United3dArtists Archive

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 29 Mar 2010, 00:25

Well, to create new widgets for tS6.6 is not possible - that's wat i found out and what makes me sad

The good message is -> other TSX's waiting for realisation

The first TSX on this "path" is a request from Emmanuel in the truespaceplugins.com forum. And i still working on this. Today i want to show the first impressions of it and i'm sure (this time) that it is possible to finalize it

Create the Scene Tree is working
Select a object is working
Rename objects is working (in this Tree you can directly click with the right mouse key from one item to the next, not like the KFE where you have to select the item first with the left mouse button - which is lazy)
And i made a few (hopefully) good looking icons

The rest is still WIP. Stay tuned - i update this thread here ... DD

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 29 Mar 2010, 15:16

Just one word : Yepeee !

Because Roman was (is) a very visual person that prefers 3D spaces to 2D trees, that tool (I mean the KFE) has always been the big weakness of trueSpace.
So your plugin DD is probably the most ambitious project for tS ; as we can't beat a 2D tree to explore and organize a complex scene. This is THE base from which we can start building big scenes, pick up and organize objects hidden in a large scene, or lost in a hierarchy.

Thanks a LOT DD !

Also, I find your icons very cool, and much more pleasant than what we see on other big apps.
XSI for instance

:

froo · Post by **froo** » 29 Mar 2010, 16:37

Excellent job DesignDevil! Keep it up!

Froo

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 29 Mar 2010, 20:09

Thank design

it is a good

what about the layers? i would like to see a tree with a branch for each layer.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 29 Mar 2010, 22:33

To the Tree i will add columns to switch properties on and off which are normaly difficult to achive in tS like "Cast Shadow", "Receive Shadow", "Visiblity", "Double Sided" and also the "actual Layer" (not to see in the image). The plan is that you also could choose the Layer in this view. Another point is to insert a combobox where you can choose a sort methode like "alphabetical", "trueSpace order" and "layers".

If you have more ideas - feel free to tell - i will check if it is possible

Edit: I'm not sure if the "multiselect" feature is possible - i do my best

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 29 Mar 2010, 23:23

It seem to become a great tsx for a complex scene. I don't know if it is possible but if we can see the differents layers, it would be interesting to have the possibility to move an object from a layer to another layer (context menu>move to layer #). I do that often but i need to select a layer, then duplicate the object to place the copy on the selected layer, then erase the object on the old layer. It is not an easy way.
Another point is to avoid to limit the size of the scene explorer windows. It is annoying to have a blocked small windows on a big screen and sometime the name of an object need to be long.
The best way is to do a beta of the tsx, then we can test it and you can finalize after the comments of differents people. Keep the good work and thank for all.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 30 Mar 2010, 06:10

Yep, all this sounds like i had it in my head.

- resizable window
- choose or change layer simply by clicking (or per context menu)

The beta methode is also a good idea - we programer call this a release candidate

.
A release is never a final version. I also work on programs that i wrote years ago to correct bugs (if i got this information from users).

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 30 Mar 2010, 08:36

marcel wrote:It seem to become a great tsx for a complex scene. I don't know if it is possible but if we can see the differents layers, it would be interesting to have the possibility to move an object from a layer to another layer (context menu>move to layer #). I do that often but i need to select a layer, then duplicate the object to place the copy on the selected layer, then erase the object on the old layer. It is not an easy way.
Another point is to avoid to limit the size of the scene explorer windows. It is annoying to have a blocked small windows on a big screen and sometime the name of an object need to be long.
The best way is to do a beta of the tsx, then we can test it and you can finalize after the comments of differents people. Keep the good work and thank for all.

What Marcel, you don't use RSLayers ????
This is THE layers managment tool for trueSpace !

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 01 Apr 2010, 07:43

Thank emmanuel! i never try it and it is very good. I think it can help me for my complex scenes. Even old user can learm new thing for TS each day.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 01 Apr 2010, 09:58

Just curious ... i have collected 104 plugins on my side but never tried this one - great thing. It helps a lot until my one is finished

I should create a "5 stars" thingy on my website - sometime.

BTW. It need's a lot more time to develope the TSX as i thought because the TreeView control from windows is a little *bitch* - in any way...but hey, i don't give up so fast

Benji · Post by **Benji** » 01 Apr 2010, 22:43

RSlayers is one of the reasons I still enjoy 6.6, however it is limited to object management. This scene explorer you're developing looks excellent, I can't wait to try it.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 01 Apr 2010, 23:29

Well, i do my very best

now comes the easter holydays - so i have to pause for 4 days - we are on the road.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 03 Apr 2010, 07:02

Here is an interesting Scene Explorer plugin for 3DS MAX.

The containers system looks like trueSpace's glue as sibling feature.
DD, this makes me wonder if your future Scene Explorer plugin could offer a couple of buttons dedicated to 2 actions : "Glue Selected Objects" and "Unglue Objects". What do you think ?

By the way, Chad, that Unglue all objects in selected hierarchy is what we discussed by email. If you already created that tool it would be nice to see with DD if you could share the code for integration in the future Scene Explorer interface

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 06 Apr 2010, 16:25

phuhh....eastern is finished.

All this points are planned (in my head) - glue as child, glue as sibling and also unglue and unglue hierarchy - i think that should be no problem to create all these points.

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 06 Apr 2010, 22:21

Here is some idea:
-I hope the scene explorer show the name of the scene because when we work on model side and bridge off, the name of the scene don't appear at the corner of the model side windows.
-infos about animated object: "object have keyframes>yes/no" - "erase all keys" button.
-It would be interesting to show the material editor and the setting of the object selected in the scene explorer with one click on an icon in your TSX.
-undo button of action made with the scene explorer (but maybe it is complex to do).

Keep the good work!

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 07 Apr 2010, 07:22

marcel wrote: -I hope the scene explorer show the name of the scene because when we work on model side and bridge off, the name of the scene don't appear at the corner of the model side windows.

Marcel, it seems your plugin collection is not complete

:

scenename.zip: (9.79 KiB) Downloaded 33 times

Here is a plugin (created by Lars I belive) that will display the Modeler scene name in tS 7.6.

Another must-have.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 07 Apr 2010, 23:06

Small Update...

I had a bit trouble to find out which way i go to create a working TreeView / ListView combination. The WinAPI TreeView and the ListView Control cannot work together without a lot of hooking and such things makes the code unreadable and instable, so i use another way. Here we go...

The next point on my ToDo is finished. The tree shows the SceneName as Root node. It also works on tS 7.

Is anybody interested to create icons for this dialog? These icons are placed over the columns to define which column shows what (Header Icons). The other ones are for the left side (over the tree) to be buttons. I have problems to find the time and also meaningful icons for the following points:

Header:
- Cast Shadows
- Receive Shadows
- Double Sided
- Hidden or Invisible
- Layer
- Object has Keyframes

Buttons:
- Refresh Tree
- Expand All
- Collapse All

My favorite color is a sky like blueish color - like the other icons in the tree

and the icons should be 32x32 or 16x16 ( in this case i could make the columns a bit smaller ) with alpha channel. This would be great. The importend point is: the icon has to be meaningful. Why? Well, images can not have tooltips (or also just with a lot of hooks ... jep, the WinAPI is a great thing

) so the user must visual identify what the icon means.

Thanks and bye until the next update...DD

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 08 Apr 2010, 07:00

DesignDevil wrote: Is anybody interested to create icons for this dialog?

Okay, I'm on it

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 08 Apr 2010, 07:23

Emmanuel wrote:Marcel, it seems your plugin collection is not complete :
scenename.zip
Here is a plugin (created by Lars I belive) that will display the Modeler scene name in tS 7.6.Another must-have.

Thank! i like this TSX simple and useful. The only way to remember the scene i worked was to try "save scene as" to see the name in the dialog box!

@design devil: keep the good work. Maybe if i have time to help you for the icons, i will do that.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 08 Apr 2010, 18:28

Here is some icons in PNG with alpha for the buttons :

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 08 Apr 2010, 18:44

wow, great - and so fast - pretty cool

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 08 Apr 2010, 19:02

And here, the headers :

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 08 Apr 2010, 19:03

3 more

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 08 Apr 2010, 19:34

They also look great, but they are not transparent - or i am wrong???

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 08 Apr 2010, 19:36

DesignDevil wrote:They also look great, but they are not transparent - or i am wrong???

True.
Do you need transparency for these ones ?

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 08 Apr 2010, 19:43

Here is the transparent versions

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 08 Apr 2010, 19:44

The last 3

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 08 Apr 2010, 19:46

in one word - PERFECT

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 08 Apr 2010, 21:21

Time for the daily update

Today i added the capability to resize the window and (automaticly) resize the TreeView (The status panel is anchored so that his width is stable). That means just the TreeView resizes in both directions (width & height), the status panel is just resized in the height.

I also added the "properties" icons (big thanks Emmanuel).

Not so much for today to show, the most of them is just writing code and also try and error the result

froo · Post by **froo** » 08 Apr 2010, 21:25

lookin goog DD!

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 08 Apr 2010, 23:54

Well, i could not sleep so i worked on ...

The next step is working. The SE can now show the properties "Hidden", "Cast Shadows", "Receive Shadows", "Double Sided" and "Has Keyframes" for the objects in the scene.

and now ... i go to bed ... cu tomorrow

ranger0101 · Post by **ranger0101** » 09 Apr 2010, 02:47

Double D....

You are a real TrueSpace tresure...
Many thanks for all your hard work..
It the awsome work that You and the other Plugin Devlopers do.
That will keep TrueSpace Relevent and Fun For many years to come...

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 09 Apr 2010, 09:01

Thanks. To "work" for this comunity makes more fun as work because i create things they other people need - that's better as working for money.

On this point i have a question about the usability and organisation of the SE.

As you can see, on the image above, the SE shows just a icon if a "Object is Hidden" - otherwise the field is empty. The same for "Object has Keyframes" and "Object is Double Sided".

We see a lot of icons for "Object cast Shadow" and "Object receive shadow". Maybe all these icons are a bit confusing. I ask me if it would better to show "Object DON'T cast shadows" and "Object DON'T receive shadow". So that are just icons are visible if this features are switched of.

I think that this would be better as overview to identify these options. So that for a "normal scene" the biggest part of the SE is empty.

What do you think???

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 09 Apr 2010, 10:11

Just one think to say:

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 09 Apr 2010, 10:26

DesignDevil wrote:
We see a lot of icons for "Object cast Shadow" and "Object receive shadow". Maybe all these icons are a bit confusing. I ask me if it would better to show "Object DON'T cast shadows" and "Object DON'T receive shadow". So that are just icons are visible if this features are switched of.

I think that this would be better as overview to identify these options. So that for a "normal scene" the biggest part of the SE is empty.

What do you think???

Yes, you are right. I will modify the icons to mean Object DON'T cast shadows & Object DON'T receive shadows.

Also, perhaps a simple checkbox in the colums will make a more "light" interface.
Here is a checkbox icon in two flavors you may want to use : blue or black.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 09 Apr 2010, 10:30

Good idea - Emmanuel you are faster than light

EDIT: I added the black one and BTW, the SE can now show the Layer Color of the Objects.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 09 Apr 2010, 11:17

Here is the DON'T version of the shadow receive/cast icons.

I think I LOVE this plugin

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 09 Apr 2010, 13:03

Ok, i added the new icons and redefined the window resize method a bit (i had a few issues displaying the header icons)

Below is a example of the SE if it is resized. Now comes the harder part. Switching all this Parameters on and off

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 09 Apr 2010, 13:54

It looks very nice

Does the panel have a "magnetic" behavior (I mean the effect that makes the panel to stick to the screen borders as user moves it toward the screen limits) ?

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 09 Apr 2010, 14:50

No, it's just a simple window. You can drag it on every position but without magnetic behavior. Maybe i could include this later - i put it on my ToDo list.

Especialy for such a SceneExplorer it could be usefull to have it fast "on hand" if you need him. My idea was that a hotkey can make him visible or hide him. So that he is fast out of the way or fast on screen. But i have to check if this (or how) is possible.

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 09 Apr 2010, 19:30

another idea:
I think the icons at the top right of the windows are too small. a bigger icons is easier to understand because it can have more details. the same size as the ref. button would be good. The column will be larger but you can delete the layers column and do that:

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 09 Apr 2010, 19:50

Bigger icons - ok, could be a solution.

To colorize the complete row is bad, because the user can choose any color for a layer and black text on a darkblue line (as example) color is not very readable. Also it goes very "rainboish" if you have a lot of layers

@EMMANUEL - could you (please, please) create the Icons in 32x32 so we could try out this.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 09 Apr 2010, 20:16

BTW - here is a update of what i have done so far. Setting the parameter for "Show/Hide", "Cast Shadows", "Receive Shadow" and "Double Side" is now working. I also added a "Expand / Collapse Branch" Feature to the Context menu. This allows you to expand or collapse just one branch with 2 mouse clicks. Also Expand and Collapse All is working now. You can also see the Renaming process thrue the Context menu (just clicking the name is also working but not showed here) and last but not least the resizing is quickly showed.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 09 Apr 2010, 20:49

marcel wrote:another idea:
I think the icons at the top right of the windows are too small. a bigger icons is easier to understand because it can have more details.

Bigger icons don't make better sense. Also, please note that 6 icons at 32 pixels width generate a waste of 100 pixels width in your working area... to multiply to the height of the panel !
We can balance that the eye comfort gain with bigger icons is not worth the loss of so much screen/scene space. It will tend to mask your work and may force to open/close the Scene Editor rather than keep it on screen, docked on a side of your work space.
Also, keep in mind that the goal of these icons is to room a checkbox in the colums ; these are not buttons you clic every time and legitimate need to be bigger for easier clic.

So, my suggestion is to keep the current layout.

Regarding the buttons, the 32x32 pixels size will be meaningful and large enough for a confortable clic

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 09 Apr 2010, 21:13

If the icons are not clickable, maybe add a line with info about the column at the bottom of the SE windows. when the mouse pass over we could see what is the function of each column (and maybe it can be used for other infos, for example when i pass over the name of the scene i could see the size, number of faces, etc...). A kind of thing useful like the infos at the bottom of the modelside windows (names of icons, time to render...)

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 09 Apr 2010, 21:30

This is called StatusBar in Windows - good idea - i give it a try.

BTW - "Delete Keyframes" and "Delete Keyframes in Hierarchie" is working now. Both function have a "Are you sure Yes/No" Message Requester to prevent wrong clicks

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 09 Apr 2010, 21:56

I hope the StatusBar will be ok. You can add a lot of infos with just a line more.
What is the difference between "Delete Keyframes" and "Delete Keyframes in Hierarchie" ?
Maybe i know but i don't remember all the english words and never read the manual since the version 2

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 09 Apr 2010, 21:59

Delete Keyframes deletes the keyframes from the object where you clicked the option.

Delete Keyframes in Hierarchie will delete the same as above but also from all child objects beyond the choosen one.

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 09 Apr 2010, 22:24

Thank.
Maybe that can help you for the design!

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 09 Apr 2010, 22:55

Ufffzzzzz, outsch ... i would be finished one day

PS: StatusBar is included and working.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 14 Apr 2010, 21:51

So i pushed up this thread...

...on my ToDo List are 41 points. 28 of them are solved and i think one point is not able to create (the Undo operation - sorry).

Anyway, i have to do a beta test just now in this state of programing. For the "why" -> here a description of a problem:

If the user changes one of the parameter (i.e. Object is Hidden) the SE has to show this instantly. To achive that i need a information - a event - about the changing but tS has no Event to tell my plugin "hey, plugin, the user has changed a state".

So i had to trick to achive what i want. What i use is called a "global mouse hook procedure". So, normaly it works very well but maybe it can give problems with other programs / tools etc.

So please download the EARLY BETA version DOWNLOAD LINK HERE (74KB) and try it out under the following aspects:

What you NOT YET can do:
- Anything with layers from inside the plugin
- Drag'n Drop operations
- Glue / Unglue operations
- Sorting the tree
- Multiselections

In first line please try if you can work with the SE without trouble in any way and other programs.

It is enough to start the SE one time. After that you can close the window if you want, the hook is installed at the first start.

Report problems here - THANKS

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 15 Apr 2010, 08:33

Cool ! A first beta to test

Scene Editor displays a scene made of +500 objects like a charm. No problem to report when used together with RSLayers, CopyExPlus, KillAni nor any other plugins : any action made in the plugins are immediatly shown in Scene Editor.
No bug found in 30 minutes of testing. That's a good sign

Regarding the interface, some remarks :

One is about how the "status stack" is rendered. When I scroll the scene tree, the status stack doesn't scroll. Having a status stack that scrolls in real time according to the scene tree display would allow to find quickly the hidden objects for example. Today, we must scroll, clic an object to refresh the stack, scroll again, etc...

An option to hide the status stack and display the scene tree only would be nice. I could prepare an icon for that

Also, I would love the Scene Editor panel to save its location/size on screen on exit, so it could open at the same place on every tS session.
The idea is to take benefit of the windows system of tS7.x : the Scene Editor could take place "over" trueSpace's stack that is almost useless when working in Modeler. See below.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 15 Apr 2010, 09:03

Thanks for testing. I himself have found a few issues that i try to fix before i give a new beta.

Store and restore the window position is not a problem, i can include that. Also to switch on and of the "status stack" is possible. I added this 2 points to my todo list

Scrolling: This sounds to be a issue because it should scroll with the tree !!! On my system the "status stack" is alway in line with the nodes on the left side in the tree. It scrolls with him, resize with him etc.

Please report which tS version you use and also the system.

I testet with tS6.6 and tS7.6 (Modeler) on Windows XP 32bit.

BTW - an icon would be cool.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 15 Apr 2010, 09:29

DesignDevil wrote: Scrolling: This sounds to be a issue because it should scroll with the tree !!!

Oh, yes : you are right. It scrolls when I clic & drag the slider. But if I use the mouse wheel, only the scene tree scrolls.
Since I use the Logitech G500 mouse and its free-spinning wheel I tend to forget scrolling is a slider thing

Bitmap for show/hide status stack is attached below.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 15 Apr 2010, 09:31

Aaaahhhh ... now i know what you mean ... this is a good example of finding bugs. Yes i have to implement this as extra functions (i forgot) - should be no problem.

PLEASE DOWNLOAD AGAIN, SHOULD NOW WORK.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 15 Apr 2010, 12:10

Another Update. I added a bit of code to prevent the fickering while resize and scroll. It is not complete flickerless but a bit better then before.

The Download link is the same as above.

BTW. I had some tS crashes while loading a scene. I'm on the way to find out why tS made problems in conjuction with the plugin but be aware of this. If a scene is loaded i have no problems until now. To solve this problem don't start the SceneExplorer before you loaded the scene.

A other small issue is (known bug):
If i load a scene with a complex motion studio skeleton, i had to refresh the SceneTree by hand because the "rearrangement" of nodes thrue MotionStudio is not finished if my plugin get's the event that the scene load is finished and it builds the tree. But that's an issue between MotionStudio and tS himself. I also get this issue sometimes with MotionStudio's SceneTree himself. Maybe this is one reason that in every SceneTree Window a REFRESH button is present

The background of this is: MotionStudio stores his own informations in the Scene File. But all informations (or objects) are located at the root. After loading a scene MotionStudio rearrange these objects into the correct position in the tree. It seems that tS fires the "scene load finish" event before other plugins are finished with his own load routine. So that this issue comes to show.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 15 Apr 2010, 13:05

Ok, i could solve also the crash problem. Why tS crashes when i load different scenes? I have no idea

I implemented a workaround for that. Everytime a new scene is loaded (or a new scene is created), the scene explorer window will now be hidden and showed after loading or creating the scene. That seems to work - i had no crashes since that. The function is clever enough to detect if the Scene Explorer was open before loading or not. So if the window was hidden it stays hidden, if not it appears again. I gan live with that

Download the new version thrue the Link above and report any problems here. I still work on my next ToDo points.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 15 Apr 2010, 16:44

No crash for me yet and no problem loading any scene with the plugin turned on with your latest version.

The scroll now 100% works with mouse wheel. Great!
Flickering is also less present.

I encountered a visual bug. In a scene made of more than 3200 objects, I found SE showing the scene name and first object name overlaped. And if I scroll down, after 1/4 of the scene tree, names starts to overlap each others until it become unreadable. See below. I guess there was something wrong in that scene though because I couldn't delete some layers (using tS's layers tool) : tS crashed instead

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 15 Apr 2010, 16:48

Update : the visual bug is present in several of my "big" scenes. Even if there is no errors or bad objects.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 15 Apr 2010, 16:58

wow, you can have big scenes

i think i know from where this problem comes - let me check this and wait until the next update.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 15 Apr 2010, 17:22

DesignDevil wrote:wow, you can have big scenes

Yep. This sort of scene can be quite big sometimes

By the way, Workspace is totally unable to handle such a scene.

Only Modeler

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 15 Apr 2010, 19:52

The problem should be solved. Please download and try again.

Prodigy · Post by **Prodigy** » 16 Apr 2010, 00:29

Emmanuel wrote:By the way, Workspace is totally unable to handle such a scene.
Only Modeler

NANANA!!

workspace can handle much better huge scenes than model side IF you know how to handle it

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 16 Apr 2010, 06:51

DesignDevil wrote:The problem should be solved. Please download and try again.

Confirmed. Bug fixed.

When I add a check in the status stack, I noticed that sometimes the tree moves up to the scene root/name, then moves down until the object get located at the bottom OR at the top of the panel. That movment is a bit disturbing as it looks like the object is "jumping" in the tree.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 16 Apr 2010, 06:59

Prodigy wrote:
NANANA!! workspace can handle much better huge scenes than model side IF you know how to handle it

Then perhaps you will record a video teaching us how to have fun managing a 3500 objects scene in the LE

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 16 Apr 2010, 07:09

Prodigy is a (good) pro Workspace but most of people don't want to be a programmer to use the best quality of a soft. workspace need too many rsobjects, script, etc... to install before doing an useful soft. and THAT is the problem for newbie.
About the scene explorer, my first comment is: when i select an object on the scene, the color for the selected object don't appear on the tree until i click anywhere on the windows of the SE.
Test it later and keep the good work.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 16 Apr 2010, 09:32

@Emmanuel - i know this problem. It's a TreeView unique problem. I have not yet found a solution for that but it is on my list.

@marcel - i'm not sure if i understand what you mean. Could you explain it again - THANKS

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 16 Apr 2010, 10:09

I think Marcel's remark is about the highlight color of the selected object. It has a gray background color until you pick it up in SE -and then it becames blue, so more visible.
Maybe a solution is to make it blue by default ?

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 16 Apr 2010, 10:22

Emmanuel wrote:I think Marcel's remark is about the highlight color of the selected object. It has a gray background color until you pick it up in SE -and then it becames blue, so more visible.
Maybe a solution is to make it blue by default ?

Yes Emmanuel. Your english is better than mine. Also, another other idea is to show the selected object at the middle of the windows, not at the bottom as we can see it now.

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 16 Apr 2010, 11:08

I understand what you mean - i put it on my list and i will see what i can do.

To control the position of the highlighted node is difficult because it is controlled by windows. That's also the reason for the "jumping" list as Emmanuel said. I'm on the way to find a solution

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 16 Apr 2010, 12:19

Tested with about 2000 objects on XP and Vista 32 bits without problems.
Another idea: the info panel of TS show the number of vertices and faces but not the number of objects. Why not use the status bar of your SE to show the number of objects when we click on the name of the scene at the top of the tree?
My first use of this plugin will be to rename the object of some scenes who become complex. I forgot always to do this when i begin a scene. Just try this on a copy before to be sure all is ok.

Last idea (but maybe difficult to do?): the possibility to select several object in the SE then rename all at the same time ( nom,001 nom,002 nom,003 etc...).
The interest of a plugin is to do what the soft can do.

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 16 Apr 2010, 12:33

Problem found: if i change the name of the scene (by edit the tree) the real name of the scene don't change. Even if i close and open the plugin again, the SE show the new ( and not real) name. I need to open a new scene to avoid that.
If it is not possible to change really the name of the scene with the tree, maybe it would be better to have not the possibility to rename the scene.

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 16 Apr 2010, 13:15

Huge problem found: after installed the plugin SE, TS crash when i try to open a scene even if i don't open the plugin. If i delete the .tsx from the folder of TS, all is ok but if i put the .tsx on the folder, TS crash any time i try to load a scene. Only "create a new scene" don't crash.
It is curious because the first time i tried the SE, all was ok. Now i can't use the SE (No change on my computer since the first try and now).

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 16 Apr 2010, 14:05

Ok, first to the name of the scene: There is just one way to change them: "SAVE AS". The Scene Name is just a file name. The sdk has no function to set the name or to get the name. I get the name thrue a hook in the system. That you can rename it in the tree is, because the tree can EDIT ALL nodes. On the next refresh the old name appears again because -> you can not really rename it. i hope that was good enough explained.

To the crash - that's pretty curious.
Sometimes i HAD scenes while it crashes but just if it is running. There is also a problem with array fields. These object will also crash if my plugin is running and the window is showed. Why? I have no idea - not yet - i will check this.

Thanks for reporting.

I added your ideas onto my ToDo list but i'm not sure if all is possible.

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 16 Apr 2010, 14:09

About my crash it is only with XP (32 bits), not Vista (32 bits).
the same scene crash on XP and not on vista.
ALL the scene on XP have the same problem with SE like if the SE is FULL uncompatible with XP (for me).
The crash is serious (need "ctrl alt del" to close).

Last idea: rifgt click on the icon to show the author of the plugin

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 23 Apr 2010, 13:32

NEWS from the PlugIn Front

For all here - i'm still working on the TSX be patient.

I found that the Mouse Hook is not really a good idea. Well if you have just a few Objects in your scene all works very well. The problems encounter if the amount of objects in the scene goes on more than 500 Objects. In this case the SE needs to long to refresh the Tree (with 1000 Objects nearly 3 sec.)

So i completly rewrote my code for getting events and restructured the system for decting events and parameter. Anyway, it is allways slow, especially in scenes with 1000 and more objects. It is not really handy to use the SE in such a scene (not yet).

The most common problem is to detect if a GLUE or UNGLUE operation was done. In such a case i have to check the complete scene against my tree. I have to check if all objects still there (or not), if the object parents are correct (in glue or unglue cases they are wrong) and so on.

Because of tS is not able to give me events on delete or create or load a object, i also have to check the complete scene against the tree (like above) in this situations.

The KFE has the same problems with such a scene so it is unbelievable for me how you (Emmanuel) can handle such scenes?

In conclusion it is very, very, very, very difficult to find a clever system for the synchronisation between scene and tree so that it is possible to "work" and not to wait until the hour glass dissapears

but i do my very best

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 23 Apr 2010, 14:40

I realize how much this project is a big challenge. Thanks for keeping us informed of the progress

If a realtime behavior is too slow with glue/unglue actions, then perhaps the scene check could rest on the Refresh button ?

KFE is very slow with big scenes also... (even more when it is docked in Rosetta interface) and this is why I don't use it. It has always been a pain to work with many objects in trueSpace, and Workspace is not the exception to the rule.
PiSceneTool helped a lot ; and RSlayers have been a breath of fresh air, as it provides both a complete layer system and a set of tools to sort and manage objects.
So your work DD will be undoubtedly one of the most improvement in tS usability and efficiency !

DesignDevil · Post by **DesignDevil** » 25 Apr 2010, 10:14

IMPORTEND QUESTION:

This post is about "which objects are showed in the Scene Explorer Plugin". So read carefully and do your test's.

I explain:
In a trueSpace scene are various objects (i.e. Polyhedrons, Subdivision Objects, Metaballs, Array Objects etc.). Not all objects which are detectable are shown in the KFE (KeyFrameEditor). For example a Nurbs Object. In the KFE you just see one Node for this object. In the scene are truely this node, a child node (group object) and under this so many childs as curves this object has. See image:

In the most cases that was showed in the KFE is enough. Normaly you never edit a single curve from a nurbs object thrue the KFE - you would (and you should) use the Edit Mode to make changes here.

Another example is a Subdivision Object. Here shows the KFE more as really is there in the scene. A Subdiv object is showed as SubDiv plus a Mesh Child. Truely in the scene is just the SubDiv object. The child is build from the KFE himself. That is the reason that tS reacts weird if you select this Mesh object.

To show all this objects is not a problem at all, it is just a point of usability and the background for this question are especially the ARRAY OBJECTS

If you create a Grid Array for example and give him 10x10x10 childs (1000 !). The KFE needs on my PC nearly 3 seconds to refresh the tree structure. My SceneExplorer needs nearly 1 second. Well this is faster but could be even faster.

On the other hand it is diffcult for me (at this point) to detect if the number of childs for a array object has changed. If you create more childs i can detect this but not if you decrease the amount of childs. I get no event from tS for this action and as conclusion the tree is not correct. A click on one of this "wrong" objects can crash tS.

From my experience i normaly never need to touch directly the child objects from such a array.

This keeps as back to the question -> which objects (or members) of a scene should be showed?

So, create in tS a few different objects and look into the KFE which objects you can select AND which you want to select. For comparisation you can use the MotionStudio Plugin. His SceneTree shows also ALL objects which are detectable.

I hope i have understandable explained what i want, so please help me with this and find the right decisions.

Thanks, DD

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 25 Apr 2010, 17:42

Change the #items of a grid array crash (each time) TS if the windows SE is open.
There is no interest to see what there is inside the grid array (it is the same thing x # items). The best way would be (if possible) to show the object and some infos without the possibility to developp the branch and maybe avoid this crash.
ex: Cube,001 (array: 1000 items)

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 25 Apr 2010, 20:23

DesignDevil wrote: From my experience i normaly never need to touch directly the child objects from such a array.

Same experience here.

Sometimes I even use Clinton's PolyCombiner tsX to convert a selection (glued objects) into a single "mesh" in order to optimize scene exploration/management. PolyCombiner can be used together with the Decompose_into_objects tool to manipulate an array (or any set of objects) as a single object, and vice-versa.
By the way, Clinton, we miss you as a tsX developper

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