confused about software/DAC requirements of laser projectors

[The_Doctor]

That's where the LSX advantage lies IF abstracts are your thing, in its base shape library not its abilities.

THAT is why I don't understand why old wars are alluded to every time debates about software vs software erupt. It's always been true that good patches sell a synthesiser. Accessibility. For one thing, it's often the only fast clue a user gets to its true ability anyway. And there's no substitute for actually playing them either. Demo sounds and light never cut it. Even an actual demo sequence on a synthesier is usually a humiliating and annoying experience to a user who wants to find their own way. But cut that sequence up into macros, liek bits of beam show, for easy reconstruction, and you have the difference between Meccano and Lego. Meccano is flashier, but I think we all know which is more fun, and easier to reuse our own way. Also, the obvious simplicity of Lego makes it all the more amazing when you see some of the astounding stuff made with it.

[oleger]

Okay, why am I learning only now that LSX includes both LaserCam and ILD SOS??
I need to contact the developer, like now. Any ideas how? I've already tried via pm.


Sure, but you need you consider that not all data can be converted the "other" way.
Not every object in Blender or in any other 3d modeller is made up of vertices. There's more, there are textures and particles (which you can actually turn to outlines with a sobel filter (using nodes) or similar and run through a bitmap to vector converter), camera animations, morph animations, and some more rarely used things like metaballs.
If you just need vertices and "skeleton" animations, then I guess you can just dump a DXF file and then sure, it will be 1:1, no loss of data and better looking than rendering to bitmaps and converting that to an ILDA vector animation. But as a 3d artist you know there's so much more you have access to than just polygons and polygon animations.

Now that I think about it, the best looking option, if you're not using textures like in the above example, might be to export polygons and polygon animations as DXF (vector) and everything else as bitmap frames, then "blend" the two together in LSX or Quickshow.
I haven't tried the bitmap to vector converters yet though, it might turn out that they give pretty good results and this method is not worth the time.

If you are using 3d max, then you need to use a plugin Illustrate! for rendering. Then you can get the desired result.

[oleger]

That's one way of doing it
Blender can render outlines like that too. The problem is, again, only using polygons.

What do you want? In any case, the laser graphics is contour lines.
For example, the animation of people

[dzodzo]

Bottom line -- I know our software works, and that even unsophisticated, non-computer-programming clients will be successful with it, and be successful quickly.

I cracked this mystery open, i downloaded a premium feature software from warez and it's really easy to use. I heard it's not millions of lines of code yet but they're getting there. Obviously the more lines of code, the better! It's just a beta version but one day it will be released with SDK for all hardware.

[dzodzo]

It's just a joke i assembled based on this idea http://pc.poradna.net/file/view/5664...hit-wizard-jpg

Welcome to the internet

[Galvonaut]

Buffo - congratulations on the impeding arrival!

Dream - This thread is becoming very helpful indeed. I am planning to do some laser-highlighting of projection mapped content and have so far had little idea of how to achieve my desired results. Lasercam (which I have) was one of my options but there may be a better way.

I totally agree that this shouldn't be a pissing contest. To be honest, just looking at videos of content made on various software on thou-tube can give you quite a good clue as to what software suits your particular need. PL can certainly help you to understand the minutiae of the various options.
Software should really sell itself - or rather it's happy, passionate or creative customers should sell it.

Yesterday I installed LSX pro. I read the first few pages of the manual and ended up creating this in 10 minutes while sat at the roller disco.
It is not fancy and I have improved upon it since with some advice from the community (thanks Swami & cmb) but this was a lot better than I was able to create in QS (and I've 'played' for several hours in QS).

I am no-doubt going to be using lots of different software - I don't want to be the artist who only uses one brush because he considers it the best.

Keith

[The_Doctor]

That's one way of doing it
Blender can render outlines like that too. The problem is, again, only using polygons.


Well that's a game changer for me :/

Even a modest tool like PainShop can do a 'find edges' trick that will be easy to adapt to find the optimal line weight and count for a decent vector scan. Trouble is, it doesn't actually convert to vector. But like the Lego analogy I used earlier, it might pay to use some basic tools in combination. If you had some 'travelling salesman' type optimiser program to feed a simple map to, then you could do 'find edges' then feed the 'salesman' routine which in closing would have done a great deal of your scan optimising too. I suspect this method might suck for lengthy animations, though.


Edit: Re 'Successful Laser Show. too damn funny. I'll have a dancing Hitler, please.

More edit: Jasc, who made PaintShop, also made an 'Image Robot' tool that can automate whole sets of image process, and it includes Find Edges, and also a Trace Contour.

[The_Doctor]

I don't want to be the artist who only uses one brush because he considers it the best.

You could always snap it in two like the Sorceror's Apprentice. Joke, but with a point to it: this is the attraction of code. I wanted a DX7 that could do things like Hawkwind did on a synth. This was impossible until I coded my own. But there IS a tendency for dreams to get out of hand with that kind of power.

[Galvonaut]

Hehe, my dreams are already out of hand Doc!

[The_Doctor]

Actually that's good. Trouble with mine is they're no longer vivid or wild enough.