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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
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Message has 4 Replies:
 | | Re: Announcing Bitsticker
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| (...) 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 (...) (18 years ago, 1-Mar-07, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
| | | Re: Announcing Bitsticker
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| 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 (...) (18 years ago, 1-Mar-07, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
| | | Re: Announcing Bitsticker
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| You might consider adding an option to use color 16 (or perhaps the "paper" color) for fully transparent pixels in uploaded PNG files. --Travis (18 years ago, 2-Mar-07, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
| | | Minor Bitsticker update
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| (...) 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 (...) (18 years ago, 7-Mar-07, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
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