Random thoughts/requests

[Viking Dan]

Random thoughts/requests

In no particular order:

Is there some way to show normals?
Is there a way to bake a procedural texture to a bitmap (not lightmapping, just turning marble or wood into a bitmap for exporting and just so it previews right in Cheetah.)
A command for removing duplicate points within a certain distance of eachother?

Nice app. The promise of character animation finally drew me in by the wallet. :icon_thumbup:

 

[capnchunky]

The promise of character animation finally drew me in by the wallet. :icon_thumbup:

Me too, although the slick modeling and UV tools caught my eye first. I've been playing with it a lot more now, so I've been building a list of my own random thoughts:

- The chain creator is very cool, but I feel like it needs an animation parameter so, for example, the chain could be moving over the rotating gears of a bicycle.

- UV transformations in anything but vertex mode create new, unmarked seams. Is that intentional?

- Loop select doesn't seem to work on single-poly edges (like the edge of a cylinder with an open top) -- Does it need polys on both sides of the edge to work?

- Blueprint views start cutting off parts of model when zooming in close -- can this be helped?

- Odd things happen when the camera view is zoomed in too far on an object -- camera movement slows way down, and tools like Select point and Scalpel don't work. Should I be working on bigger models?

- Small cosmetic bug: the paint tool's "preserve alpha" checkbox behavior is reversed

- Are there any plans for implementing media? (As if you don't have enough to work on...)

Sorry to dump so much at once; I've been jotting these down over the past several days. One last thing -- realtexture.com doesn't make any mention of Cheetah3D in their list of HDRI-compatible programs!

 

[fused]

In no particular order:

Is there some way to show normals?
Is there a way to bake a procedural texture to a bitmap (not lightmapping, just turning marble or wood into a bitmap for exporting and just so it previews right in Cheetah.)
A command for removing duplicate points within a certain distance of eachother?

Nice app. The promise of character animation finally drew me in by the wallet. :icon_thumbup:

Normals are indicated by the colour of the polygon: light grey->normal facing outwards, dark grey->normal facing inwards.
At present there is no way to bake a texture.
The optimize tool will remove all unused points.

Andrew

 

[fused]

- The chain creator is very cool, but I feel like it needs an animation parameter so, for example, the chain could be moving over the rotating gears of a bicycle.

Good suggestion, sounds like the job of a script.

- UV transformations in anything but vertex mode create new, unmarked seams. Is that intentional?

Not to sure what you mean here. Are you having problems transforming in the UV editor, try turning off tweak mode in the transform tool.

- Loop select doesn't seem to work on single-poly edges (like the edge of a cylinder with an open top) -- Does it need polys on both sides of the edge to work?

I get the same thing so I presume you need to have polys on both sides but I may be wrong.

- Blueprint views start cutting off parts of model when zooming in close -- can this be helped?

This sounds like you may be getting to close to the cameras clipping plan.

- Odd things happen when the camera view is zoomed in too far on an object -- camera movement slows way down, and tools like Select point and Scalpel don't work. Should I be working on bigger models?

This also sounds like a clipping plan issue.

Andrew

 

[Martin]

Hi Viking Dan,
texture baking and lightmap baking is already on my todo list. Almost 90% of the necessary ingredients are already implemented. But I will first rewrite the material system once I'm done with character animation since texture baking only makes sense if there are some more procedural shaders available.

Bye,
Martin

 

[Martin]

- UV transformations in anything but vertex mode create new, unmarked seams. Is that intentional?

I'm not sure if I understood you right. But I have some ideas to improve UV unwrapping. I know there is some room to make it even easier.

- Loop select doesn't seem to work on single-poly edges (like the edge of a cylinder with an open top) -- Does it need polys on both sides of the edge to work?

Sorry that is a limitation. I've put it onto the todo list.

- Blueprint views start cutting off parts of model when zooming in close -- can this be helped?

If you mean with blue print views the front, top, etc. view you can hold the shift key while dragging the zoom icon. So the camera will stay at its position and just the field of view will be changed. So you won't have clipping problems.

- Odd things happen when the camera view is zoomed in too far on an object -- camera movement slows way down, and tools like Select point and Scalpel don't work. Should I be working on bigger models?

v3.6 should improve the auto highlighting accuracy. If you have a scene which is still problematic please save it and mail it to me.

- Are there any plans for implementing media? (As if you don't have enough to work on...)

What do you mean with media?


Bye,
Martin

 

[capnchunky]

I'm not sure if I understood you right. But I have some ideas to improve UV unwrapping.

Sorry, here's what I meant (see attachment): go to UV Editing mode and seam+unwrap a mesh, a simple pyramid will do. In polygon mode, select a single poly, and then using the transform tool, move it around in the UV window. Rather than the adjascent polys simply stretching, it will disconnect them as though the selection were seams (although they go back to normal if you re-unwrap). A similar thing happens in line mode. I wasn't sure if this was intentional.

...you can hold the shift key while dragging the zoom icon. So the camera will stay at its position and just the field of view will be changed.

That's very handy, thanks!

v3.6 should improve the auto highlighting accuracy. If you have a scene which is still problematic please save it and mail it to me.

It's not a big problem, I only noticed it when I was trying to tweak a couple very small features up close. And I'll try the above tip if it ever happens again.

What do you mean with media?

Well, I used to use POV-Ray, and as much as a pain as it was for everyday things, one nice feature it had was that it was relatively easy to fill an object/scene with media (fog/smoke/etc) that would interact with the lights. Just a nice touch, as shown here:

http://www.willamette.edu/~gorr/classes/GeneralGraphics/Media/PovExamples/examples.htm


Thanks for your help!