Sample metal band logo .ild files...

[james]

No need for you to be sorry! I'm really sorry for leading you down what has been so far a dead end; and responding to you like I knew what I was talking about. That's kind-of embarrassing. Actually, I'm glad you pointed out that there is something wrong going on here. And I'd like to thank you for hanging in there and working with me on this. We'll figure it out somehow.

I need to drag my sore butt (hip replaced last Wednesday) down to my basement lab and sit in front of my main workstation and grind on this a while.

James.

[VibrationsOfDoom]

Eventually I'd love to be able to put some of those logos together in a small laser show for some metalhead friends of mine... And my friend's band Soniq Armada said if I can get some stuff for his band to project he'd hire me to run a laser at his show...

Hopefully you can figure it out, as I said I guess the main stumbling block is saving the file in ild 0 format...

[VibrationsOfDoom]

Oh yeah, and hopefully this isn't the wrong place for this, but if anyone's interested, my friend Sean Morrisey's band Soniq Armada is pretty progressive take on European styled death/black metal with some electronic/industrial touches... Pretty brutal stuff tho...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnfogbqYJww

[james]

I'm just going to go ahead and blame the Syrian Army for hacking LaserBoy.

That excuse seems to be as reasonable as any other.

James.

[VibrationsOfDoom]

Syrian army... Sounds good to me!!! But seriously, just think if you had gone on thinking those files were saving in ild format 0... Unfortunately, I don't have the technical expertise to figure out where things went offtrack... Have you ever thought about an option to save files in different .ild formats, or does that have more to do with the use of color palettes and what not?

[james]

There are currently five defined ILDA file section types: 0, 1, 2, 4 & 5.

For a very long time, the ILDA file format only had three section types; 0, 1 & 2.

Section 0 is a list of 3D vertex coordinates, X, Y & Z. Each coordinate also has a 1 byte number to designate a color in a palette.

Section 1 is a list of 2D vertex coordinates, X & Y. These coordinates also have the palette byte.

If there is no palette defined in the file, it is assumed that the palette index in each vertex is pointing to the "default" palette.

This is the one that has 63 colors (64 if you count gray at the end).

Section 2 is the palette. It's a list of no more than 256 RGB color values.

If this is written into an ILDA file, all frames (sections 0 or 1) written after it would point to this palette for RGB color values until another palette is defined.

It never really caught on because there just weren't many (or possibly any) applications that supported it. So everyone just got used to the idea of using the 63 colors. Just about every example of ILDA art in format 0 or 1 comes with no defined palettes.

Not too long ago, sections 4 & 5 were added to the ILDA file spec.

Section 4 is a list of 3D vertex coordinates, X, Y & Z plus 3 bytes to store a full 24-bit RGB color.

Section 5 is a list of 2D vertex coordinates, X & Y plus 3 bytes to store a full 24-bit RGB color.

LaserBoy knows how to read and write all section types. In the x menu, option b allows you to save your art as either section 4 or 5.

But that won't work at all on your projector. That thing wants a file with nothing but section 0 (plural) in it.

[VibrationsOfDoom]

Weird how format 0 the older format wants the 3d coordinates, while format 1 is only 2d... You'd think it'd be the other way around...

I wonder if the newer Spencer projectors are able to do format 1? Don't remember if anyone mentioned that but they did mention the newer projectors display ild files better...

[james]

Formats 0, 1 & 2 were all designed at the same time more or less and they are the oldest and most common ILDA files out there.

It's very common to find ILDA files that are a mix of sections 0 and 1. Section 0, the 3D frame, is usually processed a bit more within whatever show design application you might have. It's very typical to use a single 3D frame to make an animation by moving and rotating the 3D image.

You're right. I makes no sense that your projector can only read 3D frames. It doesn't do anything with them. It just displays them as though they were 2D.

Whatever. I guess you just have to work around what you have.

James.

[james]

I found a workaround..... just as I was typing the last post.

It's kinda' ugly so I'll just post these files and get on with fixing the actual problem.

Let me know if this works!

James.

[VibrationsOfDoom]

Wow... over 30,000 points on the ship and 50,000 on the viking?!?! Well, the spencer can't handle that many points... What it does is attempt to trace the outline of the Viking face, but you never see any lines stay... The viking ship you see a bit more detail but it's more like flashes... You see red and green traces of the image for a few seconds, but yeah, the point count obviously needs to be reduced by A LOT...

Just out of curiosity, what did you do differently? There surely is something that will reduce point counts in these two drawings...