IRC log for #brlcad on 20080711

00:04.35 PrezKennedy brlcad, the leader of project wilderness says he misses work
00:36.01 *** join/#brlcad Twingy (n=justin@74.92.144.217)
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01:54.14 andrecastelo brlcad & ``Erik : flat shaded http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/5120/rtmltfscastleas2.jpg :D:D
01:54.34 pacman87 oooh, pretty!
02:06.43 andrecastelo pacman87: thank you! :D hehehe
02:06.56 pacman87 where'd the model come from
02:06.59 pacman87 ?
02:08.27 andrecastelo hmm.. brlcad/brlcadInstall/share/brlcad/7.12.1/db/
02:11.20 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03andrecastelo * r31788 10/brlcad/trunk/misc/win32-msvc9/libged/libged.vcproj: Added ae2dir.c and dir2ae.c.
02:28.31 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03andrecastelo * r31789 10/brlcad/trunk/src/rt/viewmlt.c: Expanded rayhit() to output a flat shaded image.
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03:36.03 starseeker observes his computer works much better when he has the correct IDE driver in the kernel...
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05:28.26 *** join/#brlcad Ralith (n=ralith@216.162.199.202)
05:29.08 Ralith Does there exist a more user-friendly modelling interface than mged?
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06:17.42 homovulgaris Raltih: not presently , mafm is working on one. http://brlcad.org/wiki/User:Mafm
06:21.40 Ralith homovulgaris: that's good to hear.
06:23.02 homovulgaris mged is a "little" tough to get used to .. but it is pretty functional once u start using it
06:23.46 homovulgaris u can do things quite rapidly with the keyboard u know :)
06:23.49 Ralith I'm sure it is; however, I'm interested in leveraging brl-cad for an audience who are wary of anything not laden in widgets.
06:24.04 homovulgaris oh..
06:24.06 homovulgaris :)
06:24.16 Ralith Personally, I prefer the keyboard; I use emacs for my generic text editor/IDE, for example.
06:24.25 Ralith and in that respect I'm quite interested in learning mged in and of itself.
06:25.19 Ralith however, I'm *more* interested to see if brl-cad as a whole is going to become itself accessible to people less interested in spending time learning an arcane interface than just messing around with a mouse to get some basics thrown together quickly and easily
06:25.50 Ralith As you may be aware, other than brl-cad, there really isn't any respectable open source CAD system out there.
06:26.16 homovulgaris yeah, i know :)
06:26.21 Ralith the website cites a *very* impressive resume, which would seem to imply that brl-cad has finally broken that trend, but without a friendly interface, that's not very useful for my purposes.
06:26.49 Ralith which would be a real shame, given that the user interface is probably the simplest portion of a professional-quality CAD system
06:26.59 homovulgaris once mafm's work is done, things should be pretty smooth
06:27.50 Ralith that's really exciting :)
06:27.55 Ralith grabs the video
06:28.13 homovulgaris the lack of open source CAD systems is really spooky.. I personally majored in architecture last year and had to work entirely on proprietary software tools for instance
06:28.42 Ralith yeah
06:29.20 Ralith especially since CAD is one of the things which would benefit most from the principles of open source
06:29.20 homovulgaris and most of them have such high licensing fees. especially the ones with advanced features like CATIA for instance
06:29.45 Ralith e.g. wouldn't it suck if your flagship product's designs were inaccessible because the software developer dropped support?
06:30.16 Ralith of course, this generally moot as many CAD formats are well documented and supported.
06:30.40 Ralith speaking as someone largely unfamiliar with CAD systems, how does brl-cad compare to something like, say, solidworks?
06:30.40 homovulgaris :) u work in CADD sector Ralith ?
06:30.43 Ralith nah
06:30.50 Ralith I'm a hobbyist
06:31.03 Ralith hoping to expand into CAD/CAM/CNC
06:31.30 Ralith specifically, using brl-cad with home-built rapid prototyping equipment
06:31.37 homovulgaris brl-cad has an impressive array of features. It is more useful for precision modeling and raytracing for physics simulations :)
06:32.01 homovulgaris Ralith: rapid prototyping is really kewl.
06:32.20 Ralith the eventual goal being the capacity to manufacture precision custom parts with few restrictions and at very low cost
06:32.26 homovulgaris Ralith: I myself am quite interested in STL and CNC
06:32.46 Ralith the approach I'm looking at is FDM
06:32.52 Ralith have you heard of the reprap project?
06:33.39 homovulgaris brl-cad has a larger array of tools around 400 and libraries.. but as u said , user friendliness is to be worked out a bit :)
06:33.40 Ralith (FDM is neat because it proves to be pretty easy to build a rapid prototyper based on it)
06:33.44 Ralith hehe
06:33.45 Ralith yeah
06:34.04 Ralith but the same goes for the rest of the reprap project, so I figure by the time it becomes userfriendly to build, perhaps brl-cad will be userfriendly to use.
06:34.20 homovulgaris btw ;) I am just a gsoc student :D don't take these as official statements :P
06:34.23 Ralith the project is seriously suffering from lack of powerful host software
06:34.37 Ralith the rapid prototyper itself is moving along nicely, though
06:34.45 homovulgaris hmm.. will check out reprap
06:34.49 Ralith it's really cool
06:35.08 homovulgaris what are the requirements from the host software ?
06:35.17 Ralith long-term goal is to produce a rapid prototyper that can manufacture itself; short term goal (already achieved) is to produce one that can manufacture the only hard-to-find and thus expensive parts
06:35.22 Ralith well, there's a few different bits
06:35.25 Ralith first is the CAD system
06:35.34 Ralith which I hope brl-cad will be able to provide
06:35.45 Ralith right now a tool called Art of Illusion or something like that is being used
06:35.53 Ralith it's some shitty java modeller that almost nobody likes :P
06:36.14 homovulgaris :) i hope so too.. rapid prototyper building rapid prototyper sounds like an awesome project :)
06:36.20 Ralith yeah
06:36.36 Ralith you can build the current model for under $1000, and it's quite useful already
06:36.41 Ralith far more than a proof of concept
06:36.44 homovulgaris ur work is hosted on the net somewhere ?
06:36.49 Ralith it's not my work; I'm just a fan
06:36.52 Ralith http://reprap.org/
06:37.05 homovulgaris :) was just seeing reprap
06:37.40 Ralith one of the more challenging host-side software requirements is the process of converting models to tool paths for the rapid prototyper
06:37.58 Ralith I don't suppose you know of any existing work in that area that would be applicable to a FDM system?
06:38.54 Ralith currently, a home-grown java system is being used (I don't get the projects' obsession with java. Perhaps it's the only language the original developers knew.)
06:38.59 Ralith it's slow and has problems.
06:39.13 homovulgaris nope :) I had just a 1 year span to work on my thesis. so i worked mostly with conventional proprietary stuff :)
06:39.19 Ralith It used to (I don't know about the current state) take longer to calculate toolpaths for an object than it took to actually build it
06:39.50 homovulgaris hm.. i am no big fan of java :|
06:39.54 Ralith I agree.
06:40.26 Ralith luckily, the important bit (the rapid prototyper itself and the hardware that drives it) is all done in a much more professional manner.
06:40.26 homovulgaris i mean i understand what they say about portability etc. etc. but i always feel unnecessary overhead
06:40.34 Ralith the funny thing is, java isn't very portable
06:40.45 homovulgaris ;)
06:40.50 Ralith C(++) code written using the right libraries beats it any day.
06:41.18 Ralith for example, I doubt there's a java VM for netbsd on an ARM processor.
06:42.28 homovulgaris hmm.. there should be i guess
06:42.59 Ralith and the overhead itself prevents it from being used properly on an embedded platform
06:43.14 Ralith hell, it prevents it from being used on plenty of full-on desktop computers :P
06:43.21 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03d_rossberg * r31790 10/brlcad/trunk/src/libged/CMakeLists.txt: added some files to be consistent with Makefile.am
06:43.47 homovulgaris I better go grab some food :) Ralith, i will check out reprap further .. see u on this channel sometime, u should talk with brlcad (Sean) for better info regarding brl-cad btw ;)
06:43.56 Ralith cool
06:43.59 Ralith seeya
06:44.23 homovulgaris will run reprap today
07:04.21 brlcad mehhowdy gents
07:04.28 brlcad :)
07:13.40 *** join/#brlcad lleroy (n=chatzill@axsguard.bepco.com)
07:18.07 Ralith hullo
07:18.20 Ralith I'd hang around and ask questions, but it's past midnight over here and I need some rest
07:35.58 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r31791 10/brlcad/trunk/ (BUGS TODO): fix the primitive selection bug in mged, reported on the forums by lleroy. details in the todo file.
07:40.42 brlcad lleroy: I replied -- the bug made it into release
07:41.31 lleroy ok, thanks... I wondered if this was a bug or if this was due to my compilation.
07:41.35 brlcad lleroy: there are a few trivial mods you can make that will work or you can use the command-line way as a work-around until it gets fixed -- thanks for the report, didn't know about it
07:41.56 lleroy btw, what's in brlcad for collision detection?
07:42.20 lleroy I mean to look into CAM toolpath generation...
07:42.25 brlcad homovulgaris: 200 minutes is certainly not the worst I've seen for a compile :-)
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07:51.44 brlcad homovulgaris: (reading and responding to scrollback chatter) .. probably needs to support both binary and some scriptable form -- I can imagine some full-constrained parametric object (a full vehicle) will be horribly inefficient to have it evaluate everything as strings, but that's probably what the user will input in creating them
07:54.04 brlcad pacman87: d_rossberg's comments about self-intersecting your sketch when connecting to the y-axis is the same that I was referring to -- probably want to connect and stop when that happens instead of going all the way to the y-axis so you don't end up with open edges and infinitely thin walls
07:56.01 brlcad MinuteElectron: cool, and thanks :-)
07:59.15 brlcad pacman87: fyi, dividing by zero will cause a run-time abort exception for many environments
08:00.28 brlcad getting inf/nan results from a floating point unit is compilation and hardware dependent (relies on ieee conformance, which is a bad assumption) -- should always be using tolerance tests and other logic in order to get consistent reliable behavior
08:01.20 brlcad PrezKennedy: heh, and the wilderness misses him too!
08:04.39 brlcad andrecastelo: hah! awesome ... nice work, send that to erik if he doesn't see it here :)
08:07.33 brlcad homovulgaris: how dare you say you're "just a gsoc student" .. :-)
08:09.22 brlcad aww
08:09.27 brlcad catches up
08:12.29 lleroy brlcad: what support is available in brlcad for generating CAM toolpaths?
08:17.04 brlcad lleroy: none directly -- your best bet is probably looking at your CAM hardware to see if it'll autogenerate for a given input format (like stl, which we can export)
08:17.28 lleroy brlcad: I mean, if I were to implement CAM inside BRLCAD?
08:18.30 lleroy brlcad: I remember reading on a forum something along the lines of "there is already support stuff implemented for CAM but...???"
08:18.31 brlcad ah, well in that regard there is a fair bit available and quite a few things that are possible
08:19.21 brlcad shotlining can actually give you some surprisingly accurate (sampled) collision detection, high-performance, and robust
08:20.33 brlcad if you wanted to generate toolpaths for a layered dual-axis cnc for example, i could see setting something up where you raytrace each layer of your model and infer solidity/paths from the result
08:21.14 brlcad similar to what rtedge is doing for 2D images, but on a slice-by-slice approach up through a model
08:24.10 brlcad from a ray-tracing perspective, overlaps == collisions, so you could conceivably write a tool that would read in some geometry, provide tooling options (gui, cmd line, or otherwise), and then use either parametric projections or sampled slicing or some volumetric approach for generating tool paths (sort of a g-gcode converter in the end)
08:26.32 lleroy is there something for region-querying (i.e. give me all objects that intersect an object)
08:26.58 lleroy or where their bounding box/sphere intersects this box/sphere
08:28.40 brlcad performing the latter would be really trivial if there's not a routine already for that
08:29.11 brlcad there's not something to query existing overlaps that intersect, though that certainly depends on current object/viewing states
08:29.19 lleroy yes, but doing so efficient using something along the lines of kdtree?
08:29.42 brlcad yeah, that's what I was trying to think if there is something
08:30.05 brlcad nothing that comes to mind that uses the spatial partitioning, but I'd have to rummage around librt a bit to be sure
08:30.07 lleroy is there a partitioning scheme in use in librt
08:31.12 brlcad yeah, definitely -- this question comes up a fair bit, I should really document it somewhere.. :-)
08:32.30 brlcad it actually supports a variety of space partitioning mechanisms
08:34.20 brlcad there's a BSP implementation and a hybrid grid-based partitioning scheme in place presently
08:35.48 brlcad (which isn't so much like traditional gridding, it dynamicly sizes, attempts to balance objects per grid cell, etc)
08:37.15 brlcad default though is a non-uniform binary space paritioning tree
08:41.15 brlcad that's also, though, why I was referring to using the shot-liner since a) that uses space partitioning and is fast/robust, and b) is how you evaluate that an overlap actually exists regardless (since there is potentially unevaluated CSG and other geometry)
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08:52.09 lleroy brlcad: something completely different: I was trying to understand the mged_ill problem, and I wonder where the code jumps to when _mged_ill is called... (i suppose it jumps from tcl to C, but I failed to find the entry point into the C code)
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10:16.20 alex_joni brlcad: seen http://code.google.com/p/wildcat-cad/ ?
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10:28.38 mafm hi
10:30.54 mafm brlcad: did you see the question about the camera yesterday?
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11:05.17 homovulgaris brlcad: :O more than 200 ?
11:05.24 homovulgaris what was it on :)
11:08.17 homovulgaris btw, i wanted to use the ax_boost_base.m4 macro i added using something like this addition to the configure.ac http://rafb.net/p/v3tpKU36.html
11:08.42 homovulgaris but it gives some trouble while configuring in tcl saying LDFLAGS was not set during the last run
11:09.07 homovulgaris is there something additional i have to do other than adding the macro to m4 dir and the code to configure.ac
11:09.45 homovulgaris and also , did u see my question about passing data about variables to C++ by strings ?
11:10.15 homovulgaris sorry if u already replied.. is there any way to check up logs .. the ones at ibot.rikers is always one day old right ?
11:15.19 alex_joni 10:38 <@brlcad> homovulgaris: (reading and responding to scrollback chatter) ..
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12:27.51 *** join/#brlcad sam (i=sam@poulet.zoy.org)
12:32.07 sam howdy
12:34.06 mafm hi
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12:47.31 sam brlcad: I have two patches to suggest; one prevents "configure" from being removed upon "make distclean", and the other sets CONFIG_TS in the proper format
12:47.32 sam http://zoy.org/~sam/patches/patch-brlcad-preserve-configure.diff
12:47.32 sam http://zoy.org/~sam/patches/patch-brlcad-debian-friendly-date.diff
12:51.50 sam more generally, "make distclean" renders the source tree unusable unless you run autogen again
12:52.35 sam (which it shouldn't do)
12:52.48 sam I suggest creating a "make maintainerclean" rule instead
13:15.50 brlcad alex_joni: yes, I commented on the work a couple weeks ago -- and some chatter on grabowski's mailing list where it was announced
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13:17.25 brlcad mafm: I saw the comments in the commits and your wiki update
13:17.47 brlcad but not a specific question
13:17.57 brlcad several camera modes would be good to have
13:18.27 mafm examples?
13:18.27 brlcad howdy sam! :)
13:19.08 mafm for kbd control is not much of an issue, but I don't know for making a window to control the camera
13:20.48 brlcad sam: for the first, understandable though it was intentional to make distclean restore the sources to a *checkout* state
13:21.13 sam yeah, I understand the idea
13:21.20 brlcad we could of course get that with another rule, but were intentionally avoiding having a plethora of clean rules when one goes "all the way"
13:21.23 sam maybe it's just misc/debian which needs a makeover
13:21.53 sam it's the first project I see where "make distclean" doesn't allow you to reconfigure though
13:22.33 brlcad it's very bikesheddish to me -- not a big deal either way -- but there are undoubtedly other mods that would be needed to make it clean up to a dist state
13:22.48 brlcad though I might have already started
13:22.56 brlcad e.g. the Makefile.in files
13:23.26 brlcad sure, I understand the tradeoff -- just saying it was indeed intentional, we distclean and run autogen.sh
13:23.52 brlcad distclean is run prior to making a dist, so our devs have to go through the full release prep
13:24.40 brlcad sam: curious about the second patch -- it should already be setting that with the LC_ALL=C that preceeds
13:26.08 sam brlcad: my bad, I missed the LC_ALL=C
13:26.16 sam but the important part is the -R flag
13:26.29 sam debian/changelog needs to be in a very specific format
13:26.46 brlcad i'm on a bsd atm, what does -R do?
13:27.55 sam RFC822 format
13:27.56 brlcad misc/debian is/was user-contributed by someone that was trying to set it up in apt, you're welcome to take it over if you like
13:28.06 brlcad they've not continued their efforts
13:28.30 sam I'm afraid I would make a sloppy maintainer for such a big piece of software
13:28.50 brlcad nods
13:28.59 brlcad and there are still integration issues to sort out
13:29.35 sam I can provide patches during my quest to a working brlcad package though :)
13:29.57 brlcad sure ;)
13:30.10 brlcad want commit access to work on that or prefer patches?
13:33.37 sam as you wish
13:39.36 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r31792 10/brlcad/trunk/configure.ac: apply CONFIG_TS patch from sam hocevar to make the date stamp return in RFC822 format. breaks compilation timing, so might need to make sh/elapsed.sh handle 'one more' format
13:40.42 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r31793 10/brlcad/trunk/Makefile.am: we already removed the Makefile.in clobbering for distclean, so go the extra mile and keep configure too; patch from sam (thanks)
13:50.33 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r31794 10/brlcad/trunk/AUTHORS: special thanks to sam hocevar for his build system tweaks and debian integration testing
13:52.02 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r31795 10/brlcad/trunk/AUTHORS: sammy is another (commit) nick
13:52.46 sam wow, that was fast :)
13:54.07 brlcad you have commit now, you're a fairly known quantity and all changes are pretty closely scrutinized for this project regardless
13:54.47 brlcad but either way, thanks for the mods .. it will be really cool to finally get into apt cleanly some day
13:55.24 brlcad trunk is unstable if you're running/testing things, there's a separate stable branch for release integration testing
13:55.28 homovulgaris i look forward to apt-get install brlcad :)
13:55.42 brlcad yeah, that request comes up like once a month it seems
13:55.47 sam I was surprised brlcad wasn't in Debian
13:55.58 sam I found packages but they're only i386 and I run amd64
13:56.24 brlcad that was the last time it was seriously worked on, outside of build fixes done for ubuntu
13:57.39 sam the task is huge: unfortunately Debian still has tcl8.5 and itcl3.1
13:57.41 brlcad the biggest problem for integration is that brl-cad is big and with an extensive heritage .. developed since early 80's, it's more like X11 than it is like, say, gimp or even blender
13:58.32 brlcad so it was developed to install (like many proprietary apps or X11) into an isolated root given the conflict reality
13:58.38 sam yeah, I could see that... commit messages from 1983 :)
13:59.09 brlcad we've got most of that fixed now, but there are still a few critical issues remaining (one being proper system incrTcl detection)
13:59.30 brlcad and our high-conflict potential libs: librt, libbn, libbu
14:00.13 sam are the contribs linked statically into brlcad, or installed in a separate suffix?
14:00.15 brlcad they're our core libs and predate those we conflict, but librt is still pretty prevalent (albeit deprecated)
14:00.54 brlcad ideally they're linked dynamic for package managers
14:01.04 brlcad they're only compiled and linked if not detected
14:01.48 brlcad whether we build static or dynamic is a build setting, defaults to dynamic/shared libs
14:01.59 brlcad our install becomes several GB in side if it's static
14:02.07 brlcad s/side/size/
14:04.07 brlcad so to avoid the conflicts, I think the ultimate goal is to just set up the build system so that a /usr prefix will default to /usr/lib/brlcad/VERSION etc for the libs
14:04.18 brlcad i think i've resolved all of our bin conflicts
14:17.54 brlcad mafm: heh
14:18.02 brlcad (and hi) :)
14:18.23 mafm hiya
14:18.34 brlcad I didn't respond because it seemed more a comment than a question :)
14:18.49 mafm I see
14:19.05 mafm well, it's because I don't know the level of sofistication desired
14:19.25 mafm in geometry editors you don't need "follow player" modes and things like that
14:19.30 brlcad for clarity, you're talking about how the view responds to mouse events, yes?
14:19.38 mafm so I figured that orbital mode (with zoom) could be enough
14:20.11 mafm more to kbd events, but could be mouse too
14:20.13 brlcad you need a "follow player" mode if you have animation/timeline support where there's a camera being tracked
14:20.56 mafm are animations supported by brl-cad?
14:21.10 brlcad crude, but yes
14:21.14 mafm hmm
14:21.30 brlcad I wouldn't worry so much about that right now though
14:21.54 brlcad I see two immediate styles that are needed, one being classic "trackball" view support
14:21.59 mafm well, the orbital idea can follow a given point, only that it follows it always from the same "orbital-stationary" position
14:22.14 brlcad the other being our classic shift-grips
14:22.41 mafm with "follow player" I also meant to smooth curves when following the players and so on... that's mostly needed for games with 3rd person view
14:23.29 mafm well, I was about to create a somewhat complex and useful camera mode, with accompanying window, so I think that it would be helpful to know
14:23.32 brlcad ah, we might be talking about two slightly different things -- I could see having an orbital mode with trackball or with shift-grips
14:24.09 mafm ok, I describe
14:24.12 brlcad orbital would definitely be useful to have early on, though -- imagine browsing through a geometry database, pulling up a piece of geoemtry, and your preview spins around like in a game preview panel
14:24.43 mafm for me orbital is having a central point, and zoom in and out
14:24.58 mafm and being able to rotate up-down and left-right
14:25.26 mafm so the camera is always in a point of the sphere, looking to the center
14:25.33 brlcad sure, that's basically an immobile trackball
14:25.34 mafm being the diameter of the sphere variable
14:25.51 mafm (and following the center, if it happens to be mobile)
14:26.40 mafm another mode is 1st person as in doom, where basically the controls to move the kbd control the camera too, and have some additional keys to look up&down and so on
14:27.10 mafm follwing-player is 3rd person, and would be tracking the player from a few meters behind
14:27.28 mafm so you're in a kind of chariot, being the player the horses
14:27.44 mafm of course lots of small variations are possible in all the modes :)
14:27.52 brlcad nods
14:28.49 brlcad do you intent to tie a viewing mode to input behavior, or is it merely a degrees of freedeom matter that's separately considered from input?
14:28.50 mafm so how's trackball and shift-grips related with this? I'm not familiar with it
14:29.36 brlcad basically, those are input control styles
14:30.18 brlcad trackball navigation is what most modelers use by default
14:30.23 sam by the way, I'd like to explain why I wanted to try brlcad
14:30.28 sam maybe it isn't the right tool
14:30.29 mafm the viewing mode would be in general tied to input behaviour I think -- keys to go left/right, up/down, zoom in/out...
14:30.54 sam I'd like to create solids whose colour values are f(x,y,z)
14:30.57 brlcad sam: if it gets you contributing code/patches/fixes/enhancements, then of COURSE it's the right tool ;)
14:31.03 mafm also imagine a window: it could have 4 arrows pointing to cardinal points, and one +/- for zoom, etc
14:31.05 sam then perform CSG operations on them
14:31.54 sam in order to visualise what colours remain
14:32.33 brlcad mafm: okay, if you're going to tie them together, that works -- but probably have to clarify/learn what at least is meant by shift-grips and trackball modes then -- both use the view's eye point as the manipulation point
14:36.03 mafm is "trackball navigation" something specific about navigating with trackballs, or just an axis-based mouse?
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14:36.37 mafm or just to only have as input a trackball, instead of mouse and keyboard?
14:40.09 mafm imagine that you have 1st person view... you can go forward, backward and turn with arrow keys; look up&down with page up&down; etc
14:40.21 mafm but you can also assign similar actions to mouse
14:41.02 mafm moving the mouse is looking to a particular direction, clicking some button is run, etc
14:42.08 mafm when I speak about a camera mode is basically to have a class encompassing everything, and then you can assign kbd/mouse/trackball events to controll it, with commands similar to zoomIn, turnLeft, goToHomePosition....
14:42.49 mafm but you can also have several camera modes, so each time that you switch the camera mode, your buttons act also differently in the way that you move the view
14:43.55 mafm so I'd like a bit of input in what's desired to have input on what's needed/desired if possible, so I implement something sufficiently complex to accomodate to the needs, but not overengineer it
14:44.00 brlcad mafm: it has nothing to do with an actual trackball
14:44.47 brlcad it's probably what you're most used to actually, started from old old code from sgi back in the 80's, and a trackball.c that most have continued to use over the years
14:45.09 brlcad spinning around a simple model in opengl, you have basic trackball control
14:46.10 brlcad I know entirely what you mean by the various other modes (remember that I do also code for bzflag, we have most of those modes :)
14:46.51 mafm yes, that's what I was guessing :D
14:47.07 brlcad you've run mged, yes?
14:47.11 mafm yes
14:47.35 brlcad notice how it doesn't rotate the view around if you click-drag in the graphics window?
14:47.40 brlcad it zooms
14:48.42 mafm yes
14:49.33 brlcad it's a "shift-grips" interface, where you get zoom in/out with buttons and no move event actions by default, shift+clicking+dragging, though, does one set of operations (e.g. panning), control+click+dragging does another (e.g. trackball rotation), etc
14:49.56 brlcad that's one input style that we'll definitely want to have available
14:50.23 brlcad taking it away would probably result in me being lynched
14:50.48 brlcad but doesn't mean it has to be default, just available ;)
14:50.48 mafm lol
14:50.56 brlcad there's a doc on the website that details all the bindings
14:51.27 mafm Shift Grips Quick Reference Guide ?
14:51.30 brlcad we only need a follower mode if/when there is an animation track to follow -- we don't have that yet so I wouldn't focus on that one now
14:51.33 brlcad yes
14:51.37 brlcad it's just a simple table
14:52.04 brlcad a fly-through mode would definitely be useful/interesting
14:52.22 brlcad and then having a trackball mode probably by default
14:52.26 mafm ok, let me read and think about it and explain you my idea about implementing it
14:52.50 brlcad sam: hmmm
14:53.11 brlcad sam: that entirely depends what you expect to happen when you perform the CSG operations
14:54.00 brlcad you can do what you suggest now, but it sounds like maybe you're wanting addition/subtraction of colors (for union/subtration ops) .. and 'something' for intersection
14:56.42 mafm brlcad: trackball up&down&left&right just moves the center of the window, or moves the perspective looking at the same 3D point (I guess that it's the 1st, with another to zoom in&out)?
14:57.35 sam brlcad: I just need substraction, so no colour "merging" would be involved
14:59.06 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r31796 10/brlcad/trunk/doc/docbook/resources/README: Add basic readme explaining why the resources directory exists - this should be fleshed out later.
14:59.07 brlcad http://brlcad.org/tmp/colors.png
14:59.16 brlcad something like that?
15:01.35 sam yes, exactly
15:02.07 sam but I also want the solids to have variable colour values (using a parametric function maybe?)
15:02.16 brlcad oof
15:02.34 brlcad that'd be a shader
15:02.57 brlcad certainly doable and not hard, but you'd have to write some code to support it
15:03.12 sam and I'd need my GLX driver to understand shaders I guess
15:03.18 brlcad no no
15:03.31 brlcad ray-trace shader, rather different
15:03.39 sam ah, ok.
15:03.46 brlcad more like what pixar's renderman does for the movies
15:04.45 brlcad when generating an image via ray-tracing, the ray hits a surface and calls upon a 'shader' to determine a color value there (for the intent of coloring a pixel image ultimately)
15:05.21 sam would I be able to navigate in near realtime around the scene with a ~1500 vgr machine?
15:05.47 brlcad so in that image, you're actually looking at two shaders -- one is a classic "phong" shader that shows surface curvature, specular highlights, etc .. the other is a very very simple "flat" shader that just returns the color set to the object
15:05.48 sam the scene would have fewer than 10 cubes
15:06.41 brlcad you could certainly navigate the wireframe in realtime.. :)
15:06.45 sam lol
15:07.01 brlcad those images are renderings, ray-traced
15:07.55 brlcad ray-tracing 10 cubes in 'real-time' is certainly doable but it'd be through a different interface that doesn't use shaders
15:08.19 sam mmmh, maybe I just need a CSG library and my own OpenGL renderer
15:09.23 brlcad then it would be an opengl shader
15:13.35 *** part/#brlcad louipc (n=louipc@206-248-164-28.dsl.teksavvy.com)
15:17.18 mafm brlcad: trackball up&down&left&right just moves the center of the window, or moves the perspective looking at the same 3D point (I guess that it's the 1st, with another to zoom in&out)?
15:18.10 brlcad the latter if I understand you correctly
15:19.10 brlcad imagine a large bounding sphere in your 3D view, click-dragging from the center to the left rotates that sphere (and the scene it hypothetically encompasses)
15:19.17 mafm the latter continues the object (rotates around given center), the former moves the window in a fixed Z plane
15:19.42 mafm the latter orbits*
15:20.33 brlcad yes
15:25.44 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03sammy * r31797 10/brlcad/trunk/src/other/URToolkit/tools/rlehdr.c: * rlehdr.c: fix a potential crash in the RLE header display function.
15:27.00 mafm I see
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15:27.19 mafm well, then I think that I'll build a bit of infrastructure for supporting different modes
15:28.02 brlcad yeah, I figured you'd need to support at least two styles
15:28.58 mafm nicey nicey
15:29.09 mafm I have work for most of next week, I guess
15:29.27 brlcad mafm: here's an example of a basic (immobile) trackball: http://www.opengl.org/resources/code/samples/glut_examples/examples/dinoshade.c
15:29.46 brlcad simple lil glut example, gcc dinoshade.c -lglut
15:30.54 dtidrow cls
15:31.09 dtidrow ugh, wrong window
15:31.16 brlcad -bash: cls: command not found
15:31.32 dtidrow unless it's aliased ;-)
15:31.43 dtidrow really old habits die hard
15:32.06 brlcad shame on you for aliasing dos commands :)
15:32.22 dtidrow see previous remark ;-)
15:32.22 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03bob1961 * r31798 10/brlcad/trunk/ (11 files in 3 dirs): Added arot, eye and eye_pos functions.
15:32.24 brlcad they die even harder when you let them keep working
15:32.44 dtidrow fewer keystrokes too
15:45.10 mafm I cannot compile that thing
15:49.57 brlcad mafm: really?
15:50.03 brlcad what's your error?
15:51.27 brlcad all of the glut_examples are pretty simple to compile, just have to have glut installed (headers/libs) and tell gcc where
15:51.41 brlcad maybe gcc dinoshade.c -lglut -lgl
15:53.08 mafm the glut I already figured out
15:53.23 mafm but there's a function from glext.h causing problems
15:53.55 mafm dinoshade.c:(.text+0x1c25): undefined reference to `glPolygonOffsetEXT'
15:59.26 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03bob1961 * r31799 10/brlcad/trunk/misc/win32-msvc8/libged/libged.vcproj: Added ae2dir, arot, dir2ae, eye and eye_pos source files.
16:02.07 brlcad mafm: try adding the snippet suggested here: http://www2.cemr.wvu.edu/~ejb/Instructions/node10.html
16:03.54 brlcad i.e. add the wrapper or simply remove the EXT
16:03.59 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r31800 10/brlcad/trunk/doc/docbook/ (3 files in 2 dirs): Add appendix A of VolIII as pipes tutorial, with corresponding changes for VolIII
16:04.00 mafm freeglut (./a.out): WARNING - Display string token not recognized: stencil>=2
16:04.00 mafm dinoshade: Sorry, I need at least 2 bits of stencil.
16:04.02 mafm :D
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16:04.40 brlcad hrm, i'll dig up a simpler example later then
16:04.46 brlcad lunch!
16:04.49 mafm oki
16:05.00 mafm np anyway, I'm quite busy
16:05.02 mafm good lunch!
16:15.19 starseeker phooy - Apache FOP is known to have an issue (or more likely unimplemented feature) about not shrinking images to fit on a page
16:15.56 starseeker makes note to get ahold of the FOP devs for an eta on that feature...
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16:24.56 mafm hi homovulgaris
16:45.28 poolio Aha. My bug had to do with the fact that I fail at basic geometry. Wonderful.
17:01.39 pacman87 brlcad: self intersecting example: https://webspace.utexas.edu/trv82/www/rev_rt13.png
17:01.54 pacman87 2 lines: ((1, 1); (2, 2)) and ((1, 1.5); (2, 2.5))
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17:28.17 brlcad starseeker: or grab their sources and try to implement it ;)
17:36.43 pacman87 brlcad: i don't see how "open edges and infinitely thin walls" are created, unless you mean along the circle traced by the point of intersection
17:37.12 pacman87 and that's not really different than a user-supplied self-intersecting sketch
17:39.24 MinuteElectron brlcad: thanks?
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17:52.06 starseeker brlcad: :-P yeah, I'll just take a couple minutes here...
17:52.58 starseeker brlcad: Thanks to the joys of binary svn diffs, I should be able to size down for now and then revert to the original size if/when fop supports it again
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18:29.07 brlcad pacman87: akin to having two segments 1,0 -> 1,1; and 2,0 -> 2,1; .. you can either make four segments that clamp the four "open" endpoints to x,0 .. or you can detect that the 2,0->2,1 segment will connect up with the other leaving you with two new segments at 2,0 -> 1,0 and 2,1 -> 1,1;
18:29.47 brlcad MinuteElectron: for looking into the problem
18:30.22 brlcad i was going to do the upgrade to 6 but the modules we're using weren't upgraded yet
18:31.01 mafm I go now, have a good weekend in the case that I don't join :)
18:32.52 MinuteElectron brlcad: really, I wonder if they still haven't been...
18:33.02 MinuteElectron I think theres a change to the skin system too =/
18:46.16 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r31801 10/brlcad/trunk/doc/docbook/ (2 files in 2 dirs): Add projection shader tutorial
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19:09.12 brlcad starseeker: reminder on https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1990961&group_id=105292&atid=640803
19:09.35 brlcad he's not responded, so it might just need to move to bugs, but it's one that'd be good to fix
19:13.44 starseeker OK, thanks - i'll take a look
19:14.06 brlcad you should be able to reproduce on your 30"
19:14.11 starseeker :-)
19:14.23 starseeker let me commit ebm quick
19:14.34 brlcad doesn't have to be now/today, just a reminder
19:15.06 brlcad like to keep support requests and patches processed with fairly high priority (contrary to bugs and feature requests that might linger for years)
19:15.19 starseeker right
19:15.27 CIA-60 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r31802 10/brlcad/trunk/doc/docbook/ (2 files in 2 dirs): Add extruded bitmap overview.
19:18.20 Ralith brlcad: hey, you're still around!
19:18.34 Ralith so I was told you're The Person to come to with brlcaddy questions
19:19.00 starseeker does rtwizard not have a man page???
19:19.40 brlcad howdy Ralith
19:19.52 Ralith so I've got a fairly fundemental question: is BRL-CAD an appropriate tool for designing new parts in?
19:20.00 brlcad starseeker: niet, though it does have a fair bit of in-interface help
19:20.10 brlcad it's meant to be a "wizard" after all, walking you through
19:20.23 brlcad Ralith: it depends for what purpose
19:20.25 starseeker When he's saying running it from the command line, does that mean starting it from the command line then?
19:20.33 brlcad yes
19:21.21 Ralith brlcad: I'm not sure how to answer that question. What I had in mind was for use as source data (which would then be converted into toolpaths) for a rapid prototyper.
19:21.41 brlcad Ralith: conceptual design of parts is not a strong point, you tend to need a wide range of feature-based editing operations and ability to perform unknown free-form edits
19:22.03 brlcad if it's a part that already exists, and you're just modeling it -- sure
19:22.26 brlcad even if it's something you have drawings for already, sure
19:22.52 brlcad if you have absolutely nothing, though, and you're trying to design the worlds latest and greatest new toaster, not good for concept design
19:23.01 Ralith it seems like that would be the case for most serious cases; at least, when I'm designing something I usually have it all worked out on paper before I even touch a computer.
19:23.15 brlcad then you should be golden
19:23.19 Ralith awesome.
19:24.18 Ralith also, on a semi-related note, I don't suppose you're aware of any freely available tools that might be adapted to create toolpaths for a fused deposition modelling rapid prototyping system?
19:24.49 Ralith it seems like the sort of problem that should have been solved a long time ago, but is obscure enough not to have been.
19:26.36 brlcad Ralith: here's an example of such a modeling example where someone had drafted up the dimensions and angles for an extrator part to a pistol/gun -- it was modeled up in a matter of minutes to specification
19:27.27 brlcad the only free tool that comes to mind is one justin worked on a for a while, gcam
19:27.30 brlcad http://gcam.js.cx/
19:27.48 brlcad dumps out g-code
19:28.14 starseeker brlcad: I'm not triggering it, even at 2048x2048. Is there something special I need to be sure I do?
19:28.36 brlcad starseeker: it'll happen right when you run the app, try starting with a .g perhaps
19:28.41 brlcad rtwizard path/to/file.g
19:28.46 starseeker did
19:28.51 starseeker hmm...
19:29.13 brlcad hm, then maybe try chaning your screen res or try making other displays the primary (under display preferences)
19:29.59 brlcad it's certainly not been fixed, so it must just depend on some other factor(s)
19:30.40 brlcad Ralith: oh, oops -- the example link, heh .. http://brlcad.org/gallery/s/screenshots/extractor.png.html
19:31.28 starseeker Any chance it's 10.5 specific?
19:32.29 Ralith brlcad: that sounds very encouraging. I hope the friendly GUI in progress will be similarily efficient; while I'm personally quite happy with steep learning curves, I'm hoping BRL-CAD might be adopted by a community which, on the whole, is not.
19:32.59 starseeker hmm - changing resolution doesn't do it, nor does opening on another monitor
19:38.51 starseeker tries to find out what "screen distance" means in Tk
19:45.19 starseeker brlcad: When you wiped out rtwizard on large displays, was it an identical error message? If I'm not mistaken, the complaint is that itk is passing tk a value that is not a valid distance in pixels
19:46.17 Ralith Does mged (and, I suppose, the BRL-CAD file format) have a way to instantiate a single object such that changes to any instance are applied to all instances?
19:48.58 prasad_ is that shaded view in an interactive ogl context?
19:49.12 prasad_ or is that the ray traced img
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20:38.38 starseeker Ralith: In a sense - if you create a primitive and then use that primitive in multiple combinations, changes to the original primitive will manifest in the combinations
20:41.49 Ralith starseeker: that's cool and related, but I was wondering more if you can define one primitive or set of combined primitives, then define several instances of it which all share the same data, so that a change to one applies to all.
20:41.58 Ralith perhaps I misunderstand something?
20:42.33 Ralith the PDF on good modelling technique implies that brl-cad can do this; that is, it doesn't say how to (that I saw), but it does say that use of such a feature is a good way to do certain things.
20:43.59 starseeker Well, not for primitives as such - what you want (I think) is to create one combination (comb1.c) with one or more primitives/combinations "inside" it
20:44.08 starseeker then copy comb1.c to comb2.c
20:44.17 starseeker cp comb1.c comb2.c, IIRC
20:44.33 starseeker if you do a tree on comb1.c and comb2.c, you will notice they have the same contents
20:45.32 starseeker so if you move a primitive (notice there is a difference between moving a primitive and moving the instance of the primitive inside comb1.c - see the OED tutoral for a discussion of this)
20:45.48 starseeker let's get more concrete
20:45.57 starseeker make sph1.s sph
20:46.07 starseeker comb comb1.c u sph1.s
20:46.13 starseeker cp comb1.c comb2.c
20:47.37 starseeker tree comb1.c comb2.c
20:47.53 starseeker You should see that both comb1.c and comb2.c have sph1.s in them.
20:48.35 starseeker Now, type B sph1.s
20:48.53 starseeker then do the following:
20:48.58 starseeker sed sph1.s
20:49.05 starseeker tra 0 0 -100
20:49.26 starseeker better make that -500
20:49.41 starseeker then type accept
20:50.18 starseeker If you do B comb1.c and comb2.c, you should see no display change. This is because both comb1.c and comb2.c picked up the change to sph1.s we just made
20:50.28 starseeker er B comb1.c comb2.c
20:50.32 starseeker no and
20:51.08 starseeker Now, B comb1.c
20:51.38 starseeker no scratch that - let's leave comb2.c up
20:52.03 starseeker Now use the oed command to work at the combination level: oed / comb1.c/sph1.s
20:52.29 starseeker tra 0 0 500
20:52.31 starseeker accept
20:52.42 starseeker you should see two spheres now
20:53.03 starseeker because you operated at the combination level and not the primitive level, the translation was NOT shared between comb1.c and comb2.c
20:53.20 starseeker that make any sense?
20:54.01 starseeker Ralith: ping
20:55.00 Ralith starseeker: I follow; this is exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks!
20:56.04 starseeker If you now want comb1 and comb2 to each have their own primitives with the new location information, that's what xpush is all about
20:57.00 starseeker Have you read the oed tutorial?
20:59.19 Ralith not yet, no.
20:59.41 Ralith I'm just getting started with all this stuff, while simultaneously trying to work out if brl-cad is entirely appropriate. So far it looks perfect.
20:59.43 starseeker It should be at least related to this
21:01.04 starseeker http://brlcad.org/w/images/3/36/Object_Editing_-_the_oed_Command.pdf
21:05.06 Ralith starseeker: my installation seems to be missing an oed binary.
21:05.16 Ralith is it a function of mged?
21:06.16 starseeker yes, it's an mged command
21:06.31 Ralith kk
21:06.44 Ralith thanks!
21:23.11 brlcad starseeker: it wasn't identical values, but the same error iirc
21:23.24 starseeker sent a response asking for more info
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21:50.38 Ralith I have to say, I'm *very* impressed with the thoroughness of the documentation.
21:51.03 Ralith is the source material for the pdfs available, so that it might be converted into e.g. a webpage?
21:58.59 Ralith Also, where would I find documentation about the structure of database files?
22:04.36 Ralith the Users group presentations wiki page seems to have docs for v5, but isn't that completely outdated?
22:50.26 *** join/#brlcad Twingy (n=justin@74.92.144.217)
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23:32.40 *** join/#brlcad PrezKennedy (n=Matthew@whitecalf.net)
23:46.03 andrecastelo___ andrecastelo: get out!!
23:47.35 andrecastelo___ thank you
23:48.06 andrecastelo hey brlcad, have you seen ``Erik around?

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