Pangolin QS frame editing question

[tsteele93]

Thank you very much. I certainly didn't expect you to go to all that trouble, but I do appreciate it. I don't want to be one of those people asking for everything to be done for me, I definitely want to learn to do it myself. And I'd like to learn to do some things that may be of use to others.

I had a neat idea tonight while looking at the dashboard of my car... I want to see if I can take a pic of the dash at night all lit up and make a frame/animation where the tach and speedo move and go up in speed. It may exist, I don't know. But it would be a fun project.

There are some really good things available, but this is a small hobby and there are some pretty big gaps too so it is neat to know that if you took your time and did a good job, you might be able to do something that gets used by someone else.

Thank you again!

Tom

[White-Light]

Hi Tom,

It took me less than 10 mins so don't worry about it, I used to do a lot of logos.

There are a few slightly wayward points in it but nothing that's difficult to pull into line if you're so inclined to straighten it.

The secret to tracing is in the settings as I said above and sometimes the preparation. In colour separation remember the background is a colour so red + black in a logo = 3 colours if the background is white. Also, experiment. Don't be afraid to try 6 or 7 colours if a logo only has 3! A colour aberration can easily be fixed the main thing is to get the trace. Also on the other non colour methods, the slider adjustment is very important. A few millimetres in the wrong direction and a perfect trace can lose 50% of its lines so again don't be afraid to move the sliders around and experiment to find the best setting for your logo. Every logo is different. There isn't one setting you can tune it to and then leave it. There isn't one method that's the answer (although colour separation usually works best for most logos), you need to be prepared to try all methods and all setting until you find something that works.

Don't be afraid to simplify as I said above. It doesn't matter about putting in stupid amounts of contrast if it helps find the edges because all a laser program will trace is the edges.

If you're really stuck and can't get an entire logo to trace in one go, then as I said above, trace it in two halves then subtract the rubbish and merge them.

Finally, realise that not all logo's will trace. Some are just impossible as they're too complex.

Text is your number 1 enemy in logos as it pulls the frame rate down massively. I didn't try the logo above with the bottom red text but I reckon 1 or 2 fps would have been the result.

The way around text is to scroll it. If you need text in a frame such as the one above that's already low on frame rate, then your only real answer is a 2nd projector, one for the graphic / one for the text.

I'll add the photoshop below so you can see how I simplified the image:

[Things]

I've found that for most frames I create, I usually end up just tracing them by hand. It's not all that difficult or time consuming to do, and saves you a heap of post-processing. But like White-Light said, QuickShow is more intended for the club/hobbyist market, and some good features are purposely left out, which gives BEYOND the advantage. It's a shame they've sorta dropped the TraceIT tool, as I found that was pretty good at tracing, and really the only tool I knew of for rastering. having one of the older FB3's I can still use TraceIT, but would be nice if it was still being improved. But I suppose BEYOND will probably take it's place with features still to come. The upside is BEYOND and QuickShow are quite similar in terms of the bare level GUI, so it's not hard to pick up in the basics of BEYOND if you've used QuckShow (The 3D editor is a whole different can o worms, though )

[White-Light]

You can still download TraceIt and it will work with the FB3-QS even with the latest drivers - I've just tested build 770 on my pc.

You can download it here - towards the bottom of the page in the FB3 users category:

http://www.pangolin.com/UpdateFiles.htm

Download build is 773.

[tsteele93]

Thanks White-Light, just found Trace-It and downloaded it. Not sure why that isn't included with the actual QS since it is free? It seems odd that I had to find out about it and download it. Oh well, it certainly addresses a great deal of what I was running up against, even the editor is a good bit easier to use! Thanks... now if I can get it to output to the laser projector... always something. :P

Tom