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Since my last three patterned parts have gone over well I've been working on two
more:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=973pb528c01
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=3678bpb15
I'm running into a design problem with these parts that I haven't had with the
others. As you see those two parts only come in black.
What I wasn't sure about was whether I should use actual black for some of the
interior details, and if so whether the lack of a matching outline would be an
issue and I should do an outline in black as well, letting the part color proper
show up outside of that. Or, should I just do all the black sections in the main
color, or all in black? (I realize just sticking with all color 16 or all true
black would make a smaller part file.)
I looked at other patterned torsos that only come in black and found some mixed
results. The classic Blacktron torso (973p52) does everything in the main color,
and this is a fairly common way of doing things. But then there are exceptions
like 973p74 (http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=973px67c01) where a
couple of sections like the zipper outline and the neckline have been explicitly
done in black, and the part itself always comes in black just like the ones I'm
working on now. So there isn't enough consistency for me to be sure here, and
for all I know no one has really come up with a standard on this.
Which way is right? Is there a best practice for this?
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Hello Lee,
> Which way is right? Is there a best practice for this?
A tough question indeed. The recommended practice is to be faithful to the real
part, eg. if the areas with background color are not printed, then use main
color, otherwise use solid background color. Exception to this occur if pattern
would make sense on another background color if original background color was
hard-encoded. Imho on the two parts you intend to do there is no clear benefit
to this, and I'd use main color for black.
Philo
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In lugnet.cad.dat.parts, Philippe Hurbain wrote:
> Exception to this occur if pattern
> would make sense on another background color if original background color was
> hard-encoded.
I second that. I do not think there is a strict rule to follow. It depends
mostly if main color adds or takes away something to the pattern. Check out my
973pw5 and how I interpreted:
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?M=ww007
w.
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In lugnet.cad.dat.parts, Lee Gaiteri wrote:
> Since my last three patterned parts have gone over well I've been working on two
> more:
>
> http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=973pb528c01
> http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=3678bpb15
>
> I'm running into a design problem with these parts that I haven't had with the
> others. As you see those two parts only come in black.
>
> What I wasn't sure about was whether I should use actual black for some of the
> interior details, and if so whether the lack of a matching outline would be an
> issue and I should do an outline in black as well, letting the part color proper
> show up outside of that. Or, should I just do all the black sections in the main
> color, or all in black? (I realize just sticking with all color 16 or all true
> black would make a smaller part file.)
>
> I looked at other patterned torsos that only come in black and found some mixed
> results. The classic Blacktron torso (973p52) does everything in the main color,
> and this is a fairly common way of doing things. But then there are exceptions
> like 973p74 (http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=973px67c01) where a
> couple of sections like the zipper outline and the neckline have been explicitly
> done in black, and the part itself always comes in black just like the ones I'm
> working on now. So there isn't enough consistency for me to be sure here, and
> for all I know no one has really come up with a standard on this.
>
> Which way is right? Is there a best practice for this?
The black sections on 973p74 are probably my mistake, since the basis of the
pattern (without the Police decorations) was a copy of 973p73.
Generally speaking, unless we have evidence the that colour is actually printed,
by having the same pattern available on different colour torso parts, then any
area in the colour of the only issued base part should use colour 16.
Chris Dee
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Hi Lee,
I've started looking at the process of creating patterns for parts. I've been
reading through Willy Tschager article "Pattern It:
http://www.holly-wood.it/ldraw/patternit-en.html
I found a copy of Monzoom (Willy's recommended program for manipulating 2D
shapes), but as it's in German I haven't got very far. I'm guessing there are
some other/better programs for manipulating 2D shapes in preparation for
converting to an LDraw file.
I would be interesting to find out the tools you are using to create your
patterned parts.
Thanks in advance
Reuben
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In lugnet.cad.dat.parts, Reuben Pearse wrote:
> I've started looking at the process of creating patterns for parts. I've been
> reading through Willy Tschager article "Pattern It:
> http://www.holly-wood.it/ldraw/patternit-en.html
>
> I found a copy of Monzoom (Willy's recommended program for manipulating 2D
> shapes), but as it's in German I haven't got very far.
Oh dear! That's just my (painstaking) way. I really wouldn't recommend it to
anyone if he or she hasn't tons of time to waste.
> I'm guessing there are
> some other/better programs for manipulating 2D shapes in preparation for
> converting to an LDraw file.
There are:
* Quad2Dat of course http://news.lugnet.com/cad/?n=17389
* LDPattern - the last time I gave it a try I was most impressed
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ldpattern/
* Pattern Creator - the output is also most impressive
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cgi?f=parts/30117p6u.dat, sadly it was
never published http://news.lugnet.com/cad/?n=17390
w.
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In lugnet.cad.dat.parts, Reuben Pearse wrote:
> Hi Lee,
>
> I've started looking at the process of creating patterns for parts. I've been
> reading through Willy Tschager article "Pattern It:
> http://www.holly-wood.it/ldraw/patternit-en.html
>
> I found a copy of Monzoom (Willy's recommended program for manipulating 2D
> shapes), but as it's in German I haven't got very far. I'm guessing there are
> some other/better programs for manipulating 2D shapes in preparation for
> converting to an LDraw file.
>
> I would be interesting to find out the tools you are using to create your
> patterned parts.
My process goes like this:
1) Find a relatively high-quality photo of the part and reorient it so it has
the right proportions and faces me head-on. (I also keep the part itself handy
for details the photo missed.)
2) Use Inkscape to trace over the image, using paths that only contain straight
lines--no curves. I use the Union/Intersection/Difference tools as little as
possible because of a bug that moves the nodes slightly out of position, which
requires me to snap them back into place. Instead I use Combine, Break Apart,
and Cut Path when I can.
3) Still in Inkscape, I break all the paths into simpler parts that I can
process. Anything with a hole in it, I break the path at two nearby nodes and
add a new segments to join the loose ends, until all my paths are composed of
shapes with no holes and no repeating vertices. (E.g., a ring shape would have
to be split into two C-shaped sections. They can be part of the same SVG path
object however.) I do put extra nodes along the edges of the pattern if the
interior details come too close to the edge, to prevent long-sliver triangles
from being made.
4) I wrote a tool in JavaScript to convert these kinds of SVG paths to LDraw
triangles; it doesn't account for winding, so when I paste its output into LDDP
I also keep LDView open (with the red backfacing BFC option on) and reverse any
shapes that came out with the wrong winding. (Every group of triangles that gets
created is either right or wrong, so fixing this in LDDP is as easy as
highlighting the right section and hitting Ctrl+W.) If my tool experiences any
problems it's usually due to the path not being right, like if it accidentally
got a curved line segment or a smooth node, which I can fix in Inkscape.
5) I run the result through DATHeader to find obvious errors and combine
triangles to quads, then check in LDDP again to be sure DATHeader didn't get too
enthusiastic and combine things it shouldn't have.
Since my last patterned parts had a couple of issues due to missing some
vertices or having some misaligned, and due to rounding errors in my JS tool,
I've been cleaning up my script and also I'll be adding Edger 2 to this process
in the future since it's very good at highlighting problems. (Next time I'll run
Edger2 before sending the part through DATHeader.) I'll post a link to the
script when it's ready.
This method isn't as quick as running an image through a program that does it
for you, but it does have the advantage of letting you get a good level of
detail out of a photo that doesn't have to be extremely high resolution. Most of
the time I'm working with photos that give me 4-5 pixels per LDU, and with the
part itself around for reference that's usually good.
In a recent part I did I also managed to cut out some quarter- and half-circle
sections so I was able to use primitives in a couple of places to reduce file
size (and improve smoothness). In that same part I also was able to break out a
subpart, because one section of the pattern was repeated on the front and back.
The subpart is about 10.4K and the main part is 59.3K so the savings were
significant; however it's the first patterned part I've been fortunate enough to
do this with.
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