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Thread: LaserBoy has kicked the OS habbit!

  1. #11
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    Talking LaserBoy Multiplatform (for Windows) UPDATE

    Update.

    http://akrobiz.com/laserboy/code/Las...04_28_2008.zip

    How about some feedback?

    James.

  2. #12
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    I played with it for a few minutes. Basically just randomly pushing buttons to see what it would do. To be truthful, it was a pretty frustrating experience. At one point I was able to get a bunch of points to rotate, and I thought that was really cool. But then I pressed a wrong button or something and it stopped rotating and I couldn't get it to do it again. The on screen menu was also kind of frustrating since I couldn't see the image with it in the way. But, if it was gone I would have no idea which keys to press. I think that if you got rid of the key presses to do everything and put a menu system on it then it might be a little more friendly and appealing to me. I understand your point above about the mouse not being precise enough for certain things. But, for selecting menu items a mouse is great. And some icons or something to indicate what mode you are in would be nice, too. There are clearly some nice features within LaserBoy but the whole keyboard thing makes me not want to use it. If you ever create a Windows-ish version of it I'd love to check it out again, though. Since you want to be multiplatform maybe you could look into something like Mono (.NET) or Wine (http://www.winehq.org). I have used neither of them so I can't comment on how well they work, though.

  3. #13
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    Talking

    OK. Cool!

    I guess some instructions, for a start, would be good. I kind-of wanted it to work like a Fischer-Price-Toy; you know... lots of pretty colors and things to play around with. Anyway...

    First of all, note the LaserBoy.bat file. Take a look at it in a text editor. This is how you make the display window any size you want. It's OK to make it wider than a 4 by 3 aspect ratio, so you can use your monitor's current resolution for X and make Y a bit less, so that you have room to grab the window from the title bar and move it around. So, if you run your monitor at 1280 by 1024, you can put the numbers 1280 and 1000 in this file and it will make the window as wide as your screen but a little shorter. There MUST be at least one space between these two numbers and nothing else, or it wont work. Don't double click on LaserBoy.exe! Double click on (or make a link to) this bat file. You can also go to a system prompt and initiate the program by name in its own directory with these numbers as command line arguments. The default for the compiled LaserBoy.exe is 640 by 480.

    NOTE: If you have a regular (non-wide 4:3) screen, the resolution 1280 by 1024 is NOT 4 by 3 (it's 5 by 4), so your pixels are NOT square! Your circles will be ellipses, etc. Don't use this resolution if you can avoid it. I can't wait for the day when all screens have real square pixels and I can create my own touch screen display to control my own programs. Oh well....

    The [Enter] key will toggle the help screen overlay on and off. This is true even when you are in one of the two modes for drawing or moving stuff (k and l). Those help screens are about the keys in those modes.

    The / and the ? will toggle frame set stats and frame stats overlays.

    The view keys are press-and-hold. That is to say, the view changes as you hold the keys down. You can impose the current view into the data by choosing the v key and hitting 1 , 2 or 3 . You can not impose a view that would place vertices outside of the bounds of space. Doing so will not ruin your data. It just won't do anything. It WILL effect all frames EXCEPT those that it can not, without destruction of data.

    The screen motion keys ` ~ - _ = + start the motion in one click. Any key after that will stop the motion and have no other effect.

    Some keys are just to get you to a menu where you can pick a single key for a choice.

    In many cases, a key will change the contents of the current frame that is in the view. Holding the [Shift] key while hitting that same key will apply the change to all of the frames in the set.

    Once a transform or settings menu is entered and a choice is made, you are no longer in that menu. You have to hit the single key that takes you back to that menu to make another selection.

    example: to turn on points and blanking in the display hit

    u
    1
    u
    2

    The [Tab] key takes you to system settings, where you chose a single item and then you are prompted to enter a new value. You will see the prompt and be able to edit the line you are typing (backspace). It will only accept keys that make sense. That is, numbers for numbers and numbers, letters and the _ for file or directory names. You must hit [Enter] to make it accept your completed entry.

    The keys, k and l put you into a mode that you must [Esc] to get out of. There are also press-and-hold keys in these modes that size, spin and move stuff as you hold and see it happen. If you are in the straight-on view, you will not be able to see any changes in the Z axis. Rotate your view as needed (the 4 key).

    Choosing i or o for file IO presents some different options depending on what you want to do. Names of files are listed over the palettes. So are names of frame and frame set effects. These appear as needed. All file IO is done in the same directory as the executable file LaserBoy.exe. You will see folders like 'frames', 'dxf', 'bmp', 'waves', etc. This is where you can put files you get from other places so that they are available to open in LaserBoy and it is where you will find the results of your creative efforts within LaserBoy to share with other laser enthusiasts. When you apply a frame or frame set effect it is in the file output menu because it produces a file of the name of the applied effect. You must be aware that those names will always be over-written by any future use of those named effects AND that in order to see the effect you must open the ILDA data file (of the name of the effect) that was created by applying the effect. In other words, if you pick a frame and apply the 'spin' effect, you must open spin.ild to see it and save it to another name to prevent it from being over-written the next time you use the 'spin' effect.

    There are two palettes showing. One is the palette of the current frame and the other is a possible target palette. You can perform "palette transforms" that can convert the frame palette to the target palette in a variety of ways. The frame might not have a palette in the case that it is true color (24-bit). This will be indicated. When drawing or rendering, the color comes from either the frame's palette or in the case of a true color frame, the target palette.

    It is a bit brittle right now, in that you can get lost in a couple of missed key strokes, but you can't really mess anything up; at least not what is saved to the hard drive. Usually an [Esc] gets you out of whatever you are in, including the whole program.

    It takes a minute to get used to it, but once you memorize some of the keys, you can fly through it and not even look at the keyboard.

    It's kind-of-like a multiplatform video game, except you never lose!

    I hope you all realize, this is quite a big deal for me. I've been working on this project for a long time and now, finally, everyone in the world can see it. I hope it makes a big difference in the way laser vector art works on planet Earth.

    Hey, It's FREE !!! Take a minute to check it out. I'm not asking for anything, but I sure like to get feedback.

    What!? Didn't you get all of this from the inside of the bubble gum wrapper?

    James.



    ps. Thank God for the editor in this blog app!
    Last edited by James Lehman; 04-28-2008 at 21:15.

  4. #14
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    Default Documentation Error?

    Nice job! However, when I press [Backspace] to delete a frame it does nothing. Instead, I have to hit [Del] to delete the frame.

    Now... how do I draw/trace images?

    Bill

  5. #15
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    Talking

    Hi Bill!

    First, make a bitmap of what you want to trace. Make it square, and the same size as your LaserBoy window's Y dimension. It's a good idea to make the background of the bitmap black and the image you want to trace a dark color. That way you can see your vectors over the top of it more easily. Save this bitmap in the folder called 'bmp' inside the LaserBoy directory.

    Now open LaserBoy to the size you like and hit

    i // to input a file
    4 // to choose the type bitmap
    2 // to make it the background of the LaserBoy display

    Type the name of the bitmap at the prompt. You do not need to type .bmp at the end. Hit [Enter]

    Now your bitmap will be in the view, behind all of the vector art.

    To get rid of it,

    i // to input a file ( OK, a not file )
    4 // to choose the type bitmap
    3 // to make it disappear

    BTW the other option for importing a bitmap is to use it as a 2D color map to recolor whatever vertices are over whatever pixels. In this use of a bitmap, the size is not really important. It scales. This is how I did the spiral raster images of Tux and my little dog, Oscar.

    OK. Now hit

    j // to enter frame set transforms
    8 // to add an empty frame to the beginning of the frame set

    Make sure you are looking at the new, blank frame in the view. You should see that it is frame 0. If unsure, hit

    9 // to put the first frame into the view

    Now make points and blanking visible.

    u // takes you to the UI visuals. Each selection will toggle its current state. If it is visible, not only can you see it in the view, but it will also have an arrow in front of it in the UI visuals menu. In other words,

    u
    1
    u
    1

    Turns points on and off, etc.

    Now you should see a gray dot in the center of the view. This is the closest thing you can get to nothing at all! It is a blank vector of 2 points with no offset, no direction and no magnitude.

    Here is where I will make some distinctions. A point is usually associated with the implied coordinate space. A vertex is a point that happens to be in your vector drawing. A vector is the line that exists between a lit point and its anchor (where it came from).

    That is why there are no less than 2 points in this "blank" drawing. A vector always has a beginning and an end.

    Go into the drawing mode by hitting

    k

    [Enter] will toggle the help screen on and off.

    In this view, there are two little markers; one looks like and empty square and the other looks like an 8 way cross. These are cursors that move through the vertices and designate the start and the end of a selected segment of consecutive vertices. They are both sitting on the zero vertex in the center of the view. Note that on the side, under the palettes, there are similar icons. This tells you what palette color index that vertex has, what number the vertex is in the set (starting at zero) and which lit segment the vertex is part of (also starting with zero).

    Since there are only 2 vertices so far, moving the cursors doesn't look like much, but you can see the number change in the icon display. Put the start cursor (the open square) on vertex number 1 by tapping the

    [

    key. Now that this vertex is under the start cursor, you can move it around by hitting and holding

    x
    X
    y
    Y

    and even

    z
    Z

    Upper and lower case moves it forwards and backwards in all 3D. You can't see Z if you are looking straight at the drawing from the front. Press and hold

    4 // to spin the frame aound

    tap

    5 // to set it back to the front view

    Now that you have moved the first real vector away from the origin, you can see that it is a line connected to its anchor. It is still blank and it's actual defined color is black! If you hit

    B // (capital B)

    You will unblank the vector, but you will notice that it disappears because it is black. The start cursor is white so that you can see it. Hit

    c // to set the color of the vector to the current palette index (most likely red). If you press and hold

    p // or capital P the palette index will change

    Note that you are using colors from the frame's palette. If you go to palette transforms and promote this frame to true color you can pick any color from any palette on the target palette side.

    Now you should have a red vector with some magnitude (length). You can move the start cursor over either end and move them where ever you want.

    By tapping the

    . // period

    You will do one of 2 things. If the start cursor is on the LAST vertex in the drawing you will "pop" another vector off the end of the drawing that is an exact match of the former last vector. If your start cursor is somewhere other than the last vertex you will add a new vertex exactly in the middle of the next vector, splitting it. If there is no magnitude of the vector your start cursor is sitting on, then you won't see anything happen. But you are still adding vertices to the drawing. They are all just on the same point in space.

    Now that you can "pop" vectors off the end of the drawing, you can move the anchor point 0 to the edge of your bitmap drawing and the first lit vertex somewhere near it to form a short, straight line. If your start cursor is on the last vertex, you can pop and rotate all the way around your drawing!

    If a vector has length, then you can rotate it around its anchor in either the Z or the Y axis. Press and hold

    f // or capital F

    to rotate the vector around its anchor. Your last vector will always be the same length, until you change it by either moving it in X, Y or Z or changing it's magnitude directly by hitting

    m // or capital M

    to stretch it or shrink it.

    It's probably a good idea to do all of the tracing in one color and not worry about blanking. Save your work as you go along! It can take a while and you don't want to have to keep starting over.

    To save your drawing, [Esc] out of this drawing mode and hit

    o // (the letter o, not zero) to save output
    1 // to save this single frame as ILDA

    give it a name at the prompt and hit [Enter]. You do not need to include the .ild on the end.

    Now you can return to your work by hitting

    k

    and you will see that it remembers exactly what you were doing.

    Once you have the drawing traced, you can blank out the lines that connect the segments and color each segment however you want.

    Some of the functions for drawing (moving rotating and scaling) only work on a single vertex. In these cases, it will be the one at the start cursor.

    Blanking, unblanking and coloring are applied to all of the consecutive vertices from start cursor to end cursor. In this case to select a single vertex to change its color, blank or unblank it, you need to put both the start and the end cursor on that single vertex. Also, note that the color of a vector is stored in its "lit" end. It is in the single vertex, not the line between it and its anchor point! This gets confusing at times. Also note that the zero vertex in any drawing can not have a color, is neither lit or blank and has no magnitude relative to anything. So it can not be rotated or scaled. But it can be moved!

    If you want to select move rotate and scale whole segments, [Esc] out of this mode and hit

    l // lower case L

    Stay tooned!

    James.

    ps. I fixed the Backspace issue. I have one other issue to fix and I will release it again.
    Last edited by James Lehman; 04-29-2008 at 16:30.

  6. #16
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    Talking Fresh LaserBoy!


  7. #17
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    Default

    Excellent! I have been eyeing this program for a long time, for its wav capability and other capabilities. With another program: Win 3.1 era Micrografx Designer 3.1 (abandonware now) drawing vectors and shapes with a mouse and exporting as DXF for import into your program worked well on my test image. I don't think it can do 3-D, but for flat renders it's easy to use. Have you come up with a way of blanking with wav files? multi-channel? Is there a single-level undo?


    thanks for making this program available, it's a big boost in the arm for laser tinkerers like me

  8. #18
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  9. #19
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    Talking

    "Have you come up with a way of blanking with wav files? multi-channel? Is there a single-level undo?"

    LaserBoy generated wave files are (currently) 6 channels. {X, Y, r, g, b, i}.
    This is just a reasonable arrangment. Just about any number of channels is only a matter of software.

    Yes. LaserBoy waves have blanking; as in no red, no green, no blue, no intensity. They are 24-bit color RGB, from black to white and all colors in between.

    The multiplatform version of the code that is out there now does not include the ability to impose sample shifting on the wave data to correct for the timing differences of the scanners to the color modulation. I have yet to integrate those features into what is now one LaserBoy GUI application.

    No. There is no undo. Work from files on the hard drive. Save your work as you go along. Much of what you can do with LaserBoy is very step-by-step repeatable anyway. So to redo everything you just did might only be a handful of key strokes. Just remember what you did!

    James.

  10. #20
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    Default

    Is it possible to generate a separate wavefiles for each of the outputs or are they combined in to one multichannel one?

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