Teaser

Murgh · Post by **Murgh** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 8:34 pm

ok. here's another crazy suggestion.

to have it export technical drawing blueprints

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 8:57 pm

And generate origami-folding plans?

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Fri Dec 23, 2005 9:03 pm

That would be cool!

Lego plans would be more reasonable though....

I'd like to have it, I have been looking for a .dat viewer that works intuitively/ on PC.

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Wed Dec 28, 2005 12:24 am

I’ve looked at murgh’s crash report and wondered what the hell’s going on for a bit. Then I remembered I’m using “fast Objective-C dispatch”, which is a guaranteed crash on pre-10.4 systems. I’ll switch that off if I stop using 10.4-specific functions, and maybe add an error message – using Carbon – before NSApplicationMain() until then…

Murgh · Post by **Murgh** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 10:56 am

are you planning to have it be able to convert .dat files to .obj or wings, or is that difficult because auv information is discarded or something?

currently the only way I know is to make a .dat into a mesh and then to obj, but the texture info always gets lost on the way..

Murgh · Post by **Murgh** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 1:12 pm

so since I can't load a textured behemoth into Wings (Giles did share with me a behemoth.wings before he left, but it appears corrupted

) I had to make a drydock to take into space and take a pic there which is never ideal. and then the grid was much too complex, and Oolite didn't stop crashing until the grid was severely simplified..
so as far as icons go, I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind, but it's yours if you like.

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 2:33 pm

The icon looked even better in my dreams, but it sure beats nothing. ;-)

Yeah, exporting to 3D formats is also on the road map. It’s a pretty blurry map, mind.

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:15 pm

I put up a web site of sorts for Dry Dock, and the new release will check for updates automatically.

I’ll post here again if I change the system requirements.

Flying_Circus · Post by **Flying_Circus** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 8:41 pm

That is a very nice application (with a rather clever name, if I may say so). It certainly helps to see each ship in context, compared in scale and proportion to others. I'm sure it will prove even more useful, too, as you get to add further features to it. (I'm rather flattered you put my Jabberwocky in the dock, for the website, too!)

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 6:04 pm

Minor note: the texture loading in Dry Dock is now free of Tiger dependencies (at a slight cost in efficiency). This puts me closer to doing mip-mapped anisotropically filtered textures for Oolite. Take that, four people who chose option three!

(However, I’ve found there are sufficient other Tiger dependencies in Dry Dock that there’s no real chance of it being backported. But hey, release 4 will have, er, a slightly better icon for the currently-unused Arrow tool…)

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 4:37 pm

Dry Dock version 0.04 (612-3) is now available. The primary feature is OBJ importing. You can now open an OBJ file, verify that it looks right and export it as an Oolite OBJ file. The OBJ importer should be reasonably robust for polygon-mesh OBJ files (such as exported from Wings 3D). It writes some debugging info to the console. As promised, it also has a slighly better icon for the arrow tool. And also those horrible toolbar icons.

The procedure to convert an OBJ file is:

Open it in the usual fashion.
If the lighting looks “wrong”, try Tools->Recalculate Normals. (A Normal is a vector pointing straight out from a surface. You can display them in Dry Dock using the Show Normals toolbar button or menu item. When importing an OBJ, Dry Dock averages the normals of the vertices of each face, because Oolite doesn’t currently support per-vertex normals.)
If this results in normals being “inside-out” (you’ll notice because the light will be coming from the wrong side, i.e. from behind and below if you haven’t moved the light source) use Tools->Reverse Winding and then Recalculate Normals again.
Use Save As to export as a DAT. Select Oolite Model as the file format; the default selection, Dry Dock Document, isn’t implemented.
If there were any non-triangular faces in the OBJ, they will be converted to triangles when saving as a DAT. (For that matter, if you open a DAT with non-triangular faces and save it, the same will happen.) This conversion is done using a fanning process. You can cause this to be done explicitly using Tools->Triangulate (which will only be enabled if there are non-triangular faces).

Note: Recalculate Normals and Triangulate can’t be undone (high on the to-do list for 0.05), and I just noticed that Revert causes a crash, so the only way to undo these changes is to close the file and open it again.

I don’t get any download stats, so if you try it out please tell me. Possibly using Send Feedback… from the Dry Dock application menu. ;-)

Oh, there’s a new Compare command. It doesn’t actually do anything except bring up a sheet.

Changes from 0.03:

OBJ imporing.
Added triangulation support. DAT files are now always saved triangulated, but you can do it explicitly from the Tools menu if that’s your idea of fun.
Corrected loading of non-72-dpi textures.
“Show” menu item status now updated correctly.
You can no longer get more than one Open panel by re-activating the application.
Began work on Compare window.
Wireframe mode always uses yellow instead of face colour (which is otherwise ignored).
Slightly less efficient texture loading which is not dependant on Tiger – this will make it into Oolite at some point.
Lots of texturing changes that aren’t actually used, but will be rolled into Oolite at some point.
Improved several icons.
Internal infrastructure changes. Next version should be able to undo all destructive changes.

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JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 4:39 pm

Hmm, evidently “now” is subject to my ISP’s servers talking to each other. :-/

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 8:56 am

Ahh, there it goes. I wonder whether there’s some sort of censorship phase involved, or if their servers are just that crap?

Star Gazer · Post by **Star Gazer** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 12:00 pm

@ Ahruman - have you updated the application version? - when you run it it keeps telling you there is a newer version 601-3, but any and all updating still acquires v601-2...

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 12:57 pm

Wow, I have a user after all!

You’re right, the version number is incorrect in the archive. Quick fix: right-click Dry Dock, select Show Package Contents, open Contents, open Info.plist, search for 601-2 and replace it with 601-3. I’m uploading a corrected archive, but who knows how long it will be before the server synchs up this time… :-/

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