Animations, first few frames, and ILD SOS

I will try and be as brief as possible and apologize in advance for my lack of laser expertise. Recently I have been making very simple laser animations for very simple (and cheap) sd card laser projectors. My process was thus:

1. Make a DXF animation (on average about 2000 DXF files)
2. Import DXF files into ILD SOS
3. Export said DXF's into an ILDA file after very little tinkering. Generally I would just make sure the output version was version 0. (Occasionally I might switch the dac rate between 51k and 103k, and the scan speed between 15k and 30k. That's it. I don't really understand what they mean...)
4. Put ILDA file onto SD Card

This worked for me with 156 animations. It was very simple, but it was all I needed (and still need). The animation would run and loop just as the animation should.

Then the computer that I had, which was running ild sos, finally died of natural causes. So I bought two new copies of ild sos, for two other pc's that I have access to.

Now when I create my ilda files in ild sos, and view them in the ild sos viewer, laserboy,and ildaviewer they appear to work as flawlessly as before. When I place them in the projector however, the first frame or two seem to consist of random lines (kind of like what you see when you try and run a version 4 or 5 ilda file on an sd card laser). The rest of the frames are okay. (But they are kind of pointless if the beginning of the animation loop is continually disrupted)

It is not an issue with the projectors I use as they can still play any of my previous 156 animations without an problems. If I take one of my old dxf animations however, and now run them through ild sos to produce an ilda file, the same error occurs. If I now make an ilda file in ild sos, open it in laserboy and save it from there as an version 0 file, the same error occurs. The same happens if I resave with ildaviewer.

I'm not very bright, so I'm probably doing something ridiculously stupid, but I'll never be able to figure out what that is by myself. I'm using ild sos version 1.4.2 if that makes a difference. It is actually from the same original download I used with my original "working" computer (with different license keys of course).

I have been trying to make an ilda direct from dxf with laserboy, but haven't managed to succeed in getting that to run on a projector (it looks fine in ildaviewer and the ild sos viewer).

Does this have something to do with blanking? (Cos I barely know what that even is!) Why did I not have this problem before? First couple of frames only.

I would be very very very grateful if anyone has any views or solutions for this. Unfortunately this is a seriously time-sensitive issue. (Well of course it is! Electronics working flawlessly when there's a looming deadline? Never happened. Ever.)

Thanks for reading this,and sorry I wasn't as brief as promised!

What's different about the new DXF animations you are trying to make?

Have you tried to use the DXF files that you used before with success?

Some DXF files use a palette of 256 colors and some are in "true color"; no palette.

Are you converting your art to use the default palette of 63 colors?

You need to do this before you export to ILDA format 0.

If you don't convert to the default palette, LaserBoy will store a section 2 in front of the sections 0 that follow.

Section 2 is a palette. That will probably screw up everything.

If you want to send me the DXF files, I can try to convert them for you.

Or if you want to Skype or have a phone conversation about it, that would be OK too.

James.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yoink

I'm not very bright, so I'm probably doing something ridiculously stupid, but I'll never be able to figure out what that is by myself.

---

Something about your comment struck me this morning... (and I'm guilty of doing it too) but, saying you're not very bright?? That's a bit too much self deprication based on what you're doing. You've created 150+ ilda file animations. You've been doing conversions, importing and exporting. You're operating laser software and hardware and incidentally, you write very well. I'd say you're a lot brighter than you give yourself credit for. Not having a lot of experience at something is entirely different than not being very bright. Trust me... I work with the public... you're a hell of a lot brighter than a lot of the people I dealt with this weekend.

Hi,

Nice to see people using IldaViewer for real life applications! :)

Can you post a file created with the old computer that works and another which doesn't?
Do palettes need to be included?

It might be something entirely different. Maybe the new computer has different settings for writing to the SD card?

Hi guys,

Thanks alot for your responses (and kind words!).

So I converted the dxf animations to the default palette of 63 colours using Laserboy as James suggested: (p, up and down keys to match the target palette to the default palette, capital B to do a best match).
Then I saved the file as a version 0 using the method suggested here. And yes! The animation works for the full cycle.

The only thing is that now that the blanking lines(are they called blanking lines?) appear on the laser projected animation. As in random lines connecting parts of the animation that shouldn't be connected. Can this be fixed using the optimization controls on Laserboy?

Also how can I change the colour of the entire animation in Laserboy? I need to make five of these, each a different colour. (In the past I was unconcerned with colour as I only worked with single colour projectors).

Incidentally, I opened the Laserboy-made ilda into ILD SOS and it prompts with "File does not begin with a palette" so I choose 64 color ILDA. Then when I output an ILDA from there it has the same problem as before, just a glitch with the opening couple of frames.

I am trying to upload some dxf and ildas to show you guys but I can't seem to get attachments to work. It opens a new window and then nothing happens. It's probably just firefox, I'll try a different browser.

Thank you again so so much for all your help!

If the frames in an ILDA file use the 63 color default palette, then there is no need to define it in the file.

If you want to make an entire frame set all one color..... hmmmmm.

Go into the p palette transforms menu.

First convert your art to use the default palette by finding the default palette in the target palette view with the up down arrow keys.

Hit capital B to do a best match by color.

Then hit the capital D key.

That makes all the vectors of all the frames white.

Now you can move the palette color index pointer to index 55 using the p or P key.

This points to the color white in the default palette.

Hit the r key to set the RGB value of the selected color (55) of the palette to whatever you want (remember you really only have the 63 colors in the default palette to work with)

Since this is a built-in palette, you cannot change it, so LB will automatically make a new copy of the palette and the new color definition will be in it at index 55.

Find the new palette with the up down arrow keys. It will be P00000000 or something like that. Get it in the target palette view.

Do a match palette by index for all frames, capital C.

All frames should now be the color you want.

Now that you have made all of the frames a single color of your choice, you need to find the default palette in the target palette view and do a best match by color back to the default palette, capital B. That will find the nearest color in the default palette that matches the color you created and set all of the art to use that color in the default palette.

I think that will work.

After you do that you can go solve Rubik's Cube.

James.

Thanks alot James, that worked perfectly for the colour change!

The only issue I have now is with the large amount of blanking lines shooting around the animation. Does this have to do with optimization? I don't really know how to figure what the dac rate should be if that's important. Could someone help me with that?

I have attached some dxf's, an ilda made in laserboy, and one made in ild sos if anyone wants a look (these are uncoloured one). The ild sos ilda has that glitch problem at the beginning, the laserboy one doesn't but has significantly more blanking lines.

Thanks again for all your help!

Yes it has to do with optimizations.

You need to start taking some wild guesses and see what happens.

First of all go into menu x switch settings and turn off option a minimize ild dxf txt output.

Now when you optimize your art you can save it as is without LB stripping it down to its bare minimum.

Now go into the [Tab] menu and look at values 3 and 4. This is the maximum distance your scanners will be allowed to move in one DAC sample.

These numbers are in the same coordinates as the whole screen area you are drawing in (-32767 to +32767).

The default settings that come with LaserBoy are for average 20 to 30K -ish scanners running on a modified sound card DAC at 48KHz.

Your DAC is probably about half the sample rate and your scanners are probably not that great.

So start off by doubling the default numbers. This means that your scanners will be expected to move twice as far in one DAC sample that lasts about twice as long.

The lower these numbers are the slower the scanners will move. You can adjust the speed for lit lines and blank lines separately.

You can also change 5 max dwell in microseconds (or not). Microseconds of dwell is calculated as a factor of samples per second (DAC clock) which you set in option h output wave sample rate. This is because LB makes wave files for modified sound cards aka LaserBoy DACs.

Once you set these values in the [Tab] menu, go into menu h and hit a capital Q. This optimizes all frames together.

If you want to see what it does, go into menu u and turn on 1, 2, f and g. Then [esc] back to the main menu and press and hold the digit 4 to rotate the view.

Now you can see how independent X and Y positions come together over time to draw an image.

Your swimming goldfish animation is very curvy so there are quite a few points that cannot be removed without losing the image. That's why it kinda' works. But there are no distance spanning points in the blanking lines.


This recent attention to palettes and so forth has got me looking at my code again. It's been a long time (WOW! almost 1 year!) since I put out a fresh release. I'm working on some fine details about reading the plain ASCII text format that I created. There are some conundrums about naming palettes, writing them into text files and then reading them again. Is this named palette the same as this other palette of the same name? I think I have that sorted out, in concept. I just need to fix it in code. I wish I had someone else with some good C++ eyeballs to go over some of this and sanity check it (the code; not me).

Here are some useful links:

http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?topic=609.0
http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?topic=551.0

Check out the special TTL palette to import into LaserBoy.
http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?...sg6417#msg6417

James.

You should know that at least some of those chinese SD card players have fixed offsets between the point position and color indices in the ILDA file. That is, if you over optimize, you may not get the color of lines that you expect because the card is 'reading ahead' to set the color and the scanners are 'running behind.' I had no end of trouble trying to figure all that out with my Spencer laser; see the Spencer laser thread by dogp. I wrote some software to try to adjust the files to play as expected, but there were always a few gotchas. In the end it is best to not try to make every point look as it should, but know what the card is doing and just add a few points here and there to accommodate its behaviors. An extra blanking points at the start and end of the blank run should help.

Thanks a lot guys, I'm just going to keep tinkering about with optimization. I've pretty much got what I need now but I'm started to get addicted to Laserboy!

I still have a lot to learn though.

Thanks again!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yoink

I'm started to get addicted to Laserboy!

---

That's cus I put crack in it.

James.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by james

That's cus I put crack in it.

James.

---

that explains the interface!

;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by swamidog

that explains the interface!

;)

---

That implies that it can be explained.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yoink

Thanks a lot guys, I'm just going to keep tinkering about with optimization. I've pretty much got what I need now but I'm started to get addicted to Laserboy!

I still have a lot to learn though.

Thanks again!

---

You should consider building (or buying) at least one LaserBoy DAC.

Then you would not have the limitation of that SD card reader. You would have to tap into one of those Spencer's projectors, but all the parts are in there except for the 25 pin ILDA port.

http://laserboy.org/forum/index.php?topic=561.0

James.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tribble

I wrote some software to try to adjust the files to play as expected, but there were always a few gotchas.

---

I don't have one of these projectors, but I am still interested in taking whatever ideas you have about fixing the files and turning that into a LaserBoy Frame Set Effect (of a sort).

James.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yoink

I'm started to get addicted to Laserboy!

---

Maybe I should add some "Freemiums" and "MicroPays"!

Maybe I just watched Southpark!

James.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by james

I don't have one of these projectors, but I am still interested in taking whatever ideas you have about fixing the files and turning that into a LaserBoy Frame Set Effect (of a sort).

James.

---

Did I send you the code at one point? If not I will see if I can dig it up and send it to you. It's Java, but the approach should be straightforward to grok and translate if you're interested. I just ran out of time and motivation to work with the Spencer laser. Waiting for my last few parts to build an ILDA-capable projector. :-)

No I never got that code.

I guess I can translate Java. I'm interested in the methodology.

James.

Is it possible to flip the entire animation upside-down in laserboy? I've just been informed that the sd card projectors will be installed upside-down, so I have to flip the animations immediately. Yesterday in fact.

Can I do this in laserboy?

Thanks alot

Otherwise I guess I'll just do it at the dxf stage

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yoink

Is it possible to flip the entire animation upside-down in laserboy? I've just been informed that the sd card projectors will be installed upside-down, so I have to flip the animations immediately. Yesterday in fact.

Can I do this in laserboy?

Thanks alot

---

!seY

You can rotate, flip and mirror.

Look at menu h.

Options 3 and 4. Shift (# and $) applies the flip or mirror to all frames.

You probably want to rotate 180 degrees.

That would be 2 taps of shift 5 or 6.

Did you try putting the SD card in upside down? :P

James.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yoink

Is it possible to flip the entire animation upside-down in laserboy? I've just been informed that the sd card projectors will be installed upside-down, so I have to flip the animations immediately. Yesterday in fact.

Can I do this in laserboy?

Thanks alot

---

Most of the units I have seen have removable yokes, so they could easily be inverted and then righted with the yoke in the required position. Maybe have a look.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tribble

Most of the units I have seen have removable yokes, so they could easily be inverted and then righted with the yoke in the required position. Maybe have a look.

---

or just turn the card over.

;)

.... random blabbering ....

I just discovered another reason I love UNIX.

There is a set of ASCII character that are legitimate to use in standard UNIX file names.

0 - 9 (digit glyphs : 10)
a - z (lower case glyphs : 26)
A - Z (upper case glyphs : 26)
-_. (dash, underscore and dot : 3)

Because the space character crept into the scene with Win95 file naming extensions and cross-platform file system translation, Linux knows how to "deal with" a space in a file name, but it BUSTS the idea of a "token" as a file name.

Count it up!

There are EXACTLY 65 unique glyphs!

So what?

That's 64 plus the dot.

64 is 2 to the 6th; exactly what you can count with 6 bits.

So a file name can be a perfect hash; a bijective function.

Each glyph is a 6 bit number, leaving the dot as the name dot extension separator.

So a file name of 8 characters could be a hash of a 48 bit number and that hash could be translated back to exactly one 48 bit value.

That's plenty of room for a UNIX time value!

That's a count of every second (except for added leap seconds) since midnight, January 1, 1970; the beginning of The Epoch!

Somehow I don't think this was pure coincidence.

James.

you realize that ascii predates unix by over a decade..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by james

.... random blabbering ....

I just discovered another reason I love UNIX.

There is a set of ASCII character that are legitimate to use in standard UNIX file names.

0 - 9 (digit glyphs : 10)
a - z (lower case glyphs : 26)
A - Z (upper case glyphs : 26)
-_. (dash, underscore and dot : 3)

Because the space character crept into the scene with Win95 file naming extensions and cross-platform file system translation, Linux knows how to "deal with" a space in a file name, but it BUSTS the idea of a "token" as a file name.

Count it up!

There are EXACTLY 65 unique glyphs!

So what?

That's 64 plus the dot.

64 is 2 to the 6th; exactly what you can count with 6 bits.

So a file name can be a perfect hash; a bijective function.

Each glyph is a 6 bit number, leaving the dot as the name dot extension separator.

So a file name of 8 characters could be a hash of a 48 bit number and that hash could be translated back to exactly one 48 bit value.

That's plenty of room for a UNIX time value!

That's a count of every second (except for added leap seconds) since midnight, January 1, 1970; the beginning of The Epoch!

Somehow I don't think this was pure coincidence.

James.

---

Uh... not exactly... But, OK. But UNIX is UNIX.

Do you get why it's a nice coincidence?

It's no big deal to anyone else. I just discovered a way to do something that has been bothering me for a while.

Part of the ILDA file format spec is that each section has an 8 character space in the section header for the name of the data that follows it.

Usually that's a frame, but section 2 is a palette.

There are a few ways to make new palettes in LaserBoy. You can directly create one, import one from an ILDA or text file, get one by reducing or matching either one or many frames to a palette, etc...

In all version of LB, up to and including the current one that's out there now, there are two kinds of "new" palettes. One is just a palette, probably for a single frame and another is a super palette for several consecutive frames; perhaps the whole frame set.

My current naming convention is P0000000, P0000001, P0000002, etc... for regular palettes and SP000000, SP000001, SP000002, etc... for super palettes. The palette and super palette counters always start at 0 each time you start the application.

This is fine for storing palettes with names within an ILDA file because of the way it works and the fact that the file is read in consecutive order and palettes are only in play for as long as another palette is not yet defined in the same file. The name doesn't really do anything.

But, in the LaserBoy plain ASCII text laser vector art format, palette names are important!

Each frame of vectors can have the vector colors defined within it as either separate decimal RGB values or a single hexidecimal value OR the colors can be defined as indexes into a named palette. The palette can be one of the built-in, named LaserBoy palettes or a custom palette defined previously in the text file.

It doesn't matter what order the palettes are defined within the file. They just need to be defined before the frame or frames that use the named palette. When LaserBoy sees a palette definition, it looks for a name. If there is no name, it makes one and loads the palette into the LaserBoy palette set (in the memory of the running app). Any frame that follows that uses the palette of that name has its palette index set to the named palette in the palette set.

With the naming convention that I have described above, it is obvious that many different palettes could be created with the same names; P0000000, etc... That's a real problem for reading the text file format.

But, if I make a call to UNIX time() I get an integer that is the number of seconds (excluding leap seconds) from midnight, January 1st, 1970 to now (the epoch). I can hash that integer into visible ASCII characters that can be used to name a palette and I can be pretty sure it will be globally unique at least for the rest of my life here on Earth.

It works for the ILDA file format spec and my text file spec. It also happens to be made of characters that are valid for a UNIX file name!

Whooooop Teeeee Dooooooo!

Strange things get me excited.

I still have a lot of work to do!

James.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by james

No I never got that code.

James.

---

I spent an hour looking for this old project, checking 9 drives, mostly because I thought I had written it in Java.

But I hadn't.

I wrote it in C++. It's part of a unit I called "ildadump.cpp" and I e-mailed you the source on Jan. 10, 2013. If you don't still have it I can forward it to you again.

Boy, I thought I had lost it! Well, it was almost two years ago. Cut my memory some slack. ;)

Best,
Mike

No worries. I'm glad you found it!

I know how time can slip away. It's been over a year since I release LaserBoy.

I am working on it though!

Soon.

It would probably be a lot easier if you sent it to me again.

James.

So I have yet another question. i have an animation that I would like to run with two colours at the same time. The top part red and the bottom part blue. I could divide the animation into two parts, and run up a set of dxf for both. But is it possible to place two sets of dxf's on top of each other? After I've changed the colour of both in laserboy?
Is there anyway to colour an animation like this without having to go through each frame?

Thanks again

I missed where you are generating the DXF files in but yes you can. DXF files have a 256 color pallete.
However grabbing nearest color value of textures or grabbing textures at all is a problem for most software that export other then diffuse color.

What you can do is do 2 renders.. one sequence of DXF and one sequence with a normal raster based renderer saving to .bmp format I recall which has the color data you want.
If you place them both in the same folder and then open the first of DXF files in the sequence then ILDSOS will see the bmp sequence and in one of the last options there is something about color.

(Don't know which since I haven't been able to run my ildsos in ages after the license stopped working)

It will grab the color values from the image and applies them to the converted DXF files.

You can make all frames of each DXF set a single color and then superimpose them onto each other using LaserBoy.

First save your DXF frame sets as ild using LaserBoy.

Open the first frame set as you would normally, replacing everything already loaded. Then open the second frame set choosing option 5 superimpose frame(s) onto frame set.

The resulting frame set will have the number of frames of the greater of the two (or equal).

James.

Thank you! That works great but is it possible to place one of those ildas higher up on the y-axis than the other? L menu, capital O then y moves the frame up and down along the y-axis, but how do I apply this to all frames? (I should really have this one figured out by now!)

if you look in menu v you can see how to move the camera.

The w | W key moves it in Y. As long as all of the frames still fit inside the square, you can apply the offset to all frames with a capital T.

Only apply one of the three options at a time. IOW don't expect to pan, rotate and zoom all in the same move.

James.

I'm almost there! I have the animation made on laserboy exactly as I want it, but as I am using sd card laser projectors I need the ilda to be saved as a version0 for it to work. Up until now I've been using the approach described in this topic: http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...o-v0-converter (i.e. moving a frame a couple of points along the z axis so laserboy will automatically save it as a 3D version 0 file). This doesn't seem to work anymore and the file, which is made up of two ildas superimposed on each other, keeps saving as a version 1 file.
At the moment I'm bringing the version 1 laserboy-produced ilda into ildaviewer and then exporting from there as a version 0, but I am worried this might lose the optimizations I have made in laserboy. Is this so? Or will an ildaviewer outputted file still have the laserboy optimizations in it?

Thanks for your time and patience

Don't worry about that, I'm nowhere near capable enough to figure out optimisation and stuff so all files are loaded and exported as is, with all points intact. Just make sure to use the version from the last post in that thread. I still need to release the official update but am still figuring out how to implement the frame editor and I want to get that out of the way first. But I should, because it can make your life a lot easier...

If you are interested, I can describe the scenario of optimization as it is done in LaserBoy.

It requires quite a few functional capabilities all put together into a methodology.

There is actually, a lot to it.

James.

You can do it in the v menu.

First you flip the camera to look at the side of the cube of 3D space with the 6 key.
Then you apply this view to the art with a capital letter O (not zero).

Then you pan the camera so that the art moves away from the Z origin a little bit with the q key.
Then you apply this view to the art with a capital T.

Finally you view the art from what used to be the front with a tap of the ^ (shift 6) and apply this view to the art with a capital O.

I just tried it and I forgot to apply the first rotation to the side view to the art and it doesn't work. The camera moves, but you are looking at a view that is still rotated to something other than zero degrees on the axis.

So remember to do that!

That goes back to what I said earlier about not being able to apply pan, rotation and zoom at the same time.

James.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by james

If you are interested, I can describe the scenario of optimization as it is done in LaserBoy.

It requires quite a few functional capabilities all put together into a methodology.

There is actually, a lot to it.

James.

---

From what I gather, there is an option to remove all "in-between" collinear points and place them back using linear interpolation and a predefined distance, for both blanked and unblanked points. That sounds like something I'm capable of. Next there is the removal of angle dwell points, which I guess are points at the same location to allow scanners to come to a pause for a sharply defined corner? And adding them again. Is there a relation between angle size and amount of points added?
Interesting how you can find the optimised path to go between segments.
And then there is the mysterious "q"...
I can't even begin to imagine what I'm missing.

I'd love to talk about this in PM, to prevent a derailing of the thread.

We can spin a new thread.

Made one.

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...971#post304971