.
|
Yes, FT_OUTLINE_REVERSE_FILL is defined on my system.
| |
| |
I have a proposition: working out a Mac build is great, but what would you
say to adapting txt2dat to run on the web (like Bitsticker)? Even more
than my Mac crusade, I like the idea of making all these LDraw tools more
accessible to the casual user, who may not be so keen on the command line or
even just installing lots of little programs. I’d be willing to work on
that, when possible, and I could even host it since my web server supports
compiled CGI “scripts.”
|
That’s also a great idea, but I’ll still continue to maintain the stand-alone
executable separately, so it’ll be up to you to incorporate any changes I may
make to the original :) Either way, I’m happy put a to link on my page.
|
Cool. I don’t think any modifications to txt2dat itself will even be
necessary: I’ll write a CGI script that passes it arguments and returns its
output. That would make it easy to keep the web version in sync with the regular
version.
I just checked and txt2dat builds on my server no problem (it has FT 2.1.9).
I’ll work out my makefile later today.
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
I just checked and txt2dat builds on my server no problem (it has FT
2.1.9). I’ll work out my makefile later today.
|
Here is my rudimentary makefile for building txt2dat on my Mac and a linux
machine. No guarantees it will work for anyone else but hopefully it could be
helpful. Also a copy of txt2dat.c containing my quick checks to get around the
lack of FT_Orientation in my old version of Freetype.
This makefile goes in the same folder as the original and I build it with make
-f Makefile.alt (it puts the txt2dat program in the same folder as well).
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
--snip--
| |
More seriously, as I was just searching through the Lugnet archives for
further incriminating evidence that I’ve sort of been
reinventing the wheel with
Bitsticker, I came upon this thread by Tim Gould from 2005:
Automatic sticker creation. That is
clearly a more practical implementation of an image-to-LDraw converter! Has
that been released? More to the point, I’m simply curious about how the
vectorization is achieved. This comment in particular is right on:
| |
The advantage this has over BMP2DAT (from what I can gather, haven’t really
used it) is that my program finds the lines and then triangulates the
resulting polygon rather than turning pixels into quads (correct me if
this is not what BMP2DAT does).
|
Does it use a library like potrace or did
you write your own vectorization code? (I’ve done a lot of work with remote
sensing and GIS so vectorization is just a fascinating topic to me.)
Hopefully I have just overlooked some more recent announcement pertaining to
this project.
Thanks,
Jim
|
Unfortunately I got too busy with other things and kind of let is slide. With a
rewrite in a compiled language and using a decent triangulation (such as the one
Ross uses) and vectorisation algorithm I suspect it could be made to work
better.
Tim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Timothy Gould wrote:
| |
--snip--
| |
More seriously, as I was just searching through the Lugnet archives for
further incriminating evidence that I’ve sort of been
reinventing the wheel with
Bitsticker, I came upon this thread by Tim Gould from 2005:
Automatic sticker creation. That is
clearly a more practical implementation of an image-to-LDraw converter! Has
that been released? More to the point, I’m simply curious about how the
vectorization is achieved. This comment in particular is right on:
| |
The advantage this has over BMP2DAT (from what I can gather, haven’t really
used it) is that my program finds the lines and then triangulates the
resulting polygon rather than turning pixels into quads (correct me if
this is not what BMP2DAT does).
|
Does it use a library like potrace or did
you write your own vectorization code? (I’ve done a lot of work with remote
sensing and GIS so vectorization is just a fascinating topic to me.)
Hopefully I have just overlooked some more recent announcement pertaining to
this project.
Thanks,
Jim
|
Unfortunately I got too busy with other things and kind of let is slide. With
a rewrite in a compiled language and using a decent triangulation (such as
the one Ross uses) and vectorisation algorithm I suspect it could be made to
work better.
Tim
|
Hmmm. It would appear that using the Potrace API and the Triangle API would do
almost all the difficult work for software of this sort. I might look into
restarting the project although I’m not sure how far I could get with it. Of
course if anyone would like to take it over I’d be willing to offer as much help
(including source code) as I could.
Tim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Timothy Gould wrote:
| |
In lugnet.cad, Timothy Gould wrote:
| |
--snip--
| |
More seriously, as I was just searching through the Lugnet archives for
further incriminating evidence that I’ve sort of been
reinventing the wheel with
Bitsticker, I came upon this thread by Tim Gould from 2005:
Automatic sticker creation. That is
clearly a more practical implementation of an image-to-LDraw converter! Has
that been released? More to the point, I’m simply curious about how the
vectorization is achieved. This comment in particular is right on:
| |
The advantage this has over BMP2DAT (from what I can gather, haven’t
really used it) is that my program finds the lines and then triangulates
the resulting polygon rather than turning pixels into quads (correct me if
this is not what BMP2DAT does).
|
Does it use a library like potrace or did
you write your own vectorization code? (I’ve done a lot of work with remote
sensing and GIS so vectorization is just a fascinating topic to me.)
Hopefully I have just overlooked some more recent announcement pertaining
to this project.
Thanks,
Jim
|
Unfortunately I got too busy with other things and kind of let is slide.
With a rewrite in a compiled language and using a decent triangulation (such
as the one Ross uses) and vectorisation algorithm I suspect it could be made
to work better.
Tim
|
Hmmm. It would appear that using the Potrace API and the Triangle API would
do almost all the difficult work for software of this sort. I might look into
restarting the project although I’m not sure how far I could get with it. Of
course if anyone would like to take it over I’d be willing to offer as much
help (including source code) as I could.
Tim
|
Neat. I have also
used
autotrace, a similar program. I haven’t
used either enough to recommend one over the other, but for some reason I do
recall preferring potrace’s output. (I’ve only used the programs, not programmed
with them.)
I don’t know how much use people would find for it (the same applies to
Bitsticker), but personally I think this would be a really cool program. I can’t
offer to take it over, but as with a couple other LDraw programs I’ve had my
fingers in recently, I’d be glad to help test it out.
Take care,
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
You might consider adding an option to use color 16 (or perhaps the “paper”
color) for fully transparent pixels in uploaded PNG files.
--Travis
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
You might consider adding an option to use color 16 (or perhaps the “paper”
color) for fully transparent pixels in uploaded PNG files.
|
Another excellent idea. You’ll have the option to use the paper color for
transparent pixels, and then you can set the paper color to anything you want
(including 16).
I’m tempted to throw it in right now, but I’ve actually just started rewriting
Bitsticker in C for blazing speed and other possibilities, so transparency will
be among the “flagship features” of that release.
Be well,
Jim
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In lugnet.announce, Jim DeVona wrote:
| |
I’d like to announce the availability of a little script I wrote that
converts small bitmap images (JPG, PNG, GIF) to “stickers” that you can use
in your LDraw models. The script is called Bitsticker and there’s nothing
to download: just visit http://anoved.net/bitsticker.html and upload your
image!
|
I realized that Bitsticker would generate really long output filenames
resembling the path to the original image when used with browsers like Internet
Explorer 6. I’ve fixed it so that the output filename should be derived only
from the filename of the uploaded image.
I’ve also noticed that Stuffit Expander doesn’t seem to like Bitsticker’s zip
files (made with Archive::Zip). I
would advise any Mac users with Stuffit Expander to try unzipping the stickers
with a different program, such as Mac OS X’s built-in default unzipper. The
files work fine with WinZip.
Since making txt2dat online, I’ve
postponed the Bitsticker rewrite I alluded to elsewhere in order to consider a
similar design comprised of a separate core program that can be downloaded to
use without a web page interface. It’s not a high priority project.
Be well,
Jim
| | | | | | |
