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Re: Pan tool in 3D and 2D view?
Good Lord! That is awesome stuff (yet again!)
Two small things: The black lines are there to "outline" things? Unfortunately the full geometry being outlined makes it a bit ugly.The lines should only be drawn on a) where two faces angle is greater than "x" or b) a material change (maybe?)
Second, the horizon in black behind the building is ugly, and doesn't move with the bottom of the drawing. It might be nicer to just hide it altogether in the parallel projection. In fact, in parallel mode, just make the entire background transparent or flat white.
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Re: Pan tool in 3D and 2D view?
Oh, you might want to mention:
a) The navigation is a little odd. You use Shift-middle mouse scroll to "zoom in/out" in virtual visitor mode. This doesn't work in aerial mode, and I haven't figured out how to pull back in that case.
b) You can get orthographic sections inside buildings by using the virtual visitor and setting the body and head angles to multiples of 90 degrees.
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Re: Pan tool in 3D and 2D view?
Me again!
Another oddity I found playing with this is getting pictures out of SH3D. The parallel projection does not get used in the "Create photo" dialog. It defaults back to a perspective view, so getting a nice big high res image of a plan, elevation or section is not really possible.
Another thing (I'm such a horrible person) is that the lines are rendered in the two lower quality modes, but they are too thin causing them to become broken into dots and dashes if that makes sense. So it'd be nice to be able to configure that thickness.
Lines are not shown in either Yafaray or Sunflow renderers. Not sure that these are really a valid combo... i.e. rendered with overlaid outline.
Italy
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Re: Pan tool in 3D and 2D view?
Hi Stephen, you're right, the new features aren't complete, I decided to release this version early because I'm working on another project and it would have taken too long before finishing. It seemed to me enough powerful to be released as is, but it will be improved in the future.
The black lines are there to "outline" things?
Yes, the black lines are needed to help the user distinguish the objects, especially walls. For example if you look at the last picture I've posted you will see that the house is L shaped, but when viewed from the side ("front" and "left") in parallel projection the walls that are parallel are exactly of the same color, and there is no mean to distinguish them, apart from the black edges.
Unfortunately the full geometry being outlined makes it a bit ugly.The lines should only be drawn on a) where two faces angle is greater than "x" or b) a material change (maybe?)
I agree with you, but I think it would be too complicated to implement this in a plugin. I will think about it, but I don't know if and when it would happens.
the horizon in black behind the building is ugly
I agree again. This happens because the ground has no thickness and becomes invisible when viewed from the side, the black is just the default background normally hidden by the ground. I have to find a workaround.
just make the entire background transparent or flat white
That's my intent! :)
About navigation You're right again, I forgot to talk about it. Of course in parallel projection the size of the objects shown doesn't depend by the distance from the observer. To workaround this, I have introduced a new parameter named "parallelScale", but let's call it "zoom" for simplicity. However the camera position isn't meaningless, because it still affects which object are shown (objects behind the camera are hidden). So there was the need to control both the camera position and the zoom, hence the introduction of a new key modifier for the mouse scroll wheel: the CTRL key. If you hold CTRL, then the wheel will control the zoom, otherwise it will move the camera back and forth as always.
Another oddity I found playing with this is getting pictures out of SH3D. The parallel projection does not get used in the "Create photo" dialog. It defaults back to a perspective view, so getting a nice big high res image of a plan, elevation or section is not really possible.
I know, unfortunately it would be too complicated to hack the photo creation tool from the plugin. Maybe in the future.
the lines are rendered in the two lower quality modes, but they are too thin causing them to become broken into dots and dashes if that makes sense. So it'd be nice to be able to configure that thickness.
Oh, I didn't check this. I don't know if it could be useful without the parallel projection, but I will check if it is feasible.
Lines are not shown in either Yafaray or Sunflow renderers
I really fear the outline cannot be implemented using photorealistic renderers, it wouldn't be, how to say... realistic :)
Many thanks for your feedback and stay tuned for updates!
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Re: Pan tool in 3D and 2D view?
Some of my usual quick fire feedback.
1. When in Virtual visit mode and I use the visitor widgets in the plan to change the view (elevation, body/head angle) the black background returns. It's not too bad, as I just hit Ctrl-J twice to go out of parallel mode and back in and this fixes the rendering.
2. There is still a light grey block even when I set my floor and sky to pure white. If I understand what is happening, this is the camera front clipping plane cutting through the ground plane. I looked at the 3.7>3.7.2 code changes, but alas, I couldn't figure out if this was a colour you somehow chose to replace the black in your black background fix, or maybe some default UI/system background colour. Any chance to be able to set this as a preference? That way, we could get an all white background.
Otherwise... The lines look way better now they can be thickened, although it would be nice to have the option to turn them off completely.
Other crazy suggestions if you somehow figure a way to limit lines to edges where the angle of faces > x: A mode where all materials are replaced by plain white, for that outline sketch look. An architect I used produced some isometric sections in black line art. As I just thought about this, the silhouette would need to be forcibly outlined or it might go back to losing curved objects in the background again. I guess the rule would be if one face is toward the camera, and one faces away, then always draw the edge.
Oh, and maybe it is time to reconsider the name of this plugin - it has become so much more than just panning.
Italy
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Re: Pan tool in 3D and 2D view?
When in Virtual visit mode and I use the visitor widgets in the plan to change the view (elevation, body/head angle) the black background returns
Acknowledged, but this cannot be solved at moment.
There is still a light grey block even when I set my floor and sky to pure white. If I understand what is happening, this is the camera front clipping plane cutting through the ground plane. I looked at the 3.7>3.7.2 code changes, but alas, I couldn't figure out if this was a colour you somehow chose to replace the black in your black background fix, or maybe some default UI/system background colour. Any chance to be able to set this as a preference? That way, we could get an all white background.
I'll do a digression about how SH3D draws the background. First, keep in mind that the ground is actually a plane, it isn't a volume filled with soil and rocks, it is just a thin layer. Also consider that you can add a new level with a negative elevation (for example if you want to add the basement, a garage, or a cellar to the house). When the camera is below the ground level there is no ground which could hide the background sky. To avoid to see the sky under your feet, the background is actually divided in 2 half spheres: the one above is painted with the sky color/texture, the one below is painted with a gray gradient (darker in the lowest point and lighter at the horizon). For some reason I don't know (maybe performance, maybe to avoid artifacts at the horizon), Emmanuel decided that the bottom half sphere is painted only when the camera is below the ground level. When the camera is above the ground level the bottom half sphere isn't draw at all, leaving the background black. Under normal conditions this isn't a problem because the black part of the background gets hidden by the ground.
If you look at the ground plane from above (or below) you can see it, and since it is extremely large, it will hide everything on the other side. If you look at it from the side it will appear as a very thin line, and it won't hide anything. When you are in parallel projection and the camera view direction is parallel to the ground, it is as if you look at it from the side regardless of the camera elevation, and it won't hide anything anyway, allowing to see the black background under the sky. What my plugin does, is to force the visibility of the bottom half sphere even when the camera is above the ground. The visibility is updated every time the camera elevation changes, so I have to overwrite it every time.
The 3D view is based on Java3D, which has a very weird system of "capabilities", i.e. for every object, material, etc. you have to say if and what you want to change after the model "gets live". While the top half sphere has been set capable to change in color and texture, the one below isn't so. So I have no way to change it's color, nor to replace it with a new one. The only capability set on the below sphere is to change its visibility, and this is what I'm currently doing. I will ask Emmanuel if he can change this behaviour in a future release.
The lines look way better now they can be thickened, although it would be nice to have the option to turn them off completely.
This is feasible and I could add this option in the next release.
Other crazy suggestions if you somehow figure a way to limit lines to edges where the angle of faces > x: A mode where all materials are replaced by plain white, for that outline sketch look.
In theory it would be very easy, since there is a common way in computer graphics to achieve this effect, however it requires to use a custom shader. It is very easy if you write a program from scratch, but in this case we have to modify the behaviour of an existing program. I will give a look on what can be done as is.
maybe it is time to reconsider the name of this plugin
This is something I was thinking from long time, but there are several reasons to don't change the name. It would be nicer if the main features would be integrated in SH3D so that this plugin could be dismissed. Beside the features presented to the users, this plugin provides an API for 3rd party plugins (currently only my other plugins use this API). This API allows to: - create toolbar checkbutton groups, i.e. groups of ON/OFF buttons in which only one button can be ON at a time; - attach multiple mouse handlers to the Plan view and 3D view; - other minor features.
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Re: Pan tool in 3D and 2D view?
If I had a say in it (but I don't) I think you have more than demonstrated the abilities to get commit rights to the main app.
Maybe Emmanuel is reluctant to give access, or maybe it would require copyright assignment to eTeks for dual licensing (i.e. GPL/proprietry). I think your plugins are really adding value, and I imagine even more so if you were not contricted by the limitations of using plugins.
I don't know if I previously asked this, but are you a professional Java developer, or is this just a hobby for you? Either way, really great contributions.
The lines look way better now they can be thickened, although it would be nice to have the option to turn them off completely.
