Stream: brlcad

Topic: vol tutorial

Thusal Ranawaka (Aug 01 2020 at 06:20):

@Sean I added you to my Google Doc.

Thusal Ranawaka (Aug 01 2020 at 13:32):

@Sean https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ss9vjJW7heW5LFN9Rxq5JhqQkT0U-2R6LZrDBayYFJ8/edit

Sean (Aug 02 2020 at 02:43):

that's looking good. I like that you colored the vol layer. Might be nice to have a page on that pixel editor since that really did make things simple, and just mention that any image-editing application will work.

Thusal Ranawaka (Aug 02 2020 at 02:43):

Okay.

Thusal Ranawaka (Aug 02 2020 at 03:02):

Thusal Ranawaka said:

Sean Need to come up with a suitable topic, Setting up a cup using VOL data?

Is this topic good?

Thusal Ranawaka (Aug 02 2020 at 03:05):

My laptop is super slow, it took about 5 seconds to appear what I type on the screen. :thinking:

Sean (Aug 03 2020 at 06:39):

Title doesn't matter at this point, but that' a good start

Thusal Ranawaka (Aug 03 2020 at 13:23):

Alright. Thanks.

Thusal Ranawaka (Aug 03 2020 at 17:02):

@Sean Saw your comment.

Thusal Ranawaka (Aug 04 2020 at 13:52):

Sorry @Sean, Will make some progress on the tutorial at night. Lots of homework. :sad:

Sean (Aug 04 2020 at 18:47):

Sounds good @Thusal Ranawaka As I noted, it's a good start but appears to just be the start. I helped clean up the introduction a fair bit and rewrote a couple sentences so they're easier to read, but on the whole it's looking good.

Sean (Aug 04 2020 at 18:48):

You probably will want to put more language into explaining what you think a VOL is, maybe explain before talking about the first "slice" why we're evening looking at the volume in terms of slics.

Thusal Ranawaka (Aug 31 2020 at 13:58):

I made some progress in the tutorial.

Sean (Aug 31 2020 at 19:52):

Excellent @Thusal Ranawaka ! How long until it's functional?

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 01 2020 at 02:40):

Just couple of steps like conversion of .bw .dsp. Then make the VOL in mged and that's all.

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 02 2020 at 15:24):

@Sean I created the tutorial until the steps of converting pngs into bw. I will complete the rest in a day or too. My dad changes the password of our wifi router so things are little bit harder now

Sean (Sep 02 2020 at 15:35):

great! well except for the wifi access part. how does that make things harder? I'd think you either have access or you don't, no? is he trying to limit your internet use or just coincidental?

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 02 2020 at 15:40):

Yea. My parents dont trust internet, they always say 'Internet is bad' so they always set limitations to internet, now today schools started regularly no social distancing, 5 days a week. Very stressy actually I hate goin school

I meant the tutorial is on Google Docs how could I access it without internet dont worry I ll complete it somehow

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 05 2020 at 14:09):

Hi @Sean Good News! Tutorial is over.

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 05 2020 at 14:09):

Just check errors when you got time.

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 05 2020 at 14:09):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ss9vjJW7heW5LFN9Rxq5JhqQkT0U-2R6LZrDBayYFJ8/edit?usp=sharing

Sumagna Das (Sep 05 2020 at 14:14):

nice

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 09 2020 at 13:26):

@Sean Just a quick reminder, did you make any changes in the VOL tutorial?

Sean (Sep 09 2020 at 13:33):

@Thusal Ranawaka I didn't make changes but this looks really awesome!

Sean (Sep 09 2020 at 13:33):

you seriously made a jump and filled in details from where it was a couple weeks ago

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 09 2020 at 13:34):

Do I have to add or remove anything?

Sean (Sep 09 2020 at 13:36):

I don't think you need to add anything. The length and detail is perfect.

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 09 2020 at 13:38):

:+1:

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 09 2020 at 13:49):

I can see the changes that you making like a live video. ;)

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 09 2020 at 13:49):

Feels like someone is controlling/hacked my laptop.

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 09 2020 at 13:49):

:rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:

Sean (Sep 09 2020 at 13:49):

haha

Sean (Sep 09 2020 at 13:58):

I love interactive multiuser online editing of docs. It's a powerful construct.

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 09 2020 at 13:58):

:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Sean (Sep 09 2020 at 19:04):

@Thusal Ranawaka I finished editing the tutorial, made lots of suggestions, several comments too on things that should be changed. A couple images need to be updated.

Sean (Sep 09 2020 at 19:04):

looks great

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 10 2020 at 13:08):

@Sean WoW! You made a lot of changes, now what?

Sean (Sep 10 2020 at 13:12):

@Thusal Ranawaka well, there were several comments/questions in there for you to take care of next...

Sean (Sep 10 2020 at 13:13):

aaand, I see you just closed them all without doing any of them...

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 10 2020 at 13:15):

:face_palm:

Sean (Sep 10 2020 at 13:17):

I suggest going back through the changes more carefully, accept the edits, but pay closer attention to the comments

Sean (Sep 10 2020 at 13:17):

there were about a half dozen comments

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 10 2020 at 13:17):

I saw the comments, butttt...

Sean (Sep 10 2020 at 13:18):

but what?

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 10 2020 at 13:19):

I didn't pay close attention to it, I just read it.

Sean (Sep 10 2020 at 13:19):

I know -- that's the entire point :)

Sean (Sep 10 2020 at 13:19):

each of those comments was basically the next steps for you,

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 10 2020 at 13:20):

I am reading it now

Sean (Sep 10 2020 at 13:20):

you know how to restore them?

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 10 2020 at 13:21):

Click 'Re-open'

Sean (Sep 10 2020 at 13:25):

there's at least on more near the beginning about the section titles

Sean (Sep 18 2020 at 17:40):

@Thusal Ranawaka any progress on the tutorial. the first comment should be pretty easy to resolve...

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 19 2020 at 01:29):

Um... If there isn't any sources for the Blocky Cup image, I have to model it using mged. That's not much easy, but I'll try.

Sean (Sep 19 2020 at 12:05):

@Thusal Ranawaka I found the source, but it's a commercial product, so we'd have to get permission to use and redistribute it

Sean (Sep 19 2020 at 12:05):

it's not open source licensed

Sean (Sep 19 2020 at 12:05):

you already modeled it though

Sean (Sep 19 2020 at 12:08):

the vol is a model, we'll just need to reconfigure it to color each layer differently. still I would focus on all the other comments first -- they're easier.

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 22 2020 at 14:09):

@Sean image.png

Sean (Sep 22 2020 at 20:48):

that looks really great @Thusal Ranawaka! I see you remembered the AO options :)

Sean (Sep 22 2020 at 20:50):

so that could replace the main image for now. maybe sometime later we could show how to do it in color like the original image, or how to fill that cup with coffee :)

Sean (Sep 24 2020 at 04:16):

@Thusal Ranawaka you're SO CLOSE to being done with the tutorial... any chance you are going to be able to work on the 5 comment items remaining?

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 24 2020 at 13:32):

Back

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 24 2020 at 13:40):

@Sean The first 2 comments and the last comment, I couldn't understand what it says. Others are okay I guess.

Thusal Ranawaka (Sep 24 2020 at 13:41):

I think you made the changes for the first 2 comments by yourself already

Thusal Ranawaka (Oct 01 2020 at 14:06):

@Sean Sorry, got super busy this week. Got some time to check on VOL Tute now.

Sean (Oct 02 2020 at 20:28):

I didn't make any changes for the 5 comments... The first comment is that you have a bold section header ... and no other sections. It either shouldn't be a section header or there should be at least a couple more section headers.

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 11 2020 at 14:14):

@Sean I am back on work with last steps of the tutorial, I created the VOL cup image.png to be replaced instead of the Cup you used from App Store.

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 11 2020 at 14:15):

So, any suggestions and ideas?

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:37):

Didn't get it from the app store directly - got it from a search - but yeah I found later that it apparently came from an app in the app store.

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:43):

@Thusal Ranawaka yeah, I suggest trying to get an image that's closer to the app icon's, maybe just all the same color. What I mean by that is that icon has perspective enabled (run 'set perspective 70') and has super smooth shading. To get the smooth shading, you're going to have to really crank up the number of ambient light samples. I believe you used something like 16 samples, but will need to increase that to like 1000 or something similar.

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:43):

ah, it's right there in the tutorial, you used 64 samples

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:44):

let the final be ambSamples=64, but let the first image be something a lot better like ambSamples=1000

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:44):

with perspective

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:45):

and try to get that center blue color -- set the object's color to 44/88/120

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 11 2020 at 15:51):

Sean said:

and try to get that center blue color -- set the object's color to 44/88/120

You mean by creating a region and assign colors and materials? or is there other way?

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 11 2020 at 15:52):

Because I think we can give only one color to the whole cup because we can't assign colors for every single block like in the actual cup. Can you do it in MGED?

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:52):

that'll work -- it's just for the picture, not for instructions

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:52):

right, just one color is fine.

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:53):

it'd be really awesome to improve vol so that it uses the colors in the input images... :)

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:53):

so you'd just color the pixels how you want them, create the vol, and ta-da

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:53):

but that's not today :)

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:54):

r cup.r u cup.vol (or whatever it's called)

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 15:54):

mater cup.r plastic 44 88 120 .

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 11 2020 at 16:05):

image.png

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 11 2020 at 16:05):

I think it need some lightning.

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 11 2020 at 16:07):

image.png With Perspective

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 11 2020 at 16:08):

image.png Set ambSamples to 1000.

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 17:23):

I agree, needs a bit more light. Did you add the -A flag? what value did you use?

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 17:26):

A few more samples might help in the corner too. Still a little bit of noise in the darkest corner. I suggest something like rt -c "set ambSamples=1000 ambSlow=1" -A1.5 -C255/255/255 -s1024

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 17:27):

You could also edit the shader using the combination editor under Edit menu, Combination Editor, type name of object, click the "Shader" button, and then increase the specularity value a little bit.

Sean (Dec 11 2020 at 17:27):

that'll make it a bit more shiny

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:05):

@Sean Looks nice, image.png

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:09):

What do you think?

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:09):

I think that looks good, but you forgot to turn perspective back on

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:10):

also, doesn't look like you increased specular, did you?

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:11):

the azimuth also looks better in the original (the same rotation as the app store image)

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:12):

the ambient settings look great. could maybe increase that to -A1.7

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:31):

Sean said:

I think that looks good, but you forgot to turn perspective back on

I turned it on, but I got this output.

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:32):

you need to be specific with your camera and eye placement with perspective.

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:33):

it's easy to put an object too close to the camera if you're just spinning it around. it'll look distorted.

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:33):

try running "autoview" or Z and draw again, then use ae command to spin it (e.g, ae 35 25)

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:34):

don't use your mouse

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:35):

Sean said:

You could also edit the shader using the combination editor under Edit menu, Combination Editor, type name of object, click the "Shader" button, and then increase the specularity value a little bit.

So, I'll increase Speculartiy to 0.7 to 1.0

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:38):

sure

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:39):

if that's a bit much, .9 might be better

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:39):

you should see a difference (try without ambSamples to see quickly how it affects the appearance)

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:41):

My computer freezed.

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:41):

are you running multiple rt?

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:42):

run "rtabort" to stop them

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:45):

image.png

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:45):

that's an autoview? way too close to the camera

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:45):

Looks bit large.

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:46):

too big, i.e., too small a view, and too low

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:46):

image.png

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:47):

Sean said:

that's an autoview? way too close to the camera

Yeah,

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:47):

that's not bad, what's the ae on that one?

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:48):

I got that view from rot command

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:49):

okay, but what's the ae?

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:49):

type "ae"

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:50):

215 -25 180

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:52):

ae stands for azimuth-elevation -- it's how high up and how much rotated the view currently is. so I can see you've spun it all the way around 180 plus 35 degrees, so maybe try "ae 220 -20 180"

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:54):

image.png

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:56):

that's looks like nearly the right azimuth, but the wrong elevation dir -- try ae 225 -35 180

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:56):

play with the values until it's close to this:
Screen-Shot-2020-12-11-at-10.54.22-PM.png

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:57):

image.png

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:58):

getting closer!

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:58):

I think perspective a little bit too much.

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:58):

I think 60 or 5o will be good, What do you think?

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:59):

it depends how close it's going to be to the camera

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 03:59):

human vision is around 70 for your central field of view, it's around 90 if you include the fuzzy periphery

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 03:59):

oh

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:00):

it's around 120 if you include maximal extents, but won't look right on the kind of camera we simulate

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:01):

Okay

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:01):

certainly can try 50 if you want

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:01):

see how it looks to you

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:02):

a 90 degree perspective may be more what you're expecting

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:02):

ae 230 -40 180

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:03):

Perspective 50, image.png

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:04):

I'm convinced, that looks pretty good

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:04):

Perspective 90, image.png

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:04):

just needs a bit more azimuth and elevation still

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:05):

yep, 90 looks good too, you'd just have to resize the view or crop the image

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:06):

what ae are you at now?

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:06):

ae 230 -45 180

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:07):

Perspective 50 with updated ae image.png

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:09):

Thusal Ranawaka said:

Perspective 50 with updated ae image.png

This one looks familiar with the Cup.

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:09):

too close to the camera

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:09):

it's getting close, but notice how much the tops of the cup flair out vs the other cup

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:10):

image.png

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:10):

YES... so close

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:10):

what's your ae now?

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:11):

230 -40 180

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:11):

ae 235 -45 180

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:12):

image.png

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:13):

okay, too much elevation, but azimuth looks like it might be spot-on
ae 235 -40 180

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:16):

image.png

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:17):

YESSS...

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:17):

I think that'll do!
so next run "saveview mycup.rt"

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:17):

that'll save that view to a file in case you need to load it up again later

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:19):

Did it.

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:19):

SO, now I have to get the output know?

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:19):

.png format?

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:20):

well it's too dark

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:20):

Then?

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:20):

did you set ambient to -A1.5?

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:20):

or 1.7 or ?

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:21):

You told me to set it to -A1.7 earlier.

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:21):

what was the rt settings on that last image?

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:21):

rt -c "set ambSamples=1000 ambSlow=1" -A1.7 -C255/255/255 -s1024

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:22):

geez, you didn't need to do all those two view runs with ambSamples! :)

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:22):

you do that after you get the view oriented...

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:23):

try -A2.2

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:23):

can do ambSamples=32 until we find the right -A setting

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:25):

image.pngWith ambSamples=32 and -A2.2

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:25):

ugh

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:26):

ambient's not going to be enough, that's washing out

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:27):

can you post the .g here? I can check the shader settings

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:29):

VOL.g

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:29):

need your all_layers.bw file too

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:30):

This one? all_layers.bw

Sean (Dec 12 2020 at 04:46):

almost done, had to recompile -- apparently there was bug reading old vol's

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 12 2020 at 04:47):

Okay. Take your time;

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 13 2020 at 01:15):

Done?

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 13 2020 at 12:47):

@Sean So, what's next?

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 18 2020 at 13:15):

@Sean Are you done with the re-compiling of cup? I got some exams till 22nd then I'll be available from then.

Sean (Dec 18 2020 at 18:19):

@Thusal Ranawaka Heck no not "done" but I was trying to set up that specific view wasn't I. I think we need a custom light source to avoid the upper left edge of the cup from blending into the side wall of the cup. The angles make them blend together and that doesn't look good. I tried different specularity options, but that didn't help.

Thusal Ranawaka (Dec 31 2020 at 12:44):

Sean said:

Thusal Ranawaka Heck no not "done" but I was trying to set up that specific view wasn't I. I think we need a custom light source to avoid the upper left edge of the cup from blending into the side wall of the cup. The angles make them blend together and that doesn't look good. I tried different specularity options, but that didn't help.

So, what do we do?

Thusal Ranawaka (Jun 11 2021 at 01:22):

Hello @Sean :wave: ,

I had a look at the VOL Tutorial (almost forget it for 3 months) and then I tried to rebuild VOL from the data imported from the old laptop, but looks like the data .bw files were corrupted during the process. So, since I had the .png files of the layers, I tried rebuilding VOL Cup, the first was successful I converted all .png to .bw and combined them to all_layers.bw.

Then I tried the final step which is making VOL in MGED, but when I tried there were fewer changes in the parameters.

Thusal Ranawaka (Jun 11 2021 at 01:29):

You see, when I built VOL Cup successfully on my old laptop using MGED 7.26.0 (then I was using this version) and the parameters needed to VOL looks like this,
image.png

And after I moved to my new laptop I built MGED from source, I used 7.32.3 which looks like this,
image.png

Thusal Ranawaka (Jun 11 2021 at 01:31):

There are two new parameters called,

Take data from file or database binary object [f | 0]:
Enter name of file/object:

in the MGED 7.32.3.

Thusal Ranawaka (Jun 11 2021 at 01:32):

Can you explain what those 2 new parameters are? A bit confusing to me...

starseeker (Jun 11 2021 at 01:34):

Support was added for in-memory vol data - you need to tell the command if you're referencing a file on the filesystem or a binary object in the .g file

Thusal Ranawaka (Jun 11 2021 at 01:38):

Righto!

Thusal Ranawaka (Jun 11 2021 at 02:58):

image.png

Thusal Ranawaka (Jun 11 2021 at 03:36):

There's a some sort of an error.

Last updated: Jan 09 2025 at 00:46 UTC