The reason the exporters do not support the Mesh primitive, is because it is not properly working in Structure Synth yet. I still have some things to figure wrt implementing a continuous mesh, so it has been postponed for now - but I have not given up on it :-)
I agree it would be a nice feature - instead of painting with 'cube' pixels, you could have a nice continuous surface. In fact I've considered creating a Structure Synth clone based on mesh manipulations instead of state transformations (a la topmod - with operators like subdivision and smoothing and so on) - but right now I guess I have enough on my head already.
Regards, Mikael.
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Not sure how to get the changes to you... will probally post again in the luxrender forum with a demo picture as I can't figure out how to post attachments here...
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Found a limitation in the material export code... you will get a
RuntimeError: object data material lists can't have more than 16 materials
if you have more than 16 colors in your structsynth object... since it exports to one object, and there is a 16 material limitation in blender it will only assign the first 16 materials that are auto-generated from the exporter.
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Very interesting Luxrender examples - you should definitely post some of your pictures to the Structure Synth Flickr pool.
I will check in your changes - but the Mesh primitive still needs a lot of work, though - as can be seen in the MeshTest.es examples, there are problems with starting new meshes. Also for the other exporters, other substitutions than the transformation matrix are needed (since we output directly to their scene description format, instead of using custom importers),
(I like the grainy, lo-fi look - looks like old high-ISO film).
Wrt to the max 16 colors limit: I don't think this is related to Structure Synth - I think the Blender python import script must be modified to accommodate this - unfortunately I'm not to familiar with neither Python nor Blender...
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Yeah, agreee the 16 material max is a blender material limitation. one way to get around it would be to export each different color as a different object... Could get complicated if you had lots of colors... I can live with the 16 material limitation, if you make a structure with < 16 colors you can assign different materials to it and make it interesting enough...
regarding the render it is just a draft preview copy, took about two minutes... after some more time the grain dissapears as the quality improves.... will post some high quality ones later...
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"In fact I've considered creating a Structure Synth clone based on mesh manipulations instead of state transformations (a la topmod - with operators like subdivision and smoothing and so on)"
This would be great... I love topmod but it has a few problems and nobody is working on it anymore... It hasn't been updated for about a year and a half I think...
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Hey, I looked at some of the code for the exporters. None of them have anything implemented for exporting the mesh primitive type.
I was looking at TemplateRenderer::drawMesh function, I'm sure that's where it's supposed to go...
Looking forward to being able to export objects with nice smooth edges rather than boxes or spheres connected looking like beads...
Once a mesh object is exported, I'm sure it would be easy to add a subdivision modifier in blender or something to make it look really nice...
The reason the exporters do not support the Mesh primitive, is because it is not properly working in Structure Synth yet. I still have some things to figure wrt implementing a continuous mesh, so it has been postponed for now - but I have not given up on it :-)
I agree it would be a nice feature - instead of painting with 'cube' pixels, you could have a nice continuous surface. In fact I've considered creating a Structure Synth clone based on mesh manipulations instead of state transformations (a la topmod - with operators like subdivision and smoothing and so on) - but right now I guess I have enough on my head already.
Regards, Mikael.
I worked on this today and got it working...
Not sure how to get the changes to you... will probally post again in the luxrender forum with a demo picture as I can't figure out how to post attachments here...
I posted the code changes on the luxrender forum... along with a sample picture.
http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=585&p=17935
Found a limitation in the material export code... you will get a
RuntimeError: object data material lists can't have more than 16 materials
if you have more than 16 colors in your structsynth object... since it exports to one object, and there is a 16 material limitation in blender it will only assign the first 16 materials that are auto-generated from the exporter.
Guess you wouldn't wait :-)
Very interesting Luxrender examples - you should definitely post some of your pictures to the Structure Synth Flickr pool.
I will check in your changes - but the Mesh primitive still needs a lot of work, though - as can be seen in the MeshTest.es examples, there are problems with starting new meshes. Also for the other exporters, other substitutions than the transformation matrix are needed (since we output directly to their scene description format, instead of using custom importers),
What is the render time for a picture like:
http://www.luxrender.net/forum/download.php?id=3606&sid=d36bd4077cba0513a51c25377e7c70a9&mode=view
(I like the grainy, lo-fi look - looks like old high-ISO film).
Wrt to the max 16 colors limit: I don't think this is related to Structure Synth - I think the Blender python import script must be modified to accommodate this - unfortunately I'm not to familiar with neither Python nor Blender...
feel free to add / change / share the code I pasted
feel free to add / change / share the code I pasted
Yeah, agreee the 16 material max is a blender material limitation. one way to get around it would be to export each different color as a different object... Could get complicated if you had lots of colors... I can live with the 16 material limitation, if you make a structure with < 16 colors you can assign different materials to it and make it interesting enough...
regarding the render it is just a draft preview copy, took about two minutes... after some more time the grain dissapears as the quality improves.... will post some high quality ones later...
"In fact I've considered creating a Structure Synth clone based on mesh manipulations instead of state transformations (a la topmod - with operators like subdivision and smoothing and so on)"
This would be great... I love topmod but it has a few problems and nobody is working on it anymore... It hasn't been updated for about a year and a half I think...