Art of Illusion 2.7 beta

Thanks a lot Peter!

I´ll surly test the improved import. My guess is that this may attract a lot of people.
I´m surprised with the decision for preferences in mousewheel zoom - but positive.

The extraction command is also a feature that modelers are after :)

Greetings
Harald

Thanks!

A quick test program gave the following results:

Now it's possible to center the view anywhere, I like with a couple of classical moves. This is a great improvement as it was not possible before.

However, the logic does not seem to cover quite everything yet, so a couple of humble notes, for the future:

I'd expect the Frame Selection with Camera and Frame Scene with Camera commands to set a new center of rotation as well. Now the COR only follows the camera to the new location and in most cases after using the commands and when nothing is selected, the objects disappear from the screen, when the view is turned.

A "Center to Selection" and/or "Point and Center" command in the editor windows would be the tool to make life perfect.

The distance of the camera / the size of the view are not linked as the user would expect them to. The expectation would be that the objects on the "plane of focus" (= at the depth of the center of rotation) would appear in the same size after switching between perspective and parallel modes. Now the size is maintained only, when the camera/view is still in the initial position/size -- zoom changes that.

...And once AoI went into loop just by turning and zooming... could have been jogl-related. A couple of times Frame to Scene crashed somehow -- unfortunately I did not catch the alert message and was not able to repeat it intentionally. -- I'll post the message if it happens again.

Thanks again!

-P-

Hey Pete, it's great to see people running betas and giving feedback :o)

> unfortunately I did not catch the alert message
If this truly was an Alert from the AOI LogPlugin, then they are all stored on disk (crashes permitting).
Just open the Alert Viewer and view the most recent, or click prev. The Alert Viewer can always be opened using  whatever alert icon you have enabled, or using "Tools | Logging | View Alerts".

Cheers!
Nik

Hi,

that's good news. :)

First, to let you know: The linux installer works fine for me, no problems.

Improved OBJ import - great! I had a quick glance at imported stuff from ivy (only 1GB RAM on this machine...) and it works very well. :)) I haven't had a closer look at the viewport stuff yet (uh, long thread), but I'm very pleased with faster zooming.

Thanks for all your work!

Greetings,
TroY

After Installation I did start with the exe (for win).
I then dl ALL plugins - I know that can be dangerous - but thats what "we" expect from new users in the best case.

I tried again with the *.exe - and the only thing I see than is the splash screen and java in the taskmanager with 0% cpu usage. The same (as expected) happens after doubleclick the ArtofIllusion.jar.

This is the log:
13.01.09 23:23:29 CET [AWT-EventQueue-0] in LogPlugin.openAlert() (LogPlugin.java:421)
  log: openAlert...
13.01.09 23:23:29 CET [AWT-EventQueue-0] in LogPlugin.openAlert() (LogPlugin.java:423)
  log: ...reporting
13.01.09 23:23:29 CET [AWT-EventQueue-0] (162e703) in LogPlugin$Report.add() (LogPlugin.java:1360)
  log: Adding line: Error creating GLCanvasDrawer: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no jogl in java.library.path

13.01.09 23:23:29 CET [AWT-EventQueue-0] in LogPlugin$Report.add() (LogPlugin.java:1364)
  log: initialised...

With a batch file it runs perfect (but it should also rund with the exe).
javaw -Xmx1536m -cp ArtOfIllusion.jar;jogl.jar;jinput.jar artofillusion.ModellingApp

(I know ModellingApp is outdated - but it works)

I also had to copy the JOGL files from the lib directory into the root of my AoI installation to get JOGL to work. What I´m I missing? I would also update the installation text then.
Btw: Most people in the forums recognize that their JOGL isn´t working when they try to work with reference image planes!  The difference is outstanding when using large picture (1024² or greater).

-------------------
I tested out the extract faces - as expected = perfect!

I also tested the Kamikaze cube = passed! :)

Some other object files I had produced myself can also be read in w/o problems.
So from it´s a big improvement from my point of view.

Thanks again Peter.

Greetings
Harald

Hi Harald,

Thanks for all the detailed feedback.

Can I just clarify:

(i) Immediately after installing AOI 2.7 beta, you could start it correctly with the launcher (.exe)?
(ii) immediately after installing all plugins, you couldn't start it with the .exe and it froze with the splash screen showing?
(iii) with all plugins installed, you can start AOI, but only with your own command line?

If the above is correct, and based on your error message, can you try deleting the GLRenderer plugin, and then trying the launcher (.exe) again please?

I suspect that while AOI is correctly finding the JOGL libs, that plugins such as GLRenderer won't without some coaxing.

I'll also have a try later this evening my time and see if I can replicate your problems (I expect I can).

Cheers!
Nik

Nik, thanks for asking.
I tried another fresh install - the exe worked.
I installed all Plugins (even GL Renderer) except HID Plugin -> the exe worked.

I installed the HID Plugin -> teh exe doens´t work. Same issue for 2 other users on win.
I deleted the hid plugin (only hidplugin - not hid drivers.jar) and it works again.

By any means - it is related to HID :(

Greetings
Harald

I forgot: Without the hid plugin the JOGL support works also when starting with the exe.
It did not work with my batch file - I guess I need to include the lib\ directory into the batch file somehow?

Hi Harald,

Firstly, my apologies - I had missed the "jinput.jar" in the command-line that you had posted. I should have noticed that before.

Secondly, I have not yet repackaged the HID plugin to use the new AOI/lib folder (Peter only released the beta yesterday), so you will need to continue starting AOI the same way as you have been previously if you are using the HIDPlugin.

> I deleted the hid plugin (only hidplugin - not hid drivers.jar)
Yes, the HID drivers plugin just provides drivers for the main plugin, so removing HIDPlugin should deactivate it

> Same issue for 2 other users on win.
Q: Do you know if these users had previously installed the HIDPlugin?

I did enable a confirmation action on the HIDPlugin, so that users would be given the chance to skip installing it even if they had selected "ALL" (which I agree is a normal thing to do).

Q: Do you recall whether you got a confirmation window for HIDPlugin?

> I guess I need to include the lib\ directory into the batch file somehow?

Yes. adding "-Djava.library.path=.;lib" or if that fails "-Djava.library.path=<path-to-AOI>;<path-to-AOI>\lib" to your batch file should accomplish that.

As I said in the HIDPlugin thread, I will be working on this tonight, to try to repackage HIDPlugin to use the new AOI/lib folder.

Thanks for all your feedback on this. It's much better that we get told things more than once than to not know and think things are all right.

Cheers!
Nik

Hi Nik,

> Same issue for 2 other users on win.
>>Q: Do you know if these users had previously installed the HIDPlugin?
Not previously - they both installed a fresh beta 2.7 and as you guessed right: "Install all" is what they choose - that is what users - especially new users - should do.

>>I did enable a confirmation action on the HIDPlugin..

Perfect choice for now - since only a fraction of users might have the HID device on their desks (that might change)

>>Yes. adding "-Djava.library.path=.;lib" or if that fails >>"-Djava.library.path=<path-to-AOI>;<path-to-AOI>\lib" to your batch file should accomplish that.

That needs to find it´s way in the updated manual and into the wiki - > thanks!

Thank you for your work Nik - my feedback doens´t even take a fraction of the time you put on the code.

Greetings
Harald

Hi Harald,

> That needs to find it´s way in the updated manual and into the wiki - > thanks!

Well yes, as a last resort. But the goal is to have the code sort it out automatically.

Peter has put the new structure in to make this sort of thing more manageable, so now I just need to make full use of it to automate HIDPlugin installation fully.

Cheers!
Nik

Ok,

Just a quick note here since the original report was here as well:

Version 0.91 of the HIDPlugin is in the repository.

To download and install this automatically you *MUST* update SPManager first.

So the steps are:

1. start AOI and open SPManager
2. goto update panel, select SPManager and update it
3. restart AOI
4. open SPManager and install/update HIDPlugin

If you install manually, then install the HIDPlugin* file in your Plugins folder, and all the other files in the <aoi>/lib folder.

With this arrangement, you should have a HIDPlugin which plays well with AOI 2.7, including the .exe launcher, and is even nice and quiet if there is no HID hardware plugged in at startup time. :o)

All feedback welcome!

Cheers!
Nik

Speaking of extracting faces, I've tried to import some AutoCAD curves (.dxf) and found that AoI/(Telefish?) only seems to import surfaces.
Is this so?

Rich

Hi Rich,

Yes I think you're correct on that.

I went looking for a reasonable DXF library some years ago when I was still working on the boat model. :o)

Cheers!
Nik

This is the second time now that I've installed from the AOI installer on Windows and ended up with no AOI preferences file.

This makes AOI unusable, as AOI does not enforce usable fallback values.

The only 2 things that I can think of that may be part of the cause of this are:

1. I had previously removed an installation of AOI from that machine by simply deleting the AOI folder
2. The user I am installing under does *not* have Admin rights on the machine.

Sadly, the only way to recover from this is to manually create and edit a preferences file, or copy one from somewhere else. Trying to edit correct values in from the GUI results in a NullPointerException before the values have been saved, meaning...

If we can't find what causes the file to be non-existent, then we should at least ensure AOI gives all values initialised from preferences default values if the preferences don't initialise them.

Cheers!
Nik

Thanks for the beta Peter :)  Unfortunately I ran into a pretty bad bug.  It seems to be what Nik described here https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=5988231 where he writes about "interactive surface error=0.0".

It happens for both the executable JAR file and the Windows installer (I think it's the same bug in each case).

First, the JAR file.  I start AoI from the executable JAR and Interactive Surface Error and Maximum Levels of Undo are both zero (and the number is red).  When I try to create a sphere I get:

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
    at artofillusion.math.Vec3.plus(Vec3.java:81)
    at artofillusion.object.Sphere.subdivideSphere(Sphere.java:274)
    at artofillusion.object.Sphere.getRenderingMesh(Sphere.java:183)
    at artofillusion.object.ObjectInfo.getBounds(ObjectInfo.java:358)
    at artofillusion.object.Object3D.renderObject(Object3D.java:367)
    at artofillusion.SceneViewer.updateImage(SceneViewer.java:156)
    at artofillusion.view.SoftwareCanvasDrawer.paint(SoftwareCanvasDrawer.java:97)
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor16.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)

Now, for the Windows installer.  Both preferences are zero when it starts and when I create the sphere it freezes so bad I have to hard reset my machine.  Therefore the log plugin doesn't write anything (immediate flushing might be a good feature for the log plugin?).  I'm guessing it's the same bug.

I'm on my work machine runing Windows XP Pro with Java 6 Update 11.

- John

Addition: I tried to set the surface error to 0.01 and max undos to 10 and I got

java.lang.NullPointerException
    at artofillusion.ApplicationPreferences.setDefaultRenderer(ApplicationPreferences.java:263)
    at artofillusion.PreferencesWindow.<init>(PreferencesWindow.java:60)
    at artofillusion.LayoutWindow.actionPerformed(LayoutWindow.java:1360)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at buoy.internal.EventLinkRecord.dispatchEvent(EventLinkRecord.java:81)
    at buoy.event.EventSource.dispatchEvent(EventSource.java:140)

Reported 6 times.  Hope this helps!

- John

Could it be the java 11 update - i deleted it after problems with AoI! (Back to 1.6.05)
I´ve reported her, or asked if somebody else see that - now it seems to be the case.

Harald

Hi Peter,

> When you say that it is "unusable", what exactly is the behavior you see?

Ah, sorry. I presumed you had seen the earlier posts on this effect, and so I avoided repeating them.

1. The interactive surface error is set to 0.0
This means that AOI will loop until memory is exhausted whenever a curved object is created (eg a sphere or cylinder)

2. The default renderer seems to be set to null. This means that trying to save changes to the preferences throws an exception and fails.

3. Out of interest: Undo levels is also set to 0, and the defaultRendering mode is wireframe.

@John: Thanks for posting your alerts. I would have had to wait until this evening before I could get access to the Windows machine where this happened.

@Harald> Could it be the java 11 update - i deleted it after problems with AoI?
Not in my case, the machine is running Java 1.5, which has been working with AOI for years.

@Peter> That's not true. The installer isn't supposed to create a preferences file.
I wasn't assuming that it did. I was just clarifying that the problem seemed somehow connected to installing by that means.

@Peter> If no preferences file is found, it uses reasonable default values for all settings.

There certainly is an initDefaultPreferences() method - I'm just not sure it's always called.
I looked briefly at the code, and my comment was based on the following:

    File f = new File(getPreferencesDirectory(), "aoiprefs");
    if (!f.exists())
    {
      // See if it exists in the old location.

      File f2 = new File(System.getProperty("user.home"), ".aoiprefs");
      if (f2.exists())
        f2.renameTo(f);
    }
    if (!f.exists())
      {
        Translate.setLocale(Locale.getDefault());
        return;
      }

I confess I haven't traced the code all the way through, but it does seem to me that if there is no preferences file, the only preferences value that is initialised is Translate.locale.

Sorry my previous post was (ironically) too brief. :o)

Cheers!
Nik

@Nik> 2. The default renderer seems to be set to null.

Actually, looking further at the code, it's the ApplicationPreferences.properties object that appears to be null.

Sorry for any confusion from my previous assumption.

Cheers!
Nik

> Could it be the java 11 update

Actually, it appeared with 2.7ea2.  I installed 2.6.1 and it's not there.  I also tried Java 5 (with 2.7ea2 and beta) and the bug is still there. :/

- John

Hi Peter,

Just confirming that the new Linux installer works fine - even with the latest packaging of the HIDPlugin (yay!)

Thanks again, this is looking really good :o)

Cheers!
Nik