Art of Illusion

A miracle has happened! Pigs have achieved liftoff, ice has been reported in certain subterranean regions, and the first early access version of AoI 2.9 is now available! http://www.artofillusion.org/ArtOfIllusion29ea1-Mac.dmg http://www.artofillusion.org/ArtOfIllusion29ea1-Linux.zip http://www.artofillusion.org/ArtOfIllusion29ea1-Windows.exe http://www.artofillusion.org/aoi29ea1.zip http://www.artofillusion.org/aoisrc29ea1.zip Here are the major new features: SVG files can now be used as image maps. For the most part, they work exactly like any other images. Just load and use them as you would any image, and they'll continue to look sharp no matter how much you magnify them. I use SVG Salamander for rendering them. It seems to do a pretty good job, but not always perfect. In particular, I've found that filters applied in Inkscape tend to get lost. I don't know whether that's because it doesn't support certain features of the SVG standard, or whether it's because those filters are Inkscape-specific. The UI for managing textures and materials has been completely reworked, and hopefully is much better than before. The "Set Texture" and "Set Material" windows have been merged into a single new window. Likewise, the windows for managing a scene's textures and materials have been merged into a single new window, which is based on Helge's prototype. The latter allows you to manage a global library of textures and materials that can be imported into your scene. I've put together a small collection of textures and materials, selected from the repository on the wiki. (Speaking of which - I hadn't realized the wiki has been down for a few months! We should do something about that.) I'd like to add more to it before 2.9 is released, but it's a start, and it shows how this feature can work in practice. Peter

Wooohooo! :laola: Long awaited and now it's here. Thank you Peter for that perfect Easter egg! (I guess it was planned for Sunday, but some stupid user came up with importing problems...) :) The Win Installer stops at Step 7 (here on Win 7) - so it doesn't show the multi-Install Option (I guess), but it finished the installation anyway. So simply abort happens to work here. The library is just great! The big preview is fast enough for big screens (I'm glad having bought a quad last year...) Now I'll try all the SVG features. Harald

Great news! At last ;) I'm happy to know the textures and materials will be better presented. The installer worked well for me in XP. Btw, i want to make the spanish translation of it. Now, i'm having an issue running the program. It hangs when up to display the scene. See the picture.

Now, i'm having an issue running the program. It hangs when up to display the scene. See the picture. That happens to me, too, but in Linux. I worked around it by reinstalling without JOGL.

Peter, I like the new library feature! It was neat to see some textures I hadn't seen before, like the skies. I would suggest some terrain textures if they can be found -- for example, something with a function that puts snow on the very top. I think I've seen a texture like that around somewhere.

I like how the textures/materials library feature allows you to just plop any .AOI file into the library and you find it in the library on AOI. That could mean you can buy textures and put em in AOI. I don't know if I'm not explaining this clearly but you could create a economy of buying/selling textures for AOI. I <3 it.

> The Win Installer stops at Step 7 (here on Win 7) - so it doesn't show the multi-Install Option (I guess), but it finished the > installation anyway. So simply abort happens to work here. No idea. I didn't create the Windows installer, and I don't have a Windows machine. Anyone else have an idea what might be going on? > Now, i'm having an issue running the program. It hangs when up to display the scene. See the picture. Strange. I've occasionally seen that happen if I try to resize the window while it's still in the middle of getting laid out. I think it's caused by JOGL getting confused. But I take it this always happens for you? > I would suggest some terrain textures if they can be found If anyone wants to send me some candidate textures or materials to add, that would be great. I see two major purposes for the library: to give people some useful textures and materials for their own scenes, and to give them examples of what can be done. I think the current set does a pretty good job of the latter, but we could use lots more of the former. I'd really like to have more night sky textures, some wood textures, terrain textures of various sorts, more brick and stone textures, etc. Another important thing: don't use any large image maps! If we're going to bundle hundreds of textures, then no one texture should use more than a few KB at most. Peter

That happens to me, too, but in Linux. I worked around it by reinstalling without JOGL. That worked, but i had to delete the previous install before installing again (without JOGL this time). Peter: this is happening with the 2.9ea version. Never happened to me with the previous releases. Maybe it's about a "new" version of JOGL, making conflict? Or the installer is providing the same JOGL than always?

I see some issues regarding colors with SVG - sometimes they tend to show up inversed. When creating with Inkscape the default opacity is not 100% - this helps sometimes and sometimes not (everybody should try self). I can see a clear advantage with usual textures and bump maps - but I've got different feelings about displacement maps. You need to set up surface accuracy *really* high( low value) to get a smooth result. So far I can get better results of an large image map. But as I said: Best for bumps and textures! For me JOGL runs without problems.

Could you post an SVG file that shows the problem? Peter

Of course I can! http://www.opendimension.org/blender_en/images/inkscape_blender_test_file.svg With this SVG file you can see following (hopefully) http://img848.imageshack.us/i/aoicolortest.jpg/ The preview shows it correct - but the renderpreview is black and blue and looks different. The file is from this site here: http://www.opendimension.org/blender_en/svg_import.php (I'm just posting this from time to time, because someday - hopefully - we can use Inkscape as additional curve editor... :) ) Harald

I love the texture and material window! Are there plans to have an online repository of textures and materials just like the scripts and plugins manager? And one very minor thing: when I press the "Edit..." button with a procedural texture, the texture editor window pops up, but the main AOI window steals the focus right away. The texture editor window open behind the main window. Not a big deal, but it could get annoying.

Looks like all my favourite bugs are gone, and we have negative lights! Nice work on the texture dialog, it's fast enough to be useable. H

Hi, great! :) Random thoughts: - In the new library dialog, there's a "New file" button. When I use this button to save a new file in the library, AoI should force the file name to end with ".aoi". Otherwise, my new file won't be recognized properly. - The new library dialog assumes that the current working directory is AoI's installation directory. However, the launcher script for Unix (aoi.sh) doesn't do this. Hence, I get a Null Pointer Exception (because "mainFolder" in line 85 of "TexturesAndMaterialsDialog.java" is null) and the dialog fails to appear. That being said, the Unix launcher needs some more love. :) Most of this script is obsolete nowadays. - I can confirm the color issues regarding SVG textures. - No JOGL issues for me on Arch Linux i686 and x86_64. Everything's fine! - I, too, really like how the textures/materials library feature allows you to just plop any .aoi file into the library. :) Greetings, TroY PS.: Ohhhhhh, and there's a very nice feature coming up next... :) *looks at SVN revisions 302 and 303*

Progressive rendering? YAY! Maybe picking up Physics from Delt0r and telefish plugins from telefish could happen in AOI 3!

Ok, the SVG problem is fixed. It was just a silly mistake on my part. Or the installer is providing the same JOGL than always? It's the same JOGL as always. when I press the "Edit..." button with a procedural texture, the texture editor window pops up, but the main AOI window steals the focus right away. How odd, I don't see that. What OS are you on? Is it possible you have a plugin installed (maybe preview?) that's requesting focus to the main window when it sees the scene has changed? PS.: Ohhhhhh, and there's a very nice feature coming up next... :) *looks at SVN revisions 302 and 303* Nice to know someone's paying attention. :) Peter

How odd, I don't see that. What OS are you on? Is it possible you have a plugin installed (maybe preview?) that's requesting focus to the main window when it sees the scene has changed? It's in the library window. Here's a screen shot: If I double click on the texture name, the editor shows up as it should. Only when I press the edit button does the editor open behind AOI. I am running Windows 7 64 bit.

That's really strange. Double clicking the texture name and clicking the edit button both call exactly the same routine (TexturesAndMaterialsDialog.doEdit()). I don't know any reason they would produce different behavior. Peter

Peter, this behavior is only valid for procedurals. Uniform texture window as well as image map based texture - window stay in front after clicking on "Edit". The procedural once (no matter if 2 or 3d) are disappearing behind the main window. Same OS like zorksox. Harald

Another note on JOGL: JOGL itself, i.e. jogl.jar, is the correct version. But we noticed that the native Linux libraries (*.so) don't match this version because they're too old. I guess that something similar happens on Windows (according to reports of Siri and Harald) I haven't noticed this at first because I build AoI directly from SVN. However, when using the official Linux installer, it fails: Blank window, just like Mayid's screenshot.

The usage of SVG for Displacementmaps is not so much of an advantage as I initally thought. Is it, because SVG Salamander has to convert it to a (bitmap kind of ) texture anyway? The the only way to get rid of jaggyness is to raise (lower actually) the surface error and raise the smoothing, correct? For bump maps it seems different - because there the advantage of an SVG over an ordinary bitmap can clearly be seen. Is there a way to improve the look of displacementmaps without lowering the surface error to 0,002 or lower? Does SVG help here? Harald

The the only way to get rid of jaggyness is to raise (lower actually) the surface error and raise the smoothing, correct? That's one way. Or better, don't use a displacement map with sharp discontinuities in it. Blur it a little bit. Displacement maps are raytraced by stepping along the ray, evaluating the displacement at a set of points. The distance between those points is determined by the surface error. If the displacement changes a lot over a distance less than the spacing between points, the result won't be smooth. Peter

Hey, I just found out about this and the SVG file feature, looking forward to trying it out! Thanks! Rich