Subject:
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Re: Bricksmith 1.3: Here's Looking at You, Kid
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev.mac
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Date:
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Wed, 29 Mar 2006 19:35:49 GMT
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Viewed:
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6692 times
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In lugnet.cad.dev.mac, Allen Smith wrote:
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In lugnet.cad.dev.mac, Russell Clark wrote:
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I guess what I am asking about is that if I create a set of instructions,
there is no way to save or print to a .pdf file? Not a problem. I can just
share the .mpd file, but I figured I would ask.
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When I create a set of instructions, I use MacMegaPOV/POV-Ray to individually
render a super-high-quality image for each step. I then arrange them manually
with a page-layout program. My ultimate goal is always to print them. Of
course, producing print-quality images using a real-time onscreen design
program like Bricksmith just wouldn’t work out well; the images wouldn’t be a
high-enough resolution.
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The resolution argument actually doesn’t hold up. When I added printing support
to LDView in Windows, I made it generate an image using tiling that was at the
printer’s resolution (or maybe I maxed out at 300DPI; that was four years ago,
so I don’t really remember). LDView in Windows also supports snapshots at
arbitrary resolutions up to 9999x9999.
Mind you, the quality won’t match what you can get out of POV, but it’s
definitely possible to render something in OpenGL with a resolution that’s
sufficiently high to look good printed. And it’s a whole lot faster. Just to
check, I generated a 9999x9999 snapshot of Orion’s Imperial Star Destroyer model
based on the set. It took about 5 seconds to render the image, and another 20
seconds to convert it to PNG and save the file. I tried again with BMP, and it
took about 15 seconds to write the (285MB) BMP to the disk.
Of course, none of this helps you at the moment, because LDView doesn’t support
steps at all, and the QT verison of LDView that can run on a Mac doesn’t
currently support arbitrary snapshot sizes (although that should change in the
next release). But it does show that use of OpenGL for 3D rendering doesn’t
introduce any arbitrary constraints on rendered image size. Big images just
require a little extra work.
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I’m sure there are ways to automate this process,
but I doubt I would ever be as satisfied with the results as I am with my
labor-intensive rendering method. Just look at MLCad’s image-exporting
feature. It is useless for instruction printouts.
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LPub in Windows can produce rather impressive results. I think that shows that
professional-quality results can be generated in an automated fashion. Once
again, this doesn’t help you on the Mac, since (as far as I know) LPub is
Windows-only.
--Travis Cobbs
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Bricksmith 1.3: Here's Looking at You, Kid
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| (...) Okay, that puts me in my place. I hereby recant any prior suggestions about crummy resolution! Now that we have established that OpenGL can produce print-quality images, my question is: Can OpenGL produce instruction-quality graphics? Even (...) (18 years ago, 4-Apr-06, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Bricksmith 1.3: Here's Looking at You, Kid
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| (...) When I create a set of instructions, I use MacMegaPOV/POV-Ray to individually render a super-high-quality image for each step. I then arrange them manually with a page-layout program. My ultimate goal is always to print them. Of course, (...) (18 years ago, 29-Mar-06, to lugnet.cad.dev.mac, FTX)
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