Richard, about Shift constraints

You know, I never saw this mentioned until now. <!– s:oops: –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_redface.gif" alt=":oops:" title="Embarrassed" /><!– s:oops: –>

But I’ll agree, when I limit the grid to 50×50 there is a serious speed and stability improvement.

I thought it was my *andamp;%(andamp;% 98 machine that was the reason.

Thanks.

I’m merrily beavering away in 3DC on a model that’s supposed to represent a 10,000 meter long stream of fiery-hot glowing tracers for one of the antiaircraft weapons in my Fei Qiu flight simulator.

Imagine my surprise and consternation when I go to the Shift tool in order to reset the pivot point to be at the very beginning of the stream, and it only lets me shift 100 units at a time.

With 5,000 units to go, the thought of clicking Shift 50 times fills me with pure, unadulterated dread. Pretty please, can you lift all of the arbitrary constraints in the various operations that require numeric input?

Sure, I could have worked on a scaled-down copy, but this ruins the andquot;Tile To Fitandquot; effect I need, which is once vertically and exactly 10,000 times horizontally. When using that with a scaled down copy, it does not tile at all the way I want it to.

It’s very common for me to work with models that are thousands of meters square, and working on scaled down versions is not an option where texturing is concerned.

Also, on the subject of textures…the current Tile By Unit/Tile To Fit numeric parameters are too restrictive for massive terrains. In a future version, could there possibly be an expanded dialog that allows me to specify tiling more precisely? The Operation Adjust tool isn’t andquot;preciseandquot; enough in the sense that I hate having to eyeball things. And what if I have to go back to something I adjusted a good while ago? It gets messy.

I like seeing hard numbers in the status bar or in a dialog. The Op Adjust tool’s fine if you only want two or three repetitions in each plane, but if you want exactly 1024, counting the reps becomes a quick way to develop a migraine.

What I’d want is to be able to specify something like andquot;Tile this texture once across every 1024 unitsandquot; or andquot;Tile this texture once vertically, and 50 times horizontallyandquot;. A dialog with andquot;Vertical Tilesandquot; and andquot;Horizontal Tilesandquot; parameters would handily solve most of my problems.

Failing that, if you could have the Operation Adjust tool send the actual UV numbers to the bottom status bar, I’d be happy with that too.

In a nutshell, my two biggest andquot;gimme gimme gimmeandquot; features are:

1. No more arbitrary limits in numeric input

2. Hard numbers and a way to choose texture tiling a little more precisely. For simplicity’s sake, this could replace the Flat Mapping options dialog, which is only suitable for small models.

Sound practical to you, Richard?

-Mel Ebbles

That’s not in any way andquot;impracticalandquot;. But…

3DC works best when you are working on individual objects between 1 and 50 units in size. I know that you don’t want to here this, but I think that models should be worked on andquot;scaledandquot; to fit in this range. I don’t see any reason why tile to fit/tile by unit shouldn’t work. You just have to change the tiles/unit factor to account for the different scale.

Having said that, the Shift operation will have its limit raised to 1000 for the next version. But I am in no hurry to put out a new version so it may be a while.

And, I’ll add your other requests to andquot;the listandquot;.

Richard

Thanks, Richard. That works for me.

As for not being in a hurry, that’s perfectly okay with me too. Basically, every feature I ask for is something I think will make my life easier in future projects, not necessarily the one I may be working on *right now*.

Thanks again for considering my suggestions. When Super 3DC Max Pro Deluxe: Now With 11 Essential Vitamins and Nutrients! (using this name is strictly optional, of course) comes out, I have a pretty strong feeling that the developers of much more expensive packages are going to feel rather badly surprised <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

-Mel Ebbles

I should clarify. 3DC should work fine above 50×50. The issue is that the point manipulation and speed of scaling, movement etc. are tuned for working on objects in the 1 – 50 range.

Richard