The LSX tutorials thread!

[neskusen]

Yeah, go ahead and post the link there.

PS anyone have an answer to my question?

[james]

LaserBoy only knows how to import some of the ENTITIES of DXF.

It can do:

POINT
LINE
CIRCLE
ARC
ELLIPSE
POLYLINE
LWPOLYLINE
TEXT

It only reads the stuff in the ENTITIES section. You can open the DXF file in any text editor and read it as plain text.

It should be able to do all of these in 3D.

It does not support SPLINE.

ildSOS is built on an older version of the LaserBoy base code and it has a kind-of 2D SPLINE added to it.

I hope this helps.

Can you send me an example frame in DXF?

Also note, you can draw in 3D in LaserBoy!

http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?topic=551.0

You can also optimize your frames and export them as 3D ILDA.

James.

[daderaide]

Those tutorials were immensely helpful, but after following them precisely, I get no output file of any kind. I've triple checked that all of the settings and boxes are checked, but there is still no output when i click the render button. In Blender, I am moved from "3D View" to the "UV/Image editor" viewport, and there is an image of the monkey head, but there is no output file in the destination folder.

[colouredmirrorball]

PS anyone have an answer to my question?

I don't think it's possible. You can remove a point with RGBI but that just blanks it. I think it is still being scanned. Intensity event removes frames but that can not work per point.

[neskusen]

I don't think it's possible. You can remove a point with RGBI but that just blanks it.

Isn't that what I need?

I think it is still being scanned.

What do you mean? If there is one point, what is being scanned? Are the mirrors moving and beam intensity changing at all when you have just one point?

Those tutorials were immensely helpful, but after following them precisely, I get no output file of any kind. I've triple checked that all of the settings and boxes are checked, but there is still no output when i click the render button. In Blender, I am moved from "3D View" to the "UV/Image editor" viewport, and there is an image of the monkey head, but there is no output file in the destination folder.

Good thing about Blender is you can share the blend file and we all can have a look. You can use http://www.pasteall.org/blend/

I have a feeling your camera is positioned in such a way that it doesnt see anything, or the image format is not BMP or even an image but a movie format.

[daderaide]

if i'm understanding the purpose of neskusen's experiment, you should be able to set the length of an animation that has just one point to 1 millisecond and that would be 1kpps. You would have to change the time precision under the audio preferences. and then in the "edit properties" window for the animation event, you could set the duration to 1ms. i don't think you would even see this dot though. it would flash so fast that i don't think you would be able to see it. but you could then increment the duration by 1ms until it was as bright as you wanted. Does that sound like a solution?

[neskusen]

Um not really, unless I still dont understand this concept. I think KPPS is about mirror movement, not modulation or intensity, so if there's one point 1 KPPS shouldn't mean it is only visible 1 milliseconds, but that the mirrors move 1 point at a time each second which is irrelevant in this scenario as there is one point. ...right?

What I want to do is play around with how much the dot is visible each second. If it is visible only 1/8000th of a second, isn't that similar to if I had 8000 points to draw each second (8KPPS) and wanted to see how each point looked on its own? (provided each point is same color and intensity). The point is to simulate different amount of KPPS by hiding a single point 1/KPPS of a second and see just how much each dot appears dimmer to us as more points have to be "drawn" by the scanner.

[daderaide]

hmm. I think I understand a little better. KPPS stands for thousand points per second. so 1kpps is 1 thousand points per second or one point per millisecond. that's where i was going with my last post. I'm not sure that your description of "1/KPPS of a second" is a correct understanding ok scan rate.

I think that if you wanted to see what one lit point would look like in an 8kpps frame, you would have to have one lit point and 7,999 blanking points in your frame. then you would have to set the scan rate to 8kpps in the optimization settings. You could then add more blanking points to see how the brightness changed at higher kpps scan rates. but with just one point the mirrors aren't moving, so i don't see how any of this talk about one point will get you what you're wanting to know.

[neskusen]

with just one point the mirrors aren't moving, so i don't see how any of this talk about one point will get you what you're wanting to know.

I said few times by now, I want to "hide" that point 1/nth of a second each second to simulate drawing 7999 (unlit) more points. That's the only easy way I see of doing it if I want to change the number of "unlit points" dynamically for the experiment.
The point appears dimmer but still not going on and off because of persistence of vision.

Now my actual question is/was, if I use an RGBI or Intensity event for this will LSX really hide the point the exact milliseconds I told it to and is that what I'm seeing or is that asking too much from the program to be so precise down to the millisecond?

[colouredmirrorball]

Now my actual question is/was, if I use an RGBI or Intensity event for this will LSX really hide the point the exact milliseconds I told it to and is that what I'm seeing or is that asking too much from the program to be so precise down to the millisecond?

No. LSX processes a frame then sends it to a DAC. The DAC stores it in its buffer while the previous frame is being converted to analog. During this LSX can't send a new frame. When the old frame is completely sent out, the DAC reads the frame from its buffer and tells LSX it can accept a new frame. Depending on the DAC this can cause the beam to go off or freeze the frame or what not in between loading cycles. You can't really count on it for precise timing.

You will also need to disable optimisation if you find a way to do what you want as that adds extra points to the frame.