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Topics - selden

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Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum / Anim8or continuing to use CPU after "exiting"

« on: September 13, 2016, 08:37:14 pm »

Recently I've noticed a copy of Anim8or continuing to run, saturating a core, after I've closed Anim8or's design window. The design window has closed and Anim8or's icon has disappeared from the taskbar. I've had to use the task manager's "end process tree" command to get rid of the rogue process. Anim8or's model file seems to have been output properly, so I'm not at all sure what it's trying to do.

I've only been using the Object editor, none of the other design windows, and it only happens some of the time.

This happens with Anim8or build 1247 running under a fully patched Windows 7.

How can I find out where it's looping?

Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum / Wrong texture mapping after point edits

« on: September 06, 2016, 11:53:47 pm »

Problem: surface texture image mapped incorrectly after "point edit inset" followed by "point edit extrude faces"

My continuing saga of trying to model an open book:

I'm trying to model the inside of a book's cover, with the endpapers seeming to be overlaying the edges of the leather covering that's wrapped around the coverboards. I decided that one way to do this would be slightly depress the interior area of the inside of the cover mesh, so that it'd have a raised area next to the edges where the leather is, and a slightly depressed area where the endpapers would be directly against the coverboards. From past experience, I knew I could do this using "point edit inset" followed by "point edit extrude faces".

To accomplish this, I used the following steps:

1. merged the facets on the right and left interior sides of the cover model into one large facet each.
2. applied the surface texture images to those facets
3. adjusted the mappings of those images slightly using the UV editor.
(Those three steps worked fine.)

Then, watching closely at the top edge of the model:
4. used "point edit inset" to generate a slightly smaller region in the interior of the front endpaper region.
5. used "point edit extrude faces" to slightly depress that smaller region.

I then changed the view to look at the front of the model and discovered that it no longer showed the image of the front endpaper. Instead it was a uniform purple.

Using "drag select" to select the appropriate facets of the model and then "apply" of the appropriate material did nothing visible. FWIW, when I defined a new material with no associated diffuse surface texture image, it did recolor those facets to the new uniform color, but nothing I do can make it draw a surface texture image on those facets.

This zip file contains a model showing this problem. As best I can tell, this time I've included all of the necessary surface texture images.

Thanks for whatever help you can provide, but I suspect this is a bug in Anim8or. I'm using build 1247.

Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum / Object exported to .an8 loses some textures

« on: September 05, 2016, 09:59:18 pm »

Sometimes when an object is exported to its own .AN8 model file, the resulting model loses some of its texture image files.

When the exported .AN8 model file is opened in Anim8or, several of its materials no longer have any textures associated with them although the original model did have those textures.

This problem is seen with Anim8or v0.98a (build 1247) and previous versions.

To reproduce this problem:
1. open the included model file reassembled_closed_book_3.an8

Note that the spine and back cover are brown.

2. export the object reassembled_book_3 to temp.an8 file

3. open temp.an8

Note that the spine and back cover are the default grey.

I've included screengrabs showing this happening on my computer.
I'm running Anim8or v0.98a (build 1247) under Windows 7.

General Anim8or Forum / "Fix Normals" is greyed out. How to enable it?

« on: August 13, 2016, 09:57:43 pm »

What circumstances cause the option "Fix Normals" to be unavailable?
How can I persuade it to be available?

I'd like not to have to manually select each of the faces with reversed normals to repair them. Unfortunately, the "Fix Normals" option is greyed-out. See the attached screengrab.

Finished Works and Works in Progress / Modeling for the Gaea trilogy

« on: June 20, 2016, 08:10:39 pm »

A recent personal project has been to model a couple of the objects described in John Varley's Gaea trilogy.

I use Anim8or to create the models and Celestia to display them.

I've been posting some of my preliminary efforts at http://celestiaguru.blogspot.com/

Here are a couple screengrabs, early versions of Gaea and of DSV Ringmaster.

General Anim8or Forum / Where's the menu to select texture projection?

« on: June 11, 2016, 05:21:51 pm »

Long ago I stumbled across a menu in Anim8or where one could select the type of projection used to place a texture on an object mesh -- cylindrical, cube, etc. Unfortunately, now I can't find it.

Was I dreaming?

If not, how does one invoke it?

ASL Scripts / How to retrieve a texture's BlendMode ?

« on: October 28, 2015, 11:05:33 pm »

How can I retrieve the BlendMode associated with a Texture in the export script that I'm working on?
(I'm trying to improve the functionality of my CMOD export script.)

The documentation at http://anim8or.com/scripts/spec/index.html shows "int GetBlendMode(int mode);" to be an element of "struct material" except that can't be right. That would allow only one BlendMode per material, while there actually can be many BlendModes in a material, one associated with each of a Material's Textures. Unfortunately, my attempts to retrieve it as if it were an element of a texture structure don't work.

Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum / Can't import .LWO models: missing LWOBJ

« on: October 20, 2015, 11:14:06 pm »

When I try to import a Lightwave .lwo model file, Anim8or fails. It generates an error popup complaining

Just so you'd know...
Missing LWOBJ

Where can I get a copy of "LWOBJ" and where should it be put?
I have a trial version of Lightwave v 2015.3 installed, but it does not include any file with that name.

Edited to add: this failure is seen in Anim8or v0.98 and v0.98a [build 1185]

Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum / Large OBJ mesh (4 million vertices) crashes Anim8or build 1185

« on: September 20, 2015, 04:22:17 pm »

What's the maximum size of an OBJ mesh that Anim8or can import?

I tried to import a 724MB OBJ mesh (2Kx2K subdivisions: 4 million vertices) which had been created and exported by Blender, but Anim8or crashed.

A smaller version of the mesh (173MB, 1Kx1K subdivisions: 1 million vertices) imported with no problems.

----
I'm trying to create a 3D map for use in Celestia. Here are low resolution screengrabs of the 1K mesh with a couple of different surface textures.

Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum / BUG: Animator v0.98a [build 1179] crashed when not run as admin

« on: July 28, 2015, 07:01:08 pm »

Bug:

It would be nice if Anim8or did not need to be run once from an Administrator account.

The first time Anim8or (any version, including the most recent v0.98a [build 1179]) was ever run under Windows 7 (x64 Enterprise in this case), it crashed immediately with no error messages when it was run from an account that did not have administrator privileges.

It crashed (with no error popups) every time it was run until it was been run once from a privileged account.

When it was run from an Administrator account, it ran with no errors.

When it then was run from a non-privileged account, it generated an error popup complaining that it could not register a file type but otherwise seemed to work fine.

The next time it was run from the same non-privileged account, no error popup appeared and it worked fine.

My guess is that when it was crashing, it was trying (and failing) to create an entry in the system registry and was not failing gracefully. If that is what was happening, it'd be nice if it tried only to create entries in the registry of the non-privileged user.

Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum / Taper modifier distorts textures incorrectly

« on: May 31, 2009, 10:13:25 pm »

Problem:

When a taper modifier is applied to a 16 sided cylinder, the texture
which had been applied to the cylinder is distorted on the result. The squares drawn in the texture are stretched irregularly.

The texture's coordinates should be stretched linearly, just as the
points in the model are.

I tried cutting the cylinder's facets to provide more xyz coordinates
for the texture to be "anchored" to, but that made no difference
whatsoever.

The attached zip file includes a model which has a cylinder before being tapered and the results afterward. I've also included a text file describing how to reproduce the problem.

General Anim8or Forum / Can one change the mouse precision?

« on: May 30, 2009, 11:11:47 am »

Is there a settable option somewhere which can increase the resolution of mouse control?

In the object editor, one can use the mouse to move an object in extremely small increments: placement seems precise no matter how much magnification is being used.

However, this is not the case for rotation, scaling or UV placement. They all have rather coarse increments when using the mouse. This makes it very difficult to orient or size objects precisely.

Scaling and rotation can be set much more accurately when using their numeric menu options, but it usually takes a half-dozen tries for me to find the right values. Also, there seems to be no corresponding set of numeric controls for UV placement. Am I overlooking them?

Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum / anim8or crashes when faces are subdivided

« on: May 21, 2009, 10:25:02 pm »

Symptom:
Anim8or v0.97d crashes with no error message: its window simply disappears.

To reproduce:
Load torus.an8 which is included in the attached zip file
switch to point-edit mode
select all faces
select Edit/Subdivide faces (U)

Anim8or disappears without even a *poof*

The zip file includes some comments about how the torus was created.

General Anim8or Forum / how to tile textures around a cylinder?

« on: April 25, 2009, 11:17:49 am »

Is there any way in Anim8or to tile a texture around the curved surface of a cylinder? The UV tool tiles textures but just does face-on projections.

Will I have to create the cylinder out of a bent cube which already has been textured?

Googling the Web and searching the forum didn't find any discussion of this, but maybe I used the wrong search terms.

Thanks for whatever help you can provide.

General Anim8or Forum / Build/Subdivide faces breaks joined solids

« on: April 25, 2009, 10:52:14 am »

When I try to subdivide an object created by joining solids, the original objects are subdivided individually, breaking apart the joined object.

Is there any way I can prevent this, or is it a bug in Anim8or?

I haven't been able to find any mention of this problem in the forum or the manual. Have I overlooked it?

Here's a picture of the result after joining two cylinder meshes and doing a merge points (so there's no gap between the original meshes) followed by a build/subdivide faces. Build/ create subdivided breaks joined solids in the same way.