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Re: Sweet Home 3D 3.0
Hi Emmanuel,
what about the feature requests I opened in Sourceforge? As I added complete patch files for most of them I hoped they would make it into the next release. Is there anything else needed?
I can integrate all of them again into my local 3.0 version without much effort, so no need to hurry - just wanted to know, in case anybody else is interested in these features...
- Waited for the first mouse move to initiate the duplication of the items selected in plan when the Ctrl key is pressed.
- Added shift + arrow keys management for faster move of selected items in the plan. For consistency sake, I reversed the management of the shift key for the moves in the 3D view too (slow moves without shift key pressed vs fast moves with shift key pressed). I hope you won't mind this change of behavior, but so many new users complained about the too fast moves in the 3D view without knowing the shift key tip, that I think it's better this way. I hope you like the 2 speeds of moves I chose ; of course this depends on mouse settings in your system preferences.
- Managed some kind of auto saving, but as overwriting an existing file without user's permission sounds really too dangerous, I finally reproduced how auto saved files are managed in MS Word (and in probably many other software). So, modified projects are saved regularly in the new recovery subfolder added to Sweet Home 3D private folder. For those who still ignore where this private folder is: * under Windows Vista / 7, it's the folder C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\eTeks\Sweet Home 3D, * under Windows XP and previous versions of Windows, it's the folder C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\eTeks\Sweet Home 3D, * under Mac OS X, it's the subfolder Library/Application Support/eTeks/Sweet Home 3D of your user folder, * under Linux, it's the subfolder .eteks/sweethome3d of your user folder. The delay between two auto save operations can be set with a new option in the preferences dialog. In a future version, I might add a feature to automatically recover auto saved files at next program start, but at this time I would rather you test extensively this feature as I programmed it.
That's all for today. I hope you like it!
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
Joined: Oct 2, 2007
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 3.0
It looks good to me. I tried out the Shif + arrow keys and it worked as you said it would. :D
I found the recovery folder as you said. I'm sure it does as you said it would. :D
As for the "transparent textures in SunFlow" I'm not so sure about. The newest doors and window don't seem to be transparent and there's no transparency on the glass doors for the upper cabinets. See the screenshots below:
Date set to June 1 @ 3:00 Pm North at 0°, ceiling light moved behind the person.
Date set to June 1 @ 3:00 Pm, North moved to 320°, ceiling light moved near the door.
Netherlands
Joined: Sep 26, 2009
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 3.0
Hello all,
The new PNG transparency works! Even >> I << can do it!
What you see below is a yellow wall. In front of the wall is an invisible (!) box covered with a texture/picture. The picture is mainly black, but the white parts in the picture have been made transparent. So, the yellow parts in the black are parts of the wall that are visible when looking through the box.
All six sides being covered with the same texture, this isn't very useful. But this could be very useful when you want to make custom parts with custom textures. Example: an invisible box that has a partially transparent texture applied to one of its (vertical) sides. I may have to play a bit more with this.
If only I had the patience to learn how to use the Gimp... :-)
UK
Joined: May 3, 2010
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 3.0
Hi Emmanuel,
I see you've been busy!
As a note, I have added the comments in (brackets) to help other users know what we are talking about.
***
Good to see you found a way to allow compass rotations negatively from 0 (zero) and positively past 359 back to 0.
Also that you fixed this bug, did you recompile SunFlow to allow for a full Sunsky (the way the sky is produced when no texture is used) sphere, instead of the default 180 degree arc? I had thought of a different way to fix it for AdvancedRendering-1.6.2.
***
I do find the bucket spiral (render method) makes me feel a bit dizzy! What are other users views?
I also looked at the different bucket order methods but there's no real speed advantage between them.
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Different thoughts and ideas:
Firstly, please can you increase the "Plan" zoom factor x10 to help with positioning items less than 1cm in size. At the moment, while trying to move/drag very small items, other furniture handle options get selected first (Re-size, Height, Rotation and vertical scale)
One feature I asked about before. Please can you lock, the currently selected furniture item in the center of the plan view while zooming?
The way the Plan focuses on the center of the scene while zooming, instead of the selected item, makes it difficult to find the furniture item again, without re-selecting it from the furniture list.
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Furniture lights (Light bulbs)
I now notice the light bulbs maximum brightness is much lower, are you still using the same formula you used before? If so please can you increase the power factor to compensate for the maximum returned figure of 100 compared to the previous value of 359, and bring the default bulb brightness down to say 30%?
Lights and cross-hairs: Interesting to see you implemented the idea you mentioned before, about the cross-hairs only showing while selecting/edting a bulb. It would be helpful to have a preference option, to not hide the cross-hairs too!
I find it helpful to be able to see other lights cross-hairs in the 3D preview while positioning new lights, so I can gauge how large and small lights will work and fit together. At the moment, if I select more than 1 light to show both or all cross-hairs then all items will also be edited.
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Sunsky: (the routine used to show a sky when a texture is not used)
Do you think it's time to retire the sky colour option since it only affects an OpenGL 3D preview and original OpenGL 3D render?
It has no effect on the Sunsky algorithm, either that or move the sky colour option to the texture side, offering either
"Default sky" or "Colour/Texture"
Then when a user selects a colour, internally SH3D will generate a graduated sky colour texture, with the users colour at the apex, or just below, of the sky dome.
On a slightly different topic. Now I've seen it in action, I'm not sure having the the Sun constantly enabled is a good idea?
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Texture transparency and Caustics: (light shining through glass) Are you using a modified Janino shader to provide texture transparency and fake caustics?
After doing some render compares, apart from the stronger glass colour, maybe a bit too strong? I notice there isn't much light fall off and overlapping shadows appear black, plus there's no shadow colour blending, which is why I thought you may be now using fake caustics.
Caustics version compare: Notice the overlapping shadow problem. 3.0
France
Joined: Nov 7, 2005
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 3.0
Thank you all for your feedback
@pencilart The newest doors and window you submitted use some transparency with a very dark color, which make them finally look almost dark in SunFlow.
@Hans I'm glad you succeed to try transparent textures, but you know you don't have to go very far to find some existing models that use transparent textures too. Many plants are designed that way...
@db4tech First the source code of the Beta version is generally available in CVS, and for example you can read the current version of the PhotoRenderer class here.
Good to see you found a way to allow compass rotations negatively from 0 (zero) and positively past 359 back to 0.
Finally, it wasn't so difficult to program... For the blue sky that appeared during the night, I simply turned off Sun light when the sun is bellow the horizon.
I do find the bucket spiral (render method) makes me feel a bit dizzy!
I forgot to announce that change. I chose that order because I felt it's nicer to use a predictable rendering method that first shows the middle of the picture.
can you increase the "Plan" zoom factor x10
I'm going to try. Going to extreme scale factors might be confusing...
can you lock, the currently selected furniture item in the center of the plan view while zooming?
As the selection may contain items that are eventually out of sight, I'm not sure it's a good idea. What I want to try first is to zoom on mouse pointer location, when the user zooms with the mouse wheel + Ctrl/cmd key.
can you increase the power factor
The current factor is smaller than in the plug-in but I tried it at 100% with a light located in very large rooms and felt the value I finally chose was largely enough. Setting light power to 50% sounded also more reasonable than a much smaller value. Remind that Sweet Home 3D isn't designed to draw stadiums...
It would be helpful to have a preference option, to not hide the cross-hairs too!
I want that users understand that this sphere is bound to selection only and won't be taken into account at print or with image creation at the 2 lowest quality level.
Do you think it's time to retire the sky colour option since it only affects an OpenGL 3D preview and original OpenGL 3D render?
No, many users limit their use of Sweet Home 3D to its default values.
It has no effect on the Sunsky algorithm
I'll explain in the help that the chosen color is always replaced by a sunsky in the two highest quality level for photo realism sake.
Are you using a modified Janino shader to provide texture transparency and fake caustics?
No, the developer of SunFlow finally helped me to add support for transparency and transparent textures. By the way, again many thanks to him!
After doing some render compares, apart from the stronger glass colour, maybe a bit too strong?
It's the contrary: their color was too clear before. If you compare to the OpenGL view the glasses you show, you'll see they are supposed to be really green. Caustics and current transparency management works a different way. Caustics might look more realistic but are much heavier to compute and didn't work with faraway lights. Your 2 examples are nice, but remind Sweet home 3D is for interior design purpose first. Therefore I prefer that users can see a light reflect in windows with the new transparency algorithm than they can generate the nice glass images you show.
Lastly don't forget about me!
Thank you for reminding me. It will be available from next beta version.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
Netherlands
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 3.0
Emmanuel,
Still not very happy with the compass disappearing under my model, I have a simple suggestion: - The top-left corner of the 2D window lies at coordinates -100, -100; - The compass is situated at -50,-50; diameter is 100; - Insertion of models, insofar done automatically, is at 0.0.
I think this is the easiest way to make sure the compass pops up in a location that is almost always visible, and you don't have to program much.
Hans
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Hans
