Amapi 8 wishlist

[Thomas]

1. we will work on that, perhaps not for 8.0, but for 8.0.x
2. having a poly export, or a tesselation in shade is not so hard, but having a kind of NURBS to spline conversion is not something easy!

[Wася]

1. ok
2. I understand that, that's why I'm talking of Bezier. Amapi supports a lot of different type of curves and surfaces, but Shade curved surfaces based on Bezier curvers only. Amapi supports Bezier also, so maybe, at least for a first time it's better to restrict the list of supportd types by meshes (oops, it can already be done easy for now), and only this types of curves and surfaces. And to implement the rest types in 8.x, maybe x.x.

P.S. By the way, have you any plans to open Amapi file format, or to make SDK for Amapi?

[Roach]

With the DWG/DXF export could triangulation of polygons be removed for AP8.

At the moment any polygons with four points are triangulated when opened in AutoCAD. I'am getting roud this at the moment with polytrans, it would be great if Amapi 8 could do this.

Thanks

[Roach]

Sorry Piem already asked about this (dwg/dxf export), but I could see no response.

Any news on the rendering capabilites of AP8. Will AP8 be released with shade like curret deal with 7.52.

[Thomas]

Roach: I don't answer to everything, because: I don't know all the answers or i'm not allowed to answer to some questions...

[juanxer]

A few ideas and thoughts:

-I am having some difficulties drawing closed Bezier curves: if I simply click a last control point over the first one, everything goes OK, but if I click and drag that final control point over the first one (in order to, say, correctly oppose curvature handles), what happens is that I unintendedly move the first one away instead of producing that final connecting point, contrary to instructions in AMAPI 7.5's PDF manual. I understand the tool can't assume I am trying to close the curve, fuse these points and let my click-drag signify to extend the handles (I could mean to prolong the curve by clicking more control points yet), but the way to solve the problem is a bit ackward (click the close curve widget and adjust curvature later, or click somewhere else, adjust, and then move the points together). Was this tool intended to work as it seems to me it does?

-Autodes.sys' Form•Z has this little active plane palette with XZ, XY and YZ planes icons: having something like that plus keyboard shortcuts would be great for quickly selecting an XY, XZ or YZ working plane regardless of the camera's orientation.

-Some shortcut for instantly resetting the cursor to absolute (0,0,0) would be great, too.

[corzair]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Corzair: drawing tools are in our priority list, as snaps, constraints & more.
The improvement of the support of the pen tablets may not be in the 8.0 release, but perhaps in a 8.x one. We have some great ideas around this!

thats excellent news! ;-)

I also found the grid and set up of grid awkward
be nice to be to no diemensions so I can pretend to make say an aircraft
say 15 by 10 by 5 - cannot get the balace right in Amapi 7.52 and still have ref images with a grid that helps

Also would love to have better numerical input and modification of parts
so of like hex so it easier to stick an object after creation at a designated spot
nstead of having to press lots of keys eg shift and all that
I know its faster with tho hands but may left hand not so good

Also like others already stated a good proper scene/object tree
and prehaps better materials/shader/uv support.

oh also have some problems with nurbs and fillet/chamfer can't always get
good match up at times for a successful operation - better curves or better docs on how to approach this we amapi.

[macmiguel]

What about a full copy tool? I need to copy an object with the same name and material with the posibility of change dimension only to the copied object. (not to clone because If I clone, if I make a dimensional change, the clone changes too)

[Thomas]

A clone won't affect the size of the object, except if you select all the vertices and scale them.

[Nate Owens]

One very helpful tool I have found (pic example from Rhino) is a thumbnail display when you want to open a file... this cuts down on opening various files when you have a lot of them (and sometimes different versions of a file)

[macmiguel]

Respect to "clone" question, yes, you can scale, rotate the entire object, but if I need to change only some vertices of the cloned object. How can I do it?

Another improvements useful for me are:

1- A different colour for working background colour and render background colour. (I work over black but I would like fast render over white)
2- In preferences I need the option "disable create default .png files". They're not useful at all, and I have to delete them continuosly.
3- In mac OSX I can't open a file with the osx browser and, with the full screen option activated, I can´t either open the osx dock.

[Wася]

I'm sorry for my inattention, but Amapi 7.52 reference addendum states 3DConnexion controllers are already supported. So my 1st wish fulfilled already.

I have not found the ability to change the focal lenght of the camera. When you use reference images it should be good to chahge Amapi's camera focal length, and make it match to photocamera's one. Because it will give the ability to use distorted pictures as a reference images.

So my next wish is to have the ability not only zoom by moving the camera forth and back, but also to change the focal length (like in C4D), and to separate this two modes.

[Thomas]

The new Amapi catalog will include the thumbnail directly in the file, not as an external file (128x128 thumbnail resizable), you will be able to navigate directly inside, which was not possible before, creating fodlers, etc.

Wacr: you can already change the focal length : ALT+"." and ALT+"3" on the numerical panel.
For the 3Dconnexion ,we have to improve it a lot!

[Wася]

I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. Let me describe (I use Shade and Aiko).
This view (1):

uses camera with a focal lenght 56 mm

This view (2):

is just a zoom out. The focal length is the same - 56 mm.

But this view (3):

made at the same distance as view (1), but camera focal lenght was changed from 56 mm to 30 mm. Look at poor Aiko left hand.
Shade's camera browser gives the ability to zoom by using virtual joystick and to chage the camera focal length by directly input it.

So, if we are talking about same things, and if Alt+./Alt+3 (or mouse weel) is a focal lenght changing, I see no information about current focal length. And what in this case is a zoom by camera movement? View detail/view all? But it can not be used precisely.

[Thomas]

no value in Amapi 7.52, you have it in Amapi pro 8, then, you will be able to enter it precisely.

[Couerl]

My most important wish for Amapi-8 is it should be very solid and stable.
I would also like to be able to have more than 1 camera. Sometimes you need to be able to see the model from 2 or more views quickly and one camera is not always enough. 3 would be perfect I think.

I would also like to see more point control on edges so you can rebuild curves and re-specify how many points you want on a curve and let them redistrubute evenly or by specification.

I have more, but Piem and others have already said them, dxf quad and so forth.

[jones2000u]

Illustrator 3 import:

There have been advice that it is better to create 2d constructions in Amapi rather than import Illustrator 3 files because of the way Illustrator handles points sometimes.

My wish would be to have numeric positioning and moving of points in 2d/3d space in A8: perhaps just in the drawing plane, but in the modelling space would be good as well, either relative to each other or to a given centre point. Either world or object space, doesn't matter so long as you can reference it.

Carrara nearly does that, but in the wrong places - you can reference points in the vertex, but not as bezier curves points etc etc

EG: In illustrator I can very quickly draw an accurate set of profiles in 2d, with given rads, sections, curves etc, join the lines together where necessary and import in to Amapi. When it fails to work, I often cut the Illustrator segments into smaller chunks so there is less to process at a time.

I think that makes sense....sort of

a features wishlist is quite hard to do, because that's almost like describing the core functions of Illustrator's vector drawing technique. I'll try to be brief:

Move point: very useful if you need to have 2 points/objects an exact distance apart, but in a fixed position relative to other objects (if you know their positions on your workspace numerically)

path offset: similar to thicknessing, but in 2d, so you can create the inner surface of a bottle, for example, edit it the vector lines for the areas where it is not an exact offset (thick base, thin neck etc) and then revolve.

live guides: draw a rough template using arcs, lines and curves and then turn them all into guides. To draw the final shapes as a single multiple curved line is very fast and accurate because all the points snap to the guide points you just created. Then you can delete the guides.

There's a lot more, but that would take a day and I think it's unreasonable to wish for all the capabilities of Illustrator in one package. For me, the relative point is the biggest.

Finally, the one thing that nobody seems to have is positioning for bezier curve handles (not even AI). So for example, if you have a point with a left curve handle at -3, there is no way of accurately mirroring the right handle at the same distance without creating special guides. Anyone still awake out there?

[Thomas]

jones2000u : can you add some screenshots to illustrate your comments please?

[jones2000u]

there you are, Thomas. I have never done a commentary before, so I hope it's OK. Sorry about the quality of some of them. I used a bottle shape because I am a wine label designer, so I usually have to make accurate bottles for my label presentations. I am a very low-level 3d person!



screen shots are in pdf format, because otherwise too many to post.

I bought Shade because I thought any bezier programme must have points positioning by measurement. No.

[achrystie]

I want to see a pricing structure similar to Rhino for educational discounts.

$195 gets you:

An Educational Single User License:

• is a full-featured commercial license at a special price
• is for students, faculty (teachers, instructors, and professors),and schools only (proof of status is required)
• is upgradeable at educational prices if the owner still qualifies for educational prices
• is upgradeable at commercial prices if the owner no longer qualifies for educational prices
• can be used for either educational or commercial activities
• is not transferable (cannot be sold or transferred to another user)

An amazing incentive deal IMHO and hard for a student studying industrial design (or an educator like myself) to justify buying anything else. From there on it's upgrade pricing, which is a huge overall cost savings.

Just my two cents. If e-frontier is smart, they are already aware of this.

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