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Anim8or corrupting files

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Gregory:
I've used anim8or almost exclusively for my models since at least 1999 so I'm familiar with the program.  It has been so long since the last update that I don't know if Steve is still working on it or not, but I'll post this in case he is as I haven't found any other modeler I like as well.

This is a problem that I've noticed for a long time, but it is so small that I wasn't sure what I was seeing.  I've had models go bad in small ways when saved in an an8 file and reopened and I've rebuilt them many times.  Points will move a tiny amount, twisting a sphere or pole, skewing a box, etc.  

Now I've spent three days trying to discover why my splines (using them to make neon tubing) have worked at first then later created twisted tubes instead of the nice smooth curves I had drawn.

It doesn't break consistently.  Ten minutes ago I redrew one of my splines, it extruded perfectly.  I saved the an8 file, reopened it, and the spline points had moved a tiny amount on the Z axis so the bends were twisted.  I fixed the spline point by point in order to post an example of it, saved it, but this time it opened fine (maybe because they'd been fixed manually).

Part of the problem is that even though I have Z unchecked, anim8or doesn't consistently put my Z axis at 0 for the points, even within the same spline they are back and forth across the zero line by a tiny amount, enough to ruin the extrusion.  What is really weird is that extruding before saving and reopening produces an okay result even though it looks the same.  After saving and reopening the file it is ruined.

What i want is to be able to keep all points where I put them.  In this case that means that when I uncheck Z they all shouldn't vary in Z at all.



Greg

Gregory:
Here are results.

Raxx:
I can't replicate this. I've tried half a dozen attempts but everything stays on the Z-axis before/after saving, before/after extruding. Perhaps it's dependent on your machine. What specs are they, have you tried it on a different computer and get the same results?

Gregory:

--- Quote from: Raxx on April 29, 2013, 07:21:23 pm ---I can't replicate this. I've tried half a dozen attempts but everything stays on the Z-axis before/after saving, before/after extruding. Perhaps it's dependent on your machine. What specs are they, have you tried it on a different computer and get the same results?

--- End quote ---

Hi Raxx,

Long time since I've posted here.  Good to see you, thanks for helping.  It isn't my machinery, this relatively new computer and my old ones all did it.

Look at Image9 that I posted above.  

I've attached the M spline test; change the extension to .an8 and try to extrude the centered octagon along the M.  Then look at the Left view up close and you should see that the points aren't in line (even though they all should be 0.000).

Raxx:
Ok, I discovered the problem, thanks to the file you shared.

The problem is that you're working on too small of a scale. The height of that letter is maybe half of an Anim8or unit high. That means that in the workspace with how you are zoomed in (according to those attached pictures), each pixel represents an accuracy of a smaller floating point (decimal) value than what Steve programmed Anim8or to handle. So if you click and drag at that scale, Anim8or probably can't pinpoint a precise coordinate at that exact pixel since it's out of it's range, and instead returns gibberish at the very tail end of the x, y, and z coords.

Note also that since the interface only returns three decimal spaces, it's going to show '0' even if it's really 0.00015.

The solution: scale it up! 3D software is vector software, so scale ultimately doesn't matter. If you need true-to-world precision, then instead of setting 1 unit to equal 1 foot or 1 meter, set 1 unit to equal 1 cm and convert to metric if you're not already doing so, or just set 10 units to 1 foot (or whatever...I'm sure you get the point).

If you absolutely have to fix what you've got, open it up in notepad, go into the knots blocks of data, and set all of the Z-Coords to zero.

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