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Wrap

Text File | 1990-08-30 | 17.9 KB | 389 lines

July 1990 BRUSH_4D v. 1.0 --------------- Contents of archive: Brush_4D Program. This doc file. Help picture. Copyright © 1990 by Bruce Thomson S H A R E W A R E Brush_4D is ShareWare. No guarantee is made, expressed or implied as to Brush_4D's suitability for any application. No responsibility will be taken by the author for the results of its use or misuse. First things first. This is Shareware. It is also not the best version of this program available. For most people this version will be more than adequate. It coverts brushes with a maximum of around 190 square pixels and will create objects with a maximum of around 1900 faces. It has all the features of the larger version except for this size restriction. If you like this program then please send $US 10 to the address below. If you want the unlimited version send $US 30 to register. If you think you might want the unrestricted version at a later date send $10 now and $20 later - I will keep a record. Paying users will be kept informed of updates. 1. What Does It Do? Brush_4D converts IFF brushes (e.g. DPaint pictures) into Sculpt objects. The program will convert standard brushes, Extra Halfbrite brushes and HAM brushes in full colour. It is very fast. In addition to converting your brush into a flat object, pixel for pixel Brush_4D has some extra features. - Optimise the brush so that areas of the same colour become one large square as opposed to many small ones. - Make any colours transparent. - Wrap brush around a tube or part of tube. - Wrap brush onto a sphere. - Wrap brush with some special effects. - With HAM images allow optimisation through a HAM colour closeness setting. 2. How Do I Use It? Brush_4D runs from CLI, and is easy to use. It takes about 200K as well as the screen memory for your picture. There are two modes of use: a. BRUSH_4D -auto brush_name scene_name The brush called "brush_name" will be displayed and converted with optimisation and palette colour 0 transparent into a flat Sculpt object called "scene_name". b. BRUSH_4D brush_name scene_name You will be prompted for more input. In this mode you can choose wrapping, transparent colours, different brush sizes etc. 3. How Does It Work? Brush_4D loads in the brush as a picture and displays it on a custom screen. It then brings the Workbench screen forward for input and output. Based on your input (or the default settings if you use the "-auto" option) any colours you have specified to be transparent (and thus not converted as part of the object) will be blocked out on the picture. You will be told what proportion of the brush was made transparent. Brush_4D will then proceed to analyse the picture and convert the pixels into pairs of sculpt faces making up squares with that pixel's colour. If the optimise option has been selected rectangular areas of the same colour will be converted into one large block as opposed to many smaller blocks of the same colour. Depending on the brush, optimisation of up to around 90% can be achieved, giving a great saving in memory and faces. When the whole brush has been converted the points will be wrapped around the selected shape if one has been chosen. The data will be written out, ready to be loaded into Sculpt Animate/4D/3D etc. as an object. Alternatively the scene file can be changed into Turbo Silver or other formats using conversion programs like InterChange. 4. Wraps. Apart from just converting your brush into a flat, 2D rectangular plane Brush_4D can wrap your image onto certain 3D shapes. These are a tube, a sphere and a variable sinusoidal wave. For example you can wrap a picture of a face onto a sphere and get a reasonable 3D head. The sphere and sine wave are based on the wrap to tube. With wrap to tube you get an upright tube with the X values of the pixels wrapped around a circle and the Y values making up the height of the tube. Spheres are made by adjusting the diameter of the tube at each height level so that it is squashed in at the top and bottom and stretched out in the middle. Sine waves are made by modifying the diameter of the tube to match a sine wave with several parameters (see below). 5. The Inputs. If you select the "-auto" option when you enter the command in CLI then you will get this conversion. Flat. Optimisation in X and Y. Full brush size. No allowance for closeness of colours with HAM images. Palette colour 0 (the background colour) transparent. and the brush will be converted automatically with no further input. If you have not selected the "-auto" option you will be prompted for several values at the beginning of the program. When the picture is loaded you will be told its width and height, along with the number of colours or if it is a HAM picture. At the prompt "Input wrap type 0=Flat 1=Tube 2=Sphere 3=Sine" enter the number corresponding to the wrap type. These are: Flat - The picture will be converted to a flat, 2D object. Tube - The picture will be wrapped around a tube. You will be prompted for two additional values at this point. "Bend level for tube ..." Enter a number in the range 0 to 1. This will be the proportion of a circle that is turned through. 0 will make a flat object. 1 will wrap completely around a tube. .5 will wrap to a half tube. See help picture for more enlightenment. "Bend forwards or backwards..." If you are wrapping to part of a tube you should decide whether the picture will be pushed "forwards" or "backwards" See help picture. Sphere - You will be prompted for the values as in the Tube option. Wrap to sphere works by wrapping to a tube and then altering the diameter of the tube at each point to match a sphere. By doing this the picture will look a little stretched towards the top and bottom of the sphere. Sine - You need to enter the values for wrap to tube and then you will be asked for start and end angles for the sine wave. These values are in degrees. Wrapping to sine works by running a wriggle down the side of the points mapped to a tube so you can get effects like the look of the old style Coke drink bottles. The start and end angles give the range of values through which your wriggle will run as it travels down the side of the tube. You will then be asked for "radius offset". This will control how pronounced the wriggle is. Values range from 0 upwards. A value of 1 is equal to the amplitude of the sine wave and higher values will increase the diameter of the tube prior to adding the wave thereby lessening the effect of the sine wave. A value of zero will give shapes like an hour glass that converge in the middle. See help picture. If you have chosen any of the wrap options you will be given the option to select how the wrapping will be done. If you select "Ignore transparent..." as YES then the wrap will start at the top left corner and proceed to the height and width values you will enter (see below). If you say NO then the wrap will be based on only non-transparent colours in the brush. With this option you can choose a tight wrap or a loose wrap. On "Optimise x pixels..." and "Optimise y pixels..." enter 0 or 1 corresponding to your choice. If you select optimised for both then rectangles of one colour will be found and converted to one large block. If you are going to wrap to a tube then it might be best to not optimise x and optimise y so that you will have a good number of points for the tube to turn through, but as the y values will be running straight down optimisation will not affect the look, and save memory. With wrapping to sine or sphere you should probably turn off optimising for both so you get smooth curves. The brush width and height are now printed along with the number of colours. You can enter new width and height values here. On "Wid" and "Hei" prompts enter a value up to or including the maximum shown or a value of zero which means the maximum (it saves you a little typing.) If your values are not equal to the maximum then a border will be drawn around the area you have selected so you can see what you have taken. You are now prompted for any colours that you would like to make transparent. If you have a HAM screen you have only the option of making palette colour 0 transparent. This is usually the background colour. If the picture is a non-HAM picture then you will be asked for a list of colours you want to be made transparent. These numbers correspond to the palette colour in the picture. Enter "99" to show you have reached the end of the list. If you don't want any transparent colours then enter "99" as your first number. The picture will then be scanned and pixels that are to be transparent will be coloured in on non-HAM displays. On HAM displays the background colour will be made transparent but not shown on screen. You will be shown what proportion of the pixels in the brush were made transparent. With HAM pictures you will be able to enter a value that allows colours that are close to each other to be treated as the same colour. This gives extra optimisation as you get more large blocks of one colour rather than say two different blocks of almost the same colour. At the prompt "Enter HAM Threshhold..." enter a value of 0 to 15. Each HAM pixel has a red, green and blue component and this is the level that they are allowed to vary from the surrounding pixels before they are considered to be a different colour. A value of 0 means any difference at all between pixel colours will be detected. A value of 5 will allow for example any colours between dull orange and bright orange to be treated as one colour. A value of 15 will make the program think that all the colours are the same. Higher values result in less detailed colouring of the object but fewer faces. 6. While it Runs. Once you have entered these values sit back and depending on the size of the brush around 5 to 20 seconds later the conversion will be done. As the picture is processed, in non-HAM screens the points converted will be blocked out as it goes so you can watch the progress. In HAM screens because writing to the screen would change the colours and mess it up you can get an idea of where it is up to by choosing a new height value of a couple of pixels less than the maximum and you will see a line run across the bottom. When all the processing is done you will be shown the exact number of vertices, edges and faces used in the object and the file size. You will also be told the level of compression of the non-transparent colours if you had any optimisation on. When the program finishes it flashes the screen to alert you. 7. Tips. Don't click the hidden forward/back gadgets on the custom screen as they leave an outline that will turn up in your object. Don't RUN this program unless you are using the "-auto" option as it needs interactive CLI. Use the "-auto" mode in scripts to convert a whole lot over at once. Fewer colours will result in higher compression levels but you should balance the memory saving against the look of the object. If you want smaller objects then reduce the brush before conversion or cut out some colours. Name your objects when they are loaded in as when you have transparent colours the various parts will not be connected so you will want an easy way of selecting the whole object. When wrapping to a sphere you can get quite a bit of distortion at the top and bottom. This can be controlled by using the "Ignore Transparent for Bend" setting on NO. On your paint program cut your brush, clear the screen, and stamp the brush in the middle of the screen. Then cut the brush with a large border which can be made transparent. The transparent colours will not show up as part of your object but will be included in calculation for how much to bend the tube. With this you will not get a sphere but more of a sphere with the top and bottom cut off. This can be a good effect. The same works for sine wave but there is not often the same level of distortion with this. Use the HAM threshhold setting around 2 or 3 for good looking results with increased optimisation. If you want more than the 64 colours in EHB and don't like the fringing associated with HAM colours (which will be faithfully converted over) then you can go to a little trouble and create your objects in parts. These can be quite easy to assemble. Draw your brush using all available colours. Use the coordinates and cut it out and save it. Change the palette and by using Stencil (in Dpaint) select the background colour, invert the stencil then return to painting. Use one colour to paint over the pixels in the old brush. Then change the stencil so that colour is protected and the background colour free. Draw around the old picture with your new colours and when you have finished go back to stencil and protect everything but the colour you used to write over the first pictures pixels. Now rub over them with the background colour. Now cut the new brush with exactly the same size and start point and save. Convert both into objects and layer one over the other (they should start that way when you load them in as scenes). As well as just converting everyday brushes into objects you can use Brush_4D as a simple object creator. One use I find for it is as a replacement for the checkered floor. Make your own checkered floor with something like a pattern fill and then convert it. You now have control over the size of your ground and can have more than two colours and don't have to put it at level 0. It can also have a texture. For stripey tubes make a row of colours with something like the shaded fill and wrap it to a tube. Convert your favourite (colour) fonts over. Make them 3D by wrapping them around part of a tube, both forwards and backwards bent and put together - no longer flat and boring. Do nice keyframe animations with pictures fading into one another, sine saves squirming as you alter the start and end angles etc. - just make sure you don't optimise and have no transparents and have exactly the same size in your start and end brushes. 8. Errors. You will be told throughout if anything goes wrong like not being able to open the screen (lack of chip memory) etc. You might get the "Exceeded maximum vertices" or "Exceeded maximum faces" message. If this happens you should send off the cash for the version without limits. Alternatively reduce your image (but lose detail). If you call the programs but it returns to CLI immediately then you probably don't have the "mathtrans.library" in your LIBS: directory. 9. The Competition. Because of my geographical isolation I am quite uninformed. I know practically nothing about competing products. I did read a review of DigiWorks 3D ($US 130/160) - I see it as a complementary product as it does only flat conversions (extrusions don't really count) and doesn't handle colour at all. It is nice though in finding edges etc. for you. With my program you will get jaggies on diagonal edges, with DigiWorks you would get one diagonal line. 10. The Address! I a poor student, and will need to start saving for 'Imagine'. Future upgrades depend on your generosity. Send your money to: Bruce Thomson PO Box 33116 Takapuna Auckland NEW ZEALAND Make that $US cash or cheques drawn on NZ banks or money orders etc. If you're in a kindly mood send all you've got, copies of any other shareware/PD ray tracing utilities, comments, suggestions etc. $NZ acceptable also. Multiply amounts by 1.8. 11. Other Important Stuff. This program is to be distributed with these docs intact and unaltered. The help picture is to accompany it. Distribution of restricted version. (ie this package) - This restricted version is freely uploadable to BBS's etc. - Fred Fish can include it in his library. - Other PD/Shareware libraries can distribute it if they are not price gougers, ie they charge no more than 150% of Fred Fish's charges. - Free User Group disk magazines, etc. may distribute it. - Ask me if you want to distribute it packaged in any form that is not covered above, that you will be charging any money for - e.g. a disk that accompanies a magazine The unrestricted version is for your private use only if you decide to buy it. It is not to be copied. 12. Future Versions. There may be future versions based on the financial response to this release. I am considering fractal landscapes, math contour surfaces etc. mapped onto flat objects using the brush colours. Suggestions from (even non-paying) users are welcome. ______________________________________________________________________________