Page 3 of 8

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Sat May 28, 2011 11:30 pm
by Fuchida
I tried that same result... It's okay though, it was a problem at first spending a couple hours trying out different fan ages and then realising that i had no Prpfile, also at first it didnt export, cause i had the avatar model inside it and even though i had checked the disable export button, or maybe because of that the exporter brought about 5 errors

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Sun May 29, 2011 5:00 pm
by bnewton81
Just installed it. Looking forward to playing with it tonight. Thanks a lot for the hard work!

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Sun May 29, 2011 7:00 pm
by nathan2055
dendwaler wrote:I think i noticed a little bug in PyPRP2.

When you want to enable the PyPRP2 add on then you have to check a little box.
Coincidently i did a dubbelclick on the checkbox resulting in a "uncheck" situation again.
After that it was impossible to enable it again. It is not a continious toggle!
To enable it , i first had to close Blender.
After the restart of Blender , i was able to check the box again.

I repeated this to be sure it has always this behaviour.
The surrounding checkboxes can be toggled on and off normally.

It took me some time before I was aware why I could not enable it. :)

It looks like I have the same bug, but I can't enable the Plasma Development Environment at all!

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Sun May 29, 2011 7:46 pm
by Branan
@nathan2055 Just to make sure we cover the obvious things: The dll and pyd files need to be in the same directory as blender.exe, and you have to have a 32-bit blender 2.57. Once you've verified those, make sure the Blender console is enabled with Help->Toggle System Console, and please tell us what it shows in the console when you try to enable the addon.

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Mon May 30, 2011 7:52 am
by nathan2055
OK, in my Blender install folder I have a 2.57 folder, which contains a folder called PyPRP2 and the bin folder. Ah! I need to copy the bin files to my install directory. I'm going to go test that now.

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Mon May 30, 2011 7:55 am
by nathan2055
YES! I can successfully enable PyPRP2 now! I must have extracted the files for the install wrong. :oops:

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Mon May 30, 2011 2:28 pm
by bnewton81
Is there some where i can get a blow by blow of how this new interface works? I got it installed and I know it is right because it gives me the option to export as Plasma age. I also have the Plasma section in the World tab. It is very different than the old version. Scewy. :D I love that there is a way to set the export folder. That was my main reason for being so slow in creating ages. I hated the process of having to click 25 times to indicate the dat folder.

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Mon May 30, 2011 3:58 pm
by nathan2055
bnewton81 wrote:Is there some where i can get a blow by blow of how this new interface works? I got it installed and I know it is right because it gives me the option to export as Plasma age. I also have the Plasma section in the World tab. It is very different than the old version. Scewy. :D I love that there is a way to set the export folder. That was my main reason for being so slow in creating ages. I hated the process of having to click 25 times to indicate the dat folder.

I would also like a tutorial, seeing has I'm a noob to this (though I have managed to make a floating cube :D ).

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Mon May 30, 2011 7:13 pm
by Aloys
Thanks again for releasing that version. I got to spend a bit of time with it; and for the most part I like where this is headed. :)
Obviously because it's a beta and there are not too many features yet it's hard to get a precise grasp of the big picture, but so far so good.

Now for some constructive criticism, in no specific order:

About the Exporting: a huge thanks for the export path saving option! This has been killing me for years: Telling Blender each and every time where to export my Age, selecting the folder, scrolling down to the right file etc.. I won't even dare to imagine how many millions of mouse clicks have been wasted on this.

I don't understand the logic behind the Plasma modifiers being in the object constraints panel. If I hadn't watch Branan's video I would have looked for that either in the Object panel or the Modifiers panel. In Blender the Constraints panel deals with animation and objects hierarchy; the plasma modifiers doesn't deal with either.

"Bounds type: proxy" is a bit of a confusing name IMO. 'proxy' usually means that you use something else instead of the current object at hand; which is not happening here. Either 'triangle mesh' or 'actual object geometry' would be clearer. Or is that what the 'Explicit' setting is for? Or is that all temporary?

About the Page/Scene system. I haven't worked much with this system yet, but it seems that in the 3D view you cannot display objects from different scenes at the same time. In which case that is a deal-breaker. Even though objects are exported on different pages, we need to be able to work them together in the 3D view at times. Layers can be used to handle visibility. Maybe page assignation could be handled in the Plasma Modifiers panel.

What does the 'properties' panel in the 3Dview/Properties toolbar do? (Other than displaying the Plasma modifiers attached to the selected object.)

I just fixed the object unloading bug.
Thanks, I had met that one too on my very first try. :) For a moment I thought there was something wrong with my installation.

readme.txt wrote:Wireframe materials
What is that?

Tachsuzamm wrote:a) Under Object => Plasma Object, there's an option to exclude this object from export (Disable Export).
Good to have this option, but wouldn't it be more straight to let this behave as a positive option, as "Is Drawable" is?
User interfaces with negative logic sometimes tend to be a bit less intuitive.
(Just rename it to "Enable Export", "Include in Export", or just "Export", and give it a checkmark by default, maybe?)

I don't really have a preference regarding this, as long as this option stays in. :) (I use a lot of objects as references in my blend files, like avatars and other modelling aids)

There's probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting that I'll add later.

Re: PyPRP2 Beta 1 released

PostPosted: Mon May 30, 2011 9:30 pm
by tachzusamm
Aloys wrote:I don't understand the logic behind the Plasma modifiers being in the object constraints panel. If I hadn't watch Branan's video I would have looked for that either in the Object panel or the Modifiers panel. In Blender the Constraints panel deals with animation and objects hierarchy; the plasma modifiers doesn't deal with either.

I stumbled accross this as well. But i think the developers thought about it as well, and that "Constraints" is currently the best way to put, because:
a) Those "Modifiers" (Avatar-LinkInPoint, Marker) are no Modifiers to the object at all. Just the name "Plasma Modifiers" is a bit confusing.
b) Putting those "Modifiers" into the Object category would lengthen this already huge menu again, and it would be useful for only very few (mostly only one linkin-point) objects. And it's actually not really an object's "property" in the truest sense - just something special needed for plasma.
c) Actually, an Avatar LinkIn-Point IS a constraint; not for the object though, but for the Avatar with the object as target. Confusing only because we don't need to put an Avatar "placeholder" in the blendfile with a target, but only it's target (the linkin point).

Aloys wrote:What does the 'properties' panel in the 3Dview/Properties toolbar do? (Other than displaying the Plasma modifiers attached to the selected object.)

Exactly that, and nothing than that. It's display is generated (automatically, AFAIK) by the Blender Python API, based on special custom properties.
You can simply ignore it.