My lasersoft

[Sergey]

Hi to all!
I have done some successful experiments with making laser soft and as a result now I have several smal programms.
I will put them here.
The first is Spiro generator. It saves output to ILD files.
In order to work with this application you should have VB6 runtime libraries or instal PIC converter from FTP.

[stanwax]

Man that is cool - I will have some fun with that
Thanks for sharing

Rob

[decix]

Very nice

[-bart-]

I like these kind of tiny tools !

[Onge]

Thank you Sergey

[Sergey]

Oh, I forgot one detail. If you place mousepointer on point and X coordinates would be equal then pointer will be as cross and you can move your points on graphic.

[Sergey]

Have fun with a new one!
Draw tool now can draw or erase still pictures.
CL Lascan Lasersoftware from Christian Lorner was example for me and I used some codes for openning ILDA files. I want to thank Christian for his great work and for sharing source codes.

[Sergey]

These two progs can rotate still pictures and animations. The first program will work good with 2D, 2nd - with 3D images. I have used 8bit integer calculations so this algorithm is not very precision but stil useful for hobby systems. In preview you will see single-color(green) images but actualy output will be ful-color.

[Sergey]

I use this simple ILDA viewer for searching files. It does not show colors.
Note that this program do not support True Color files and files with color lookup tabels. It will work incorrect or return error.

[stanwax]

Great Stuff Sergy
Thanks fpr sharing and thanks for your efforts
Keep em coming!

Rob

[decix]

Very nice! Thx for Sharing. You should combine all your progs under one GUI.

[Sergey]

Very nice! Thx for Sharing. You should combine all your progs under one GUI.

Yes, its good idea.
But there are too few effects for combining them in one MDI hierarchcal structure.

[Sergey]

You can find some laser graphics in LDB format. However you will not find any description of its structure. Pangolin keeps it in secret.
I have done researches of that format and now I can read LDB files. This archive contains programming stuff. It has Visual Basic 6 project with codes for opening LDB files. Of course I dont know how to read all data fields and not all files can be read. If you can, please share code example for us.

[Sergey]

This tool is for making ILDA raster scanning files. See details in description.txt file. Any comments are welcome.

[James Lehman]

The is pretty neat!
I see you are converting to palette.
The way I do it in LaserBoy is in 24bit color.
Plus, you might want to make several frames with the scan lines moving around. You can get much more information from the bitmap that way.
It's kind of like looking through a picket fence. If you are driving past it fast enough you can see right through it!

James.

[Sergey]

Hi James!
Yes, its good idea to use vector mask.
My soft support table colors because I have not good editor with True Colors. Excepting Laserboy ofcourse
Unfortunately I cant test it in real live because have only single color system.

[mixedgas]

I love this stuff, especially the raster converter.

can you make a version of spirograph where you can specify the frequency ratios and amplitudes?

ie 3:2 makes a star with 5 points , but as you change the amplitudes of the waves it gets very interesting

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Stve Roberts

[Sergey]

Well Steve, I made a lot of experiments with my spiro while debugging. I selected the most succesfull frequency range. It can do only rounded figures. Sorry, it is limitation of used algorithm. The simplified model is following(remember mathematics:
[function input]
For i = 1 To N * 360 Step Stp
X1 = R1 * Cos(i * 0.0174533 / N) + R2 * Cos(i * 0.0174533)
Y1 = R1 * Sin(i * 0.0174533 / N) + R2 * Sin(i * 0.0174533)
[draw point x1,y1]
Next i
[function output]
Where N - complexity
R2-amplitude and
R1=127-R2

That figures you are saying reguire another approach with independent frequency generators.
I will try to do something and if it will be succesful then I upload new version here.

[James Lehman]

LaserBoy also renders frames and frame sets from functions. This was how I made art in LaserBoy before I wrote the drawing tools. Many of the frames that come with LaserBoy were math generated.

This is a snippet from the Linux version of LaserBoy. Since I had so much other work to do in porting LaserBoy to any OS, I haven't worked on this. But it's still in there. There is just no easy interface for it.

In order to make use of it, you would need to be able to compile the source.

//################################################################################
ez_ilda_point A(int point, int frame_index) // single frame, 40 points, 3D spring
{
    ez_ilda_point P;
    float factor = (point / 8.0) * two_pi;
    P.x = (short int)(900 * sin(factor));
    P.y = (short int)(900 * cos(factor));
    P.z = (short int)(point * 300 - 6000);
    P.k = 0;
    P.c = 1;
    return P;
}
//################################################################################
ez_ilda_point B(int point, int frame_index)
{
    ez_ilda_point P;
    float factor = (point / 20.0) * two_pi,
          shift  = (two_pi / 60.0) * frame_index;
    P.x = (short int)(point * 1200);
    P.y = (short int)(sin(3.5 * factor + shift) * point * 200);
    P.z = (short int)(0);
    P.k = 0;
    P.c = point * 2 + 2;
    return P;
}
//################################################################################
// The functions A, B and F are definitions for all points in an ez_ilda_frame
// and possibly all frames in an animated frame set.
// There is are ctors for ez_ilda_frame and for ez_ilda_frame_set
// ez_ilda_frame(ez_ilda_point(*F)(int, int), int points_per_frame, int frame_index);
// ez_ilda_frame_set(ez_ilda_point(*F)(int, int), int points_per_frame, int num_frames);
// When calling these the total number of points and frames is defined.
//--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ez_ilda_point F(int point, int frame_index)
{
    ez_ilda_point P;
    float factor = (point / 699.0) * 30 * pi;
    P.x = (short int)(22000 * sin(factor) * (sin(31 * factor / 15)) );
    P.y = (short int)(22000 * cos(factor) * (sin(31 * factor / 15)) );
    P.z = (short int)((point * 40) - 14000);
    P.k = 0;
    P.c = point % 253 + 2;
    return P;
}

[Sergey]

>>In order to make use of it, you would need to be able to compile the >>source.
He-he

I will port it into my experimental Visual basic application and look what it can to do.

[James Lehman]

Those are just a few examples. The really inportant part is the structure that allows one to create a function in the simplest terms and pass the function itself into the frame or frame set constructor. I don't think you have pointers to functions in BASIC.

This structure or concept is what led to being able to add frame and frame set effects to LaserBoy and call them by name from the interface. Same idea. Pointers to functions.

Neato!

James.

[Sergey]

Yes, you are right. BASIC's concept does not allow to have pointers. But I dont care. I simply do big frame(s) buffer as global structure and load there all important temporary data. Very stupid approach but simple and work good.

[Sergey]

ie 3:2 makes a star with 5 points

Are you talking about anything like this?

[mixedgas]

Are you talking about anything like this?

yes, very much like that!!!
congradulations, you truely have invented a new way of programming abstracts, a whole new look without having to have a true oscillator console. very useful!
are color modulations next? I suggest a seperate color mod program!
thanks, steve

[Sergey]

New version of spiro generator.
New features:
-fine adjustment of frequency ratio(division factors);
-pattern presets;
-mixed colors modulation.

Now it can do a lot more and I decided to rename it to 'Abstract Pattern Generator'.
Unfortunately there is no possibility for me to test it for compatibility with Vista. So I wait for your comments.