LaserBoy 05-20-2008 v2

[drlava]

The issue is not getting the colors out of DXF I think it's getting illustrate! to generate colored lines instead of colored 'faces'.

[Dr Laser]

The illustrate! color how to tutorial is here....sorry no voice narrations. I'll do a full how to tutorial soon. Don't forget to use AutoCad ACI palette instead of standart 3ds palette
http://www.laseremitter.com/tuts/colortut.avi

Also here is CATmover because looks like that link is down.
http://www.laseremitter.com/files/catmover.rar

[Onge]

Yep Mamba Black blanks certain lines

Below is the Castle frame 42 and Plain frame 7 displayed in Mamba Black.
iShow gives a read error which is what I get if I try to load ILDA RGB files into it.

Andre

[TL]

dead link for me.


Perhaps setting the conversion space to a smaller work area would result in less unnecessary vertexes.

James, It's crazy easy to do something like that in 3D software. This one was done in 3D studio max 2.1 (1997?) and with the illustrate! 4.0 vector rendering plugin 30-day trial (still trying to figure out how to get colorized vectors). Then the DXFs were converted to ilda in laserboy. Hopefully a blender plugin will come about similar to illustrate! Someone is currently working on one in the forums.

Yes, unfortunately my server is down, as the data center had an explosiion in their power supply (currently there are 7500 servers down..)

It's me who is working on the blender thing, I think I have to look at illustrate! the next days...

[James Lehman]

Yep Mamba Black blanks certain lines

Below is the Castle frame 42 and Plain frame 7 displayed in Mamba Black.
iShow gives a read error which is what I get if I try to load ILDA RGB files into it.

Andre

Make sure you convert every frame from the DXF palette to the default palette

p/A

before you save it as ILDA. The default palette of 62 colors is not saved in the file. It is assumed that if there is no palette, this is the one to use. Sounds like your other programs just don't like color palettes.

i/2/3 name
h/D
p/A
o/3 name

James.

[carmangary]

Will laser boy convert colors that are not in the default palette to closest matches? That would be a nice feature if it does.

[Dr Laser]

Bit 14 is the blanking bit. If this is a 0, then the laser is on (draw).
If this is a 1, then the laser is off (blank). Note that all systems must
write this bit, even if a particular system uses only bits 0-7 for blanking/
color information.

[James Lehman]

Will laser boy convert colors that are not in the default palette to closest matches? That would be a nice feature if it does.

Yes. It has a "best color match" in the palette transforms menu.
It will do that from any color set (24 bit or palette) to any chosen target palette.

James.

PS. I'm still frying my brain on this stuff. I don't have the one thing that I wanted working quite right, but I've added TONS of other neato features! I might just have to release a "beta" version soon.

[James Lehman]

Bit 14 is the blanking bit. If this is a 0, then the laser is on (draw).
If this is a 1, then the laser is off (blank). Note that all systems must
write this bit, even if a particular system uses only bits 0-7 for blanking/
color information.

Right you are!

LaserBoy stores a byte for blanking (called k)

#define    EZ_ILDA_SELECTED_POINT         1   // 0000 0001
#define    EZ_ILDA_UNIQUE_POINT           32  // 0010 0000
#define    EZ_ILDA_BLANKING_BIT           64  // 0100 0000
#define    EZ_ILDA_LAST_POINT             128 // 1000 0000

Internally, I use this byte for some other stuff too.

another byte for the color palette index (c) is stuck right after this one.

That makes a 16bit short that has the color index in 0-7 and the blanking bit at 14.

#define    EZ_ILDA_UNIQUE_POINT           32  // 0010 0000

This might be what's confusing some of the other apps.


James.

[James Lehman]

The illustrate! color how to tutorial is here....sorry no voice narrations. I'll do a full how to tutorial soon. Don't forget to use AutoCad ACI palette instead of standart 3ds palette
http://www.laseremitter.com/tuts/colortut.avi

I just got a chance to see this.

Oh man is that COOL!

You've got to come to SELEM!
(or at least Akron )

I'd really like to meet you and see your stuff!

Great!

James.