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LDView 4.1 Beta 1 is now available for download from the LDView downloads page
here:
http://ldview.sourceforge.net/Downloads.html
This is a Beta release, which means that I’m hoping to get as much feedback as
possible. This also means that it is likely not as stable as a final release, so
you probably don’t want to try it out if you absolutely hate using buggy
software.
Some notable changes:
- Curve smoothing in POV-Ray exports.
- Customizable toolbar on Windows and Mac versions.
- Highlight geometry selected in the Model Tree.
- 3D-Studio exporting (needs more work).
- Updated Linux version to Qt 4.5.
Please see the full change history
here.
Please send any bugs, suggestions, or other feedback to ldview@gmail.com. As mentioned above, the main reason for this release is to
get feedback so that the official release will be as high-quality as possible.
--Travis Cobbs (tcobbs@REMOVE.halibut.com)
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Sorry, I forgot to post the original announcement to lugnet.cad. Please see
lugnet.announce for the full announcement.
--Travis
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In lugnet.announce, Travis Cobbs wrote:
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- Curve smoothing in POV-Ray exports.
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This feature alone is awesome (and way better than mesh enhancer). Thanks for
the hard work.
-Orion
P.S. Any plans to build in support for 3rd party POV part libraries (i.e. LGEO,
Anton, etc...)?
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
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In lugnet.announce, Travis Cobbs wrote:
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- Curve smoothing in POV-Ray exports.
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This feature alone is awesome (and way better than mesh enhancer). Thanks
for the hard work.
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You’re welcome. For many people, this will be the premier feature of LDView
4.1. I intended to include it in LDView 4.0, but decided it was better to get
the release out instead of delaying it just for that. It was not an easy
feature to implement.
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-Orion
P.S. Any plans to build in support for 3rd party POV part libraries (i.e.
LGEO, Anton, etc...)?
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LGEO support is already there (via the LGEO.xml file in the installer). In the
POV Export options dialog, check the “Use XML mapping file” option. Then,
either leave the path field blank (to default to LGEO.xml in LDView’s install
directory) or browse to LGEO.xml yourself. Some people have customized their
LGEO.xml (and hopefully saved under a different filename, since I think the
installer will overwrite LGEO.xml) to use Anton parts in certain places.
However, that requires a POV-coded wrapper for each part, since Anton’s parts
are specified in POV files as a function call, where LGEO parts aren’t, and
LDView currently only supports the LGEO way of doing things.
--Travis
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In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
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In lugnet.announce, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
- Curve smoothing in POV-Ray exports.
|
This feature alone is awesome (and way better than mesh enhancer). Thanks
for the hard work.
|
You’re welcome. For many people, this will be the premier feature of LDView
4.1. I intended to include it in LDView 4.0, but decided it was better to
get the release out instead of delaying it just for that. It was not an easy
feature to implement.
| |
-Orion
P.S. Any plans to build in support for 3rd party POV part libraries (i.e.
LGEO, Anton, etc...)?
|
LGEO support is already there (via the LGEO.xml file in the installer). In
the POV Export options dialog, check the “Use XML mapping file” option.
Then, either leave the path field blank (to default to LGEO.xml in LDView’s
install directory) or browse to LGEO.xml yourself. Some people have
customized their LGEO.xml (and hopefully saved under a different filename,
since I think the installer will overwrite LGEO.xml) to use Anton parts in
certain places. However, that requires a POV-coded wrapper for each part,
since Anton’s parts are specified in POV files as a function call, where LGEO
parts aren’t, and LDView currently only supports the LGEO way of doing
things.
--Travis
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Oh dear... I hope I did this.
I should add for Orion that it’s quite trivial to add parts in whatever library
you choose, especially if you make use of header files to do a lot of the mass
declares etc. It really is a fantastic conversion system and I’ve not looked at
l3p since using Travis’ earliest alphas of the conversion.
Tim
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In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
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LGEO support is already there (via the LGEO.xml file in the installer).
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As a note for OSX users, the LGEO.xml file is built into the .app package.
-Orion
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
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LGEO support is already there (via the LGEO.xml file in the installer).
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As a note for OSX users, the LGEO.xml file is built into the .app package.
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Thanks for pointing that out. For the default case (not creating a custom xml
file, and not filling in the path field), this made the most sense on the Mac.
For the advanced case, I’m hopeful that advanced users will know how to dig into
an app wrapper.
--Travis
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
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In lugnet.announce, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
- Curve smoothing in POV-Ray exports.
|
This feature alone is awesome (and way better than mesh enhancer). Thanks
for the hard work.
-Orion
P.S. Any plans to build in support for 3rd party POV part libraries (i.e.
LGEO, Anton, etc...)?
|
Here’s a test render of 10129 that I made from the raw LDView export file:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/billthefish/3898882207/
Pretty good right out of the gate. Next step is to add radiosity and the Lugnet
colors library.
-Orion
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
Cool. Most of the renders I’ve posted on Flickr recently have been prepared with
LDView too. I add radiosity, but I haven’t changed the color library. (Indeed,
the images attest to the fact that I’ve had trouble with the trans-gray “smoke”
color, at least in conjunction with my favored 30384.dat canopy.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anoved/tags/povray/
Jim
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
> In lugnet.announce, Travis Cobbs wrote:
> > * Curve smoothing in POV-Ray exports.
>
> This feature alone is awesome (and way better than mesh enhancer). Thanks
> for the hard work.
Played a little more with this today.
I turned off the XML file to experiment with LGEO free output. Right away I
noticed that the file size was significantly larger (7.2 MB vice 1.1 MB for
10129). Browsing the output reveals a pretty significant number of duplicate
part #declares. Also, some of the ring primitives weren't included in the part
files properly (e.g. LDX_48_slash_7_dash_16rin3_dot_dat_in_part instead of the
previously declared LDX_48_slash_7_dash_16ring3_dot_dat_in_part).
-Orion
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
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In lugnet.announce, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
- Curve smoothing in POV-Ray exports.
|
This feature alone is awesome (and way better than mesh enhancer). Thanks
for the hard work.
-Orion
P.S. Any plans to build in support for 3rd party POV part libraries (i.e.
LGEO, Anton, etc...)?
|
Here’s a test render of 10129 that I made from the raw LDView export file:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/billthefish/3898882207/
Pretty good right out of the gate. Next step is to add radiosity and the
Lugnet colors library.
-Orion
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Here’s another test render. This time I including radiosity and Lugnet’s color
definitions.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/billthefish/3902502731/
Turned out pretty decent but I found a few bugs that I reported in another post.
-Orion
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
> In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
> > In lugnet.announce, Travis Cobbs wrote:
> > > * Curve smoothing in POV-Ray exports.
> >
> > This feature alone is awesome (and way better than mesh enhancer). Thanks
> > for the hard work.
>
> Played a little more with this today.
>
> I turned off the XML file to experiment with LGEO free output. Right away I
> noticed that the file size was significantly larger (7.2 MB vice 1.1 MB for
> 10129). Browsing the output reveals a pretty significant number of duplicate
> part #declares. Also, some of the ring primitives weren't included in the part
> files properly (e.g. LDX_48_slash_7_dash_16rin3_dot_dat_in_part instead of the
> previously declared LDX_48_slash_7_dash_16ring3_dot_dat_in_part).
Thanks for the bug report. I have a few comments and a question.
First of all, it's expected to be quite a bit larger with LGEO disabled, since
it has to include the part geometry, while the LGEO version just references LGEO
parts for their geometry. Having said that, the duplicate declares are making
it much larger than it should be.
Secondly, I'll investigate the duplicate declares, since LDView is supposed to
be smart enough not to do that. Obviously something is wrong, because they're
definitely there.
Finally, I don't understand the last part. I downloaded 10129.dat from
pobursky.com and exported to POV with smooth curves enabled and the XML mapping
file disabled. I didn't see either LDX_48_slash_7_dash_16rin3_dot_dat_in_part
or LDX_48_slash_7_dash_16ring3_dot_dat_in_part in the generated file anywhere.
--Travis
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Orion Pobursky wrote:
| |
In lugnet.announce, Travis Cobbs wrote:
| |
- Curve smoothing in POV-Ray exports.
|
This feature alone is awesome (and way better than mesh enhancer). Thanks
for the hard work.
-Orion
P.S. Any plans to build in support for 3rd party POV part libraries (i.e.
LGEO, Anton, etc...)?
|
Here’s a test render of 10129 that I made from the raw LDView export file:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/billthefish/3898882207/
Pretty good right out of the gate. Next step is to add radiosity and the
Lugnet colors library.
-Orion
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A test render from me. The slopes and wedge at the front use the mesh-smoothing.
It works well.
Tim
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In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
> Secondly, I'll investigate the duplicate declares, since LDView is supposed to
> be smart enough not to do that. Obviously something is wrong, because they're
> definitely there.
I tracked the source of this problem down. As far as I can tell, it's only
happening with substituted primitives. Please let me know if you see any
duplication of other parts of the model. I have fixed this in my source code,
and it will be fixed in the official 4.1 release.
--Travis
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If you render LDView’s POV output using the POV-Ray 3.7 beta release, you will
see that the colors all look washed out. This seems to be due to a difference
in the way that POV-Ray 3.7 handles gamma correction. There are two things that
you need to do to fix this:
- Add Display_Gamma=1 to your command line options (there’s a box in the toolbar in the Windows version for setting command line options). This should fix the colors in the preview window, but not the output file.
- Create an include file that contains the following line and set that include file as the top include in LDView’s POV export settings:
global_settings { assumed_gamma 2.2 }
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Note that you can just manually paste that into the top of your file, but that
gets old pretty fast. Also, if you already have a top include, just add the
above line to it.
I’m not sure what the long-term solution to this problem is. POV-Ray 3.7 gives
a warning that it doesn’t support the assumed_gamma setting, and yet the
setting still has the desired effect.
Thanks go to John Winning for info on the assumed_gamma setting.
--Travis Cobbs
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In lugnet.cad, Travis Cobbs wrote:
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If you render LDView’s POV output using the POV-Ray 3.7 beta release, you
will see that the colors all look washed out. This seems to be due to a
difference in the way that POV-Ray 3.7 handles gamma correction.
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I also discovered this a while back while working on LD4DStudio 1.1, it’s seems
weird at first. But the change is really logical when you think about it.
They basically moved the gamma correction to the ini/command line because it
only applies to the render target not the scene it self.
The color difference comes from the fact 3.6 used a correction of 2.2 by default
if you set the correction to the new default in 3.6 you get the exact same
colors.
2.2 is the Windows default by the way. This is why they don’t use this default
anymore (not everyone uses Windows).
Roland
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Travis Cobbs wrote:
> Sorry, I forgot to post the original announcement to lugnet.cad. Please see
> lugnet.announce for the full announcement.
>
> --Travis
Looks great! Could you configure your program to take over some of the
functions of LDBoxer?
http://home.swipnet.se/simlego/ldraw/ldboxer/ldboxer.htm
It would be great to be able to export a minimal file that can later be
converted to 3DS or OBJ.
-Mike
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Michael Horvath wrote:
> Travis Cobbs wrote:
> > Sorry, I forgot to post the original announcement to lugnet.cad.
> > Please see
> > lugnet.announce for the full announcement.
> >
> > --Travis
>
> Looks great! Could you configure your program to take over some of the
> functions of LDBoxer?
>
> http://home.swipnet.se/simlego/ldraw/ldboxer/ldboxer.htm
>
> It would be great to be able to export a minimal file that can later be
> converted to 3DS or OBJ.
>
> -Mike
Also, I'm having trouble importing exported 3DS models into Blender. Any
ideas?
-Mike
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In lugnet.cad, Michael Horvath wrote:
> Michael Horvath wrote:
> > Travis Cobbs wrote:
> > > Sorry, I forgot to post the original announcement to lugnet.cad.
> > > Please see
> > > lugnet.announce for the full announcement.
> > >
> > > --Travis
> >
> > Looks great! Could you configure your program to take over some of the
> > functions of LDBoxer?
> >
> > http://home.swipnet.se/simlego/ldraw/ldboxer/ldboxer.htm
I do understand the utility, but integrating that functionality into LDView
would be a pretty big project, and I don't think it's something I'm going to do.
> > It would be great to be able to export a minimal file that can later be
> > converted to 3DS or OBJ.
> >
> > -Mike
>
> Also, I'm having trouble importing exported 3DS models into Blender. Any
> ideas?
I'm using a 3rd-part library to generate the 3DS files, and for reasons that I
haven't yet been able to determine, Blender doesn't like the 3DS files being
generated. I do hope to solve this problem, but until I can figure out what it
is about the files that Blender doesn't like, I'm not going to have any luck
doing so.
The library does come with a sample program that converts 3DS files into
Wavefront .OBJ format, and Blender seems much happier with these files. If you
want this program, send me an email and I'll send it to you. (I haven't read
its license, so I'm not sure I can just post a link.)
--Travis
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Travis Cobbs wrote:
> The library does come with a sample program that converts 3DS files into
> Wavefront .OBJ format, and Blender seems much happier with these files. If you
> want this program, send me an email and I'll send it to you. (I haven't read
> its license, so I'm not sure I can just post a link.)
>
> --Travis
Thanks, I'll try that.
-Mike
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