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Hi all, started a diary last night which I plan to update a few times a week depending on my progress.

Comments and ideas very welcome.


Just got the script engine (F'Tang) to a usable state and added a free plain tool and a free cube tool, both working fine and UV mapped too using an easy function. So that screenie shows the very first primitive created with vanmesh . Gonna have to add a clause that stops inverted polygons being created - not sure how yet, maybe make a function that inverts specified polygons, add it to the script subroutine if I can - but I'll need it anyway for manually fixing interior polygons.

The scripts seem to run quite quickly considering the amount of optimization I haven't done yet, plus the heavy use of Left$, Right$, and Mid$ will be slowing things down, hopefully that'll get fixed soon or I may look into a text handling plugin. In real terms, when creating a plain, it's smooth as silk - a little jerky with the cube because it's updating a lot of verts, but at least the mouse control is spot on to make up for it. There are still a lot of issues with condition handling, but all the math is in place, just adding more functions as I need them for the scripts and scratching my head as to the best way to detect the difference between '>' and '>=', I need a better way of splitting the condition up.
One neat side effect of my lack of error trapping, is that I can vary the amount of variables passed to an internal function, just have to check them inside the function to see if they're used. A typical example might be a select all function, I can use the same function to simply select all the verts, or I can pass upto 32 variables and use it to single out and select verts according to set criteria. Coding script parsers is a pain, actually evaluating formulaes and swapping out variables is straightforward enough, the pain starts with condition checking. I'm thinking of a neat way to add For...Next loops, but I might have to brutalise that in favour of something easier to handle, don't want to have to manually set the control variable before a for...next - it'll just lead to bugs. The formula parse is quite lazy, it'll let me increment variables by simply putting '[VAR]+1', so I might leave for...next for next time .

The GUI is stable right now, adding proper dialogue functions should be a big step forward because I can then program the rest of the tools, don't see the point in coding a fileselector twice, so I'm holding out for my scripted dialogues to handle that. Currently the dialogue handling is hard coded, that needs scripting but the memory footprint is already in place to hold the setup data, and the functions I have already are pretty general - should get the rest of the dialog controls done relatively quickly. Scripting the dialogues will be a breeze, for example I have it set so I can pass a control command to a dialogue control that is returned when the control has been clicked on - most of the handling will be done using a common variable holding the returned data. Not quite VB's 'On Click' style of handling, but it'll do for a scripting engine. The dialogues will work a bit like the old Excel dialogue boxes, just a grid of data really, so I should probably make a dialogue design tool - if I have time I'd actually prefer to make a proper IDE for F'Tang, but I reckon I'll manage for a while without it. It's so much damn work making a script system that I don't plan on repeating it, F'Tang will be expanded on in the future for different projects, I plan to include a level engine with vanmesh and a game orientated incarnation of F'Tang will be part of that.

This week...
Gonna continue debugging that parser and start on a polyline subroutine, once I have polylines in I can extrude and start doing some real testing. I've been dragging my heels on finishing the GUI in case I had to change it a great deal, but everything seems fine for now so I'll do more work on that, that green blob at the right of the screenie has been mocking me for some time, I should really get it working soon. The other priority is more dialogue functions, and a fileselector script.

Note that the screenshot has been cropped and shows the script subroutine for creating plains, added later with PSP to give an idea of the script functionality.

Screenie will be added shortly...

Van-B

Sounds nice.

One Q, you said that the creation of primitives will be automated via your nice scripting engine ( that seems to have come a long way since you mentioned it last ). Does that mean that in the future, we will be able to add our own scripts for making, say, a torus?

Anxiously waiting the screeny...

Jess.

Me firewall is blocking the screenie, well it's blocking it at RGT and I can't upload it anywhere right now - I hope Rich adds pic uploading here soon...

The script engine will allow plugins, so anything a pre-made tool can do, your scripts will be able to do too. You'll even be able to make your own dialogues for the tool, I have a ton of dialogue controls planned and it'll all nestle together in 1 subroutine per tool, should be a neato plugin solution. My plan is to use a single script file for all the main stuff, then any scripts that are added to it's plugin folder will be loaded on startup and be available as tools.


Van-B

You can always e-mail me the pictures & I'll stick 'em on my site.

Ditto here. got some space spare for pics/small downloads.

Jas

Ohh cool, got it uploaded at last.

Damn firewall seems random for some reason.

Anyhoo, here it is - not a great screenie but it's purpose is simply to show the script and capture my first primitives for posperity.

Note that it has been truncated to avoid thread distruption because it was 1024 wide.



Van-B

Sounds really nice Van,
The script looks easy to use too ( unless that's just a really simple version shown onscreen there, lol ).

Will be nice to be able to use this in all its glory once you've finished it

Keep up the great work, and I'll keep a watchful eye over this

Jess.

Wow. That you managed to get such a nice looking app is incredible But with a full working scripting engine

You have my respect for that

Thanks,
The script shown is the actual plain tool, the polyline tool (which I added yesterday - yay) is about half the size of that . I don't think I could have coded the tools with so few lines in DBPro, F'Tang is certainly earning it's keep.

I did'nt get much done yesterday besides the polylines, I did add a toolbar 'adder' to the script, so now I can script tools and add them without having to code anything in DBPro. Also, now that polylines are done, I can look into extrusion and lathe tools - which should be relatively easy with the way the polylines have been setup (sorta like they link together but with no special coding, it's handled with the poly vertice allocation). Also got to test out my IF...Else...Endif handling, works perfectly .


Van-B

Sounds like you've really mastered it Van.

Great stuff. I'd like to have a look at F'Tang and have a go at writing some simple scripts when VanMESH is released, would be nice to see the limits, and have a look at how easy it seems to be.

Jess.

can't wait for this to be realeased

I'm glad that is still around

In my opinion,you should put a double priority on extrusion.The basic extrusion from four points(with of course no face left at the base) and,like wings' Region extrude,an n-face extrusion which is basically allowing to extrude two or more negihboring faces with no polygon left in between,very useful when modeling.

Is it allowing open geometry?

Extruding edges is also a popular request.

I agree, I do most of my modelling with extruded polylines then lots of vert editing - but Rhino is very lacking in other extrusion tools.

The way I imagine it working is you'd start with a closed polyline and VM will let you extrude it to however many sections you need and with a 'lid' if you want one. You'll be able to select vertices or polygons and extrude those in the same way - very quick and clean character modelling is what I'm after.

Also, it should be pretty neat at reducing polycounts too, because it can delete a vert and adjust it's connected verts automatically, including adjusting the UV map.

I have a lot of control over how polygons are displayed because it's all 2D, so edgeloops etc and highlighting gaps are gonna be looked into.

What do you mean by open geometry?


Van-B

-What do you mean by open geometry?


Non 'water-tight' geometry,from which you could extrude edges.

Wings cannot have holes(ie one face of a cube missing)but high-end softwares like Softimage support both at the same time.

It depends on the selection;

IF an open edge is selected(like on our cube above),the Extrusion works on Edges and extends them

IF it is on an edge that is completely surrounded by polygons,the extrusion 'cuts' around the selected edge,then allows,within the same operation,to move on it's Normals.


-I have a lot of control over how polygons are displayed because it's all 2D, so edgeloops etc and highlighting gaps are gonna be looked into.



Cool,I'd personally vote for a Lasso selection then,very useful.

You can have it let's say,on the Left mouse button it selects only visible points and with the R-click would include the ones you can't see.

Van can i ask you some questions about your scripting engine?

Yeah, I've actually been doing some work on the scripting side, mainly debugging though - scripts can be damn awkward.


Van-B