ILD SÔS - Upcoming new ILDA format oriented software.

**mikkojay** · 02-22-2009, 10:36

Things change........

**Zoof** · 02-22-2009, 12:10

Originally Posted by Pangolin

Yes, in many cases this is true.

Exactly. We are researching a moving-coil project right now, and working with two of the guys who produced coils in the BOSE 800 and 900-series speakers. I got interested in these guys and the history of BOSE, so while reading about Amar Bose, I learned that he never did what he did to "change the world" or make money. Rather he did what he wanted to for the sake of his own fascination.

Bill

I hate to break it to you Bill, but speaker scanners have been done before

Actually I'm quite curious where this is going. If you need some design tips for moving coil galvos, you can visit my gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/DrZoof/H...19496405365218
It has some pics of my 2002 version moving coil galvo's with 4A booster amps

Wait, I just remembered that I pointed that gallery out to you before.... wondering where you got the idea huh....

(just kidding, but you know that)

**Pangolin** · 02-22-2009, 12:50

Originally Posted by Zoof

I hate to break it to you Bill, but speaker scanners have been done before

Hehe. That's the way I started out, actually!

Originally Posted by Zoof

Actually I'm quite curious where this is going. If you need some design tips for moving coil galvos, you can visit my gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/DrZoof/H...19496405365218
It has some pics of my 2002 version moving coil galvo's with 4A booster amps

Wait, I just remembered that I pointed that gallery out to you before.... wondering where you got the idea huh....

Yes, that's really very impressive work. And actually I didn't know why the magnets were magnetized the way they were until recently.

Great work for sure. Lots of us played with speakers for scanners, but I don't know anyone else who made moving coil scanners the way you did.

Anyway, no, the moving coil project we are working on, surprisingly, has nothing to do with scanners, and mostly has application in industrial pursuits. I should have a prototype in a month or so, and will take pictures and show you all, just for the heck of it...

Bill

**drlava** · 02-22-2009, 14:20

Bill, you've taken a relatively big interest in this thread, and even without demonstrations of the software yet, thank you. I'll respond to a few pertinent things here:

Originally Posted by Pangolin

By the way, you keep inferring to "expensive 3D packages" and such. Would you please tally up the costs you see people spending on getting 3D Studio MAX, the Illustrate! plug-in, your program, and whatever laser program they would need? It might be interesting for people to see the total cost you are talking about here.

Ok, let's see. The illustrate! to ilda path is only one use of this software, although it is probably the use that most closely resembles one of your products uses. First off, the price for this ILD SÔS program will be free for free software developers such as Zoof, Mikkojay, carmangary, James, Sergy etc. and for regular users, not free but as close as possible - only $15, like dinner at a cheap restaurant. Some people may say 'why not just make it free' but then there is the risk that I would crave too much gratitude or want to be be crowned king of the universe so maybe it's better this way

If you want to do 3D still frames, the free google sketchup app has a free ruby script for DXF generation. I don't know if it only exports polylines but wouldn't be too hard to fix it if it doesn't.
If you want to do 3D animations with 3D studio max and illustrate! then the least you can pay if you are a student is around $350: $250 for an older version of 3D Studio and $99 for the student license of illustrate!. illustrate has a free 1 month demo also. If you aren't a student then illustrate! will run $400. I don't know the exact cost of a brand new 3D Studio Max license but the answer is probably 'many thousand'.

One area where I find continuous curiosity is the concept that somehow free softare will create many many free laser shows and help to grow the industry. In fact I used to believe that myself prior to around the year 2002 or so, when Pangolin actually created free software to go along with very low cost (less than $500 end-user cost) laser projection hardware. The project went nowhere, despite big name investors such as Intel, Logitech, Symbol technologies and other big name silicon valley companies. Also, being in the industry for over 23 years I have heard the phrase "save the industry" many times, spoken by people who have only been involved with laser for a short time, as well as people who have been involved with the industry for longer than I have. So I see it a lot -- people say "hey, I will create free softare, this is better, this will really help". I have seen it for years. There is already a lot of free software in this business and, so far... nothing.

In my opinion, people should not create free software with the notion that somehow it will magically expand or "save" the industry. Rather, there should be a realization that these projects are done for the fun of it, and pride of it, and for the admiration of others. There's nothing wrong with that! I hold up the work that mikkojay and Zoof has done as positive examples.

Bill

Yes, indeed they have done great work and I look forward to future work as well. I don't think that free software has much of a chance to grow the industry but that's really not the goal. You might agree that it does help grow the community of non-industry users by drawing attention to capabilities and low cost of entry. Along with growing numbers of non-industry users I hope to see growing numbers of free or cheap open format shows of good quality, but that remains to be seen. Ildaswap is a good foundation.

One final point about the shading techniques we were taking about earlier - shading is just the icing on the cake. 3D is the cake. A lot of professional 3D shows I have seen have not made use of shading at all. This soft with illustrate! can generate non-shaded full color 3D shows on a close par with any other solution. The shading via double render is somewhat of a cool 'bonus' in my mind, with the right artist it can produce good results but great shows can be produced without shading at all which is a pretty big deal and I think you understand this.

edit: by the way I'll be starting a thread on the laserboy forums too so spaghetti users and ousted users who want to discuss feel free to do so there.

**Dr Laser** · 02-22-2009, 15:33

Guys let me explain why and how this snowball started. And yes it's all my fault. I'm on DSP. Which means ProtizeMax converter (Pangolin Max converter brother) is 4000$. Plus I had to upgrade to superior license which about 10.000$ plus need to get a controller with a Network card about 2.000$. Forget me if I'm wrong...it all could well be in EUR!. So I started to look for alternatives. Protizeconverter is $2000. I discovered that Pangolin Traceit does the same thing but for about 1750$ less. So I actually got a stand alone version of this program. And It does everything I need. I used 3D studio since DOS days. I started to look for ways of transferring stuff from 3ds to laser animation. (Pangolin wasn't really an option because to get their Max converter I need to buy their card...why I need their card when I have dual card DSP!!. If Max converter was as Tracit standalone there would be a different story) Firsts few attempts were bad. Then I discovered Swift 3d max. Which was horrible. And then buddy of mine gave me a link to Illustrate! I loved so much I actually got the program. But you can have 30 days fully functioning demo. I came across DXF export which worked very well. But there was no program to do DXF to ILDA transfer. I tried Monkeys tools. But DXF importer was horrible. In the same time James was developing Laserboy. He had DXF import but it couldn't read Illustrate! output. So together we worked on this to make it work. And it worked. It could produce a good ILDA. Of course there was no shading but I've seen many laser animations. There are many without any shading. Illustrate!+Laserboy is a good amateur way of making ILDAs of MAX. Dr Lava's project is far more clever and professional. I'll do a tutorial for sure when the final version comes out. Also I should do more on Illustrate!. There are soo much more. The Last tutorial was just a BASIC intro. Every object can be treated differently in Illustrate! There are different ways to deal with object interaction. Many different way for object rendering..

PS. Are we discussing Pangolin software here somehow?. I thought topic name is "ILD SOS- Upcoming new ILDA format oriented software". I guess I'm wrong.

PS1. I thought somehow Pangolin Max converter doesn't need any compare or advertising. Again I was wrong again. Max converter sales are low? Will all my respect to Pangolin I can't see any useful input on SOS project from Bill. No advice or on topic help. Just a pure advertising of his software.

PS2. let's talk about Windows 7. I think Windows 7 is a greatest thing. It's much better then MAC OS. MAC sucks! I think this will be more use to SOS project.

PS3. I can recreate and render any Pangolin demos of Max converter. With same results.!

70% of all posts in this topic is just a troll!. Let's go back to the topic.

**Pangolin** · 02-22-2009, 16:55

Doc, you just have a really gettable goat!