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Thread: Creating first ILDA

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by james View Post
    Can you post some examples?

    DXF is plain ASCII text. So you can open it in notepad or whatever.

    Look for the ENTITES section and see if it is made of the line primitives that LB knows how to read.

    I bet your 3D stuff is all about surfaces and not lines or edges.
    Here is the simplest example I can do.
    I start MAX, create a cube, and export as DXF. I had to ZIP it up since DXF isn't a supported file.
    It opens fine in Illustrator.
    Is there any reason to use 3D DXF over 2D?
    I assume if you are doing all your moves and rotations in LaserBoy it may be smoother..?
    I can create a 2D DXF sequence with exactly what I need, it just needs to be clean and smooth as silk
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  3. #13
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    Thank you!
    I looked at LC-MAX, and it only works with Beyond (correct?).
    What other software is MAX/AE-to-ILDA friendly?

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    Quote Originally Posted by 3DPiper View Post
    Here is the simplest example I can do.
    I start MAX, create a cube, and export as DXF. I had to ZIP it up since DXF isn't a supported file.
    It opens fine in Illustrator.
    Is there any reason to use 3D DXF over 2D?
    I assume if you are doing all your moves and rotations in LaserBoy it may be smoother..?
    I can create a 2D DXF sequence with exactly what I need, it just needs to be clean and smooth as silk
    I took a quick look at this file. It has INSERT in its list of ENTITES and those refer to BLOCK which is defined elsewhere in the file.

    LaserBoy doesn't know how to read that stuff. As a matter of fact, if you group together a bunch of line primitives, it can't read that either.

    All of the ENTITES that it can read are 3D and It can read them as 3D. But this is more academic than anything else.

    Just about everyone who uses LB to convert DXF into laser frames does it on 2D files.

    If you make an animation of a 3D space and export that as DXF, your CAD app can do all of the hidden lines and stuff and all you get is the outlines of solid objects. That's what you really want.

    I'm glad you are able to get it to work for 2D files. I'd like to see some examples of your art.
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  5. #15
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    If you don't mind exporting to Blender, there is this:

    https://ildrender.automatic-brain.de/index.php#features

    Steve
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    Quote Originally Posted by james View Post
    I took a quick look at this file. It has INSERT in its list of ENTITES and those refer to BLOCK which is defined elsewhere in the file.

    LaserBoy doesn't know how to read that stuff. As a matter of fact, if you group together a bunch of line primitives, it can't read that either.

    All of the ENTITES that it can read are 3D and It can read them as 3D. But this is more academic than anything else.

    Just about everyone who uses LB to convert DXF into laser frames does it on 2D files.

    If you make an animation of a 3D space and export that as DXF, your CAD app can do all of the hidden lines and stuff and all you get is the outlines of solid objects. That's what you really want.

    I'm glad you are able to get it to work for 2D files. I'd like to see some examples of your art.
    Thank you for looking at the file.
    I can definitely do all the animation I need in MAX and just export 2D DXF, that is no problem.
    No art yet! haha still experimenting.
    Check the file attached, it is a2D DXF from MAX. Each element has its stroke color matching the body diffuse material and it imports into LaserBoy and look great!
    But I can't seem to export the single frame to a usable ILDA file.
    It doesn't show up on my test projector (a cheapie SD-RGB500) and if I check the ILDA in other programs I either get a palette error or the splines aren't clean like in LaserBoy.
    What is the proper flow for 2D DXF -> ILDA?
    If I can get a single frame displaying I know I can get a full animation
    Attached Files Attached Files

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    Quote Originally Posted by mixedgas View Post
    If you don't mind exporting to Blender, there is this:

    https://ildrender.automatic-brain.de/index.php#features

    Steve
    I did see that, very cool.

    Cost abut $180..
    Last edited by 3DPiper; 05-12-2021 at 18:01.

  8. #18
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    So I've played around with LaserBoy and some other programs and have had minor luck getting my animations on my current cheapie test laser projector.
    Can anyone look at the attached DXF sequence and get a working ILDA animation?
    I understand to create a ILDA 0 animation with minimal palette, name it in an 8.3 format, and add it to a .prg text list in a folder.
    The ones I create look great on the computer, but the projector either flat out won't play it or it is very badly segmented with huge gaps or it just goes crazy and I can't see anything recognizeable at all. Even single frames look horrible.
    The rainbow bullseye ILDA that came with the projector look great! Bright and clear with no stuttering. Granted, I know it it is just one frame. How can you tell what format that ILDA is in so I can render to the same?
    I hope to eventually get a LaserCube, will I have these same problems with that projector?
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  9. #19
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    If you open any ilda file in LaserBoy it reports what was in it on the screen. It tells you how many sections of each type it found in the file. Been a while, but I'm pretty sure you can open ctn.wtf to set all of the parameters to be able to optimize correctly before you save as ilda. You should also look in menu x switch settings to make sure you are not automatically minimizing the ilda file when you save it and you should also save 2D as 3D (also in menu x).

    Interesting file set. I had to mess with this a bit in my development version of LB. I'll have to see how it works in the current public version.

    The colors are in the dxf palette but they are rather dim and don't match well with the TTL 7.
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Last edited by james; 05-21-2021 at 22:47.
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  10. #20
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    Thank you for looking at the DXF sequence.
    The ILDA animation you created is the best one yet!
    Unfortunately it has no color (only white) and is missing an object.
    But it is smooth and the lines are not broken like in my versions.

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