Anim8or Community

Request for enhancement of Wavefront .obj object export:

Please make it possible to export a .mtl Ns value of 1.0

Suggestion: When Anim8or's material Brilliance is set to 1.0, then set Ns to 1.0  (Currently it gets set to 0.0)

Rationale:

I am trying to create Wavefront .obj objects with a matte surface for importing into "Sweet Home 3D." For a surface to be matte, SH3D needs it to have a .mtl value of
Ns 1.0

(In addition, a setting of "illum 1" is desirable but does not seem to be required.)

Background:

I've been using Anim8or to create "furniture" objects for use in "Sweet Home 3D", free home-design software. ( https://www.sweethome3d.com/ ) SH3D uses Wavefront OBJ format as its model import format. When an object which was created in Anim8or with default material characteristics has been exported to .obj and then imported into SH3D, SH3D's image rendering algorithms render the object with highly reflective surfaces. They actually produce a mirror image of the environment on their surfaces. In many cases this is undesirable.  After consulting on the SH3D support forum, I learned that when an object is imported which has a Ns of exactly 1.0, then those reflections are NOT drawn.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to persuade Anim8or to emit an Ns of 1. I can get very close to 1.0 by reducing Anim8or's Brilliance value close to 1, but when Brilliance is set to 1.0, it generates an Ns value of 0.0. A value of 0.0 causes rendering errors in SH3D.

As a workaround, I've been using a text editor to change the value of Ns from 0.0 to 1.0, but it'd be nice not to have to do that.

Unfortunately the Forum's security certificate has expired.

Edited to add:
Perhaps related, the system's clock is off by quite a bit, too.
This post was made at slightly after 4AM Eastern, which is slightly after 3AM in Chicago.
The Forum software claims the post was made slightly after 11 PM, which would place it somewhere in the Pacific.

Enhancement request for Anim8or v1.01.1363:

Please make it possible to copy and paste the text that's in the "If you want to..."  Error/Warning popups.

(I'm guessing that the box is supposed to be titled something like "If you want to know...", but its title is being truncated for some reason. A bug, perhaps? There certainly seems to be enough room in the popup's title bar.)

I haven't checked the other Error and Warning popups, but it'd be nice if copy-and-paste were available for them, too, if it isn't already.

In particular, I'd like to be able to copy and paste the file name which is shown in the
"If you want to..." popup which is used to display the names of missing textures while Anim8or is loading a model.

Background: I recently copied a .AN8 model file from one directory to another so I can use it in a new project. Unfortunately, it references many textures which I need to copy, too, and I'd like to make a list of them. I'd rather not replicate the entire original directory since it contains many irrelevant files.

See the attached screengrab.

Anim8or v1.01.1318+ crashes when loading the .an8 model of Lusitania which is provided in the thread

http://www.anim8or.com/smf/index.php?topic=5703.msg42831

Anim8or v1.01.1318 does not crash.

This is running under Windows 7 with current patches on a 1.6 GHz Core i7-Q720 with an Nvidia NVS 3100M with video driver v342.

Problem: Reference image is missing its texture

Details:

If an object contains a reference image, copying everything to a new object does not display the reference image's texture. A blank (black) reference image is drawn instead. See the attached screengrab.

Workaround: Exit and restart Anim8or. The copied reference image is then drawn with its texture in the new object. (This can take a painfully long time if one is working on a large model.)

This problem is seen when using Anim8or v1.01.1318 and previous versions.

Simplified instructions to duplicate:

Open an empty .an8 file
Import a reference image (object editor -> Build -> Reference Image ...)

Copy all to clipboard ( Ctrl-A Ctrl-C )
Create a new object (object editor -> Object -> New)

Paste into the new object ( Ctrl-V )

The new reference image is drawn black.

See the attached Zip file, which contains a model with a reference image. Since it has been saved, when you load it and select object02, the reference image will be drawn.

Selden

p.s. Similarly, sometimes when I copy a mesh from one object to another, it isn't drawn, either. Maybe it's a related problem?

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to duplicate this mesh viewing problem predictably. As with the reference image, though, if I exit Anim8or and restart it to edit the resulting .an8 file, the copied mesh is present and visible in the second object.

s.

Is there any way to set the default font used for text in the Object Editor?
Is there any way to set defaults for the other fields in the Text popup menu?

I want to have about a dozen 3D text strings around an object. Unfortunately, whenever I select the Text tool it defaults to Ariel. The font I'd prefer is quite a ways down in the list of fonts shown by the Text popup, Scrolling through that list for each string can be rather awkward and time consuming.

I couldn't find any mention of setting default values for any of the fields of the Text popup in the online documentation for the Object Editor.

It'd be really nice if the values one types into the Text popup menu (other than the position) were remembered for use for the next time.

Problem:  scaling of point positions doesn't always work in v1.00b

With two sets of points selected at opposite ends (top and bottom) of a mesh and Y axis is selected, applying scaling (moving the mouse up and down vertically) should cause those groups to move up and down, toward and away from one another.  Instead, nothing seems to happen. My impression is that each group is being treated individually instead of as a set: when all axes are enabled, applying scaling using the mouse, the relative positions of the points in the ends contract within each group.

Flattening in the Y dimension has been applied to both sets of end points independently, which might be related.

This works in v0.98: the mesh's end points move up and down.

I've attached screengrabs and a mesh which can be used to demonstrate this problem: vertical scaling works in v0.98 but not in v1.00b

edited to add:

This vertical scaling problem is also present when one starts with a (vertical) cylinder, selects its ends and does an "inset". With scaling selected, the central (selected) inset regions of the two ends won't move up and down relative to one another.