ShapeGen (.94) - Large cylinders and spheres

I wanted to try to get the word out that my tool ShapeGen .94 is available, for a couple of reasons. (ShapeGen makes cylinders and spheres larger than 10 meters) The first reason is that I'm afraid the people still using RingMaker or ShapeMaker don't realize that ShapeGen allows you to control textures, texture scale and alpha on the fly in addition to color. The second is that version .93 had problems with larger numbers of blocks because of a recent change in SL; this has been fixed with .94. ShapeGen is available for 1 Linden at Dolmere's store at Osterhout(233,16). (If you don't see it there, look in my profile, it may have moved) Feel free to give it away. I don't even care if you sell it, as long as you keep it open. I hope this post doesn't seem like advertising, I don't profit off the tool. It's just that I've been flying all over lately and I've seen that a fair number of people use the tools, and I also get people regularly asking me questions about RingMaker or ShapeMaker, so I'd like to let people know about the improved version. I'm going to paste the readme here for people unfamiliar with it.

*****************
ShapeGen allows the user to create rings (clyinders) and spheres larger than 10 meters by rezzing and aligning a set of box prims. It is provided free of charge by Cadroe Murphy. It may be resold only if all of the source code is left open and available.

ShapeGen listens on CHANNEL 88 for commands from its owner.
Example: "/88 radius 4.5"

CREATING A RING:
1) Set the number of sides you want the ring to have. ("sides" command)
2) Rez the blocks. ("rez" command)
3) Set properties of the ring such as radius and thickness.
4) Form the ring. ('ring"
5) Set properties of the blocks such as color and texture.
6) Repeat steps 3 through 5 until you're happy.
7) a. Freeze the blocks in place. ("freeze" command) **Important**
7) or b. Delete the blocks. ("delete" command)

CREATING A SPHERE:
1) Set the number of sides.
2) Set radius of sphere.
3) Set all properties of blocks (color, texture, etc).
4) Create the sphere ("sphere" command).
Note that you can not adjust a sphere after issuing the sphere command, you do not need to freeze the blocks, and you can not delete it through the delete command. Unlike with rings, generating a sphere is a single operation that can not be undone. Be careful. It can be useful to rez a ring and set its properties such as color first to visually verify them before creating a sphere. A sandbox sim is a good place to pratice with ShapeGen.

COMMANDS:

"sides X"
- Set the number of sides to X.
"rez"
- Rez the building blocks. Applies only to rings.
"ring"
- Form the ring using the current settings. Applies only to rings.
"radius X"
- Set the radius of the ring or sphere to X.
"width X"
- Set the width from inner to outer edge to X. Applies only to rings.
"thickness X"
- Set the thickness from top to bottom to X.
"tilt X"
- Set the tilt of the ring to X degrees. (Imagine a cone) Applies only to rings.
"set color X Y Z side"
- Set the color of side to color X Y Z (values from 0 to 255)
- See below for side names. If no side is given, all sides are set.
"set texture key side"
- Set the texture of side to key.
- See below for side names. If no side is given, all sides are set.
- To get a texture key, right-click it in inventory and select "Copy Asset UUID", then paste into chat window.
- Use "blank" as key to remove textures.
"set tscale X Y side"
- Set the texture scale of side to X and Y.
- See below for side names. If no side is given, all sides are set.
"set alpha X side"
- Set the alpha of side to X. 0 is transparent, 1 is opaque.
- See below for side names. If no side is given, all sides are set.
"freeze"
- Freeze the blocks in place. They will no longer obey commands. Applies only to rings.
"delete"
- Delete the set of blocks. Applies only to rings.
"report"
- Report settings to owner over private chat
"reset"
- Reset settings to default.
"delay x"
- Set the delay between block messages to x. See NOTES below.

SIDES:
For commands that take sides, they use the following names (not numbers).
"top" - the top side of an un-tilted ring; the outside of a sphere
"bottom" - the bottom side of an un-tilted ring; the inside of a sphere
"front" - the inner edge of an un-tilted ring
"back" - the outer edge of an un-tilted ring
"left" - one side of a block next to its neighbor
"right" - other side of a block next to its neighbor

NOTES:
Delay: When using a large number of blocks, some of them may be unresponsive until commands are re-issued. Increasing the delay between messages send to the blocks can sometimes help. The default is .2 seconds. The "delay" command can be used to adjust the delay time.

ShapeGen remembers color, texture and alpha settings after shapes are rezzed, and the settings will be applied to the next shape.

Unlike in previous versions, a ring wil not change shape until you use the "ring" command. This allows you to change several settings before reshaping the ring, but it means an extra step when changing a single setting.

You can't change the number of sides after you rez a set of blocks for a ring. If you change your mind after rezzing, delete them, then change the number of sides, and rez again.

Don't forget to freeze the blocks when you're done adjusting a ring.

The ring settings are displayed as text above the RingGen object, but you can also use "report" to get them through chat.

Thanks - as a relative newcomer, I did not know about this tool.

As usual you have done us proud Keep up the good work

Thanks for the update, Cadroe - and the updated version of ShapeGen! I have all of your tools on display and freely available at my Prim Twister's Workshop. I'll get this new one added to the mix right away. I can't even guess how many people have come through and grabbed copies of your great tools in the past few months.

Thanks, I'm glad people find it useful And thanks for making them available to people, Vlad. Hopefully one day it won't require tricky scripting to construct large primitives. This idea is one way to do it.

For those who just want a link.

Get ShapeGen at: Ohno (100, 72)

BTW you don't have prim-array set for sale.

I will attest that this is one cool, & useful script set (and really good if you're too lazy, like me, to do all the scripting and math to write your own).

Thanks for the convenient link and the heads-up about PrimArray, Strife. I swear those things spontaneously set themselves not to sale sometimes.

Someone asked me how to keep me (Cadroe) from showing up as creator on the shapes constructed with ShapeGen, and I thought I'd answer here. ShapeGen rezzes a box prim named Block from its inventory to form shapes, and I'm the creator of those blocks. In theory, to have yourself listed as creator, you simply have to make your own box prim and put it in ShapeGen's inventory, replacing the one that's in there now. The only tricky bit is that you have to put the Block script into your block as well. So here's my (untested) stab at how to do this.

1) Drag ShapeGen into the world.
2) Open its contents and drag the Block inside into the world.
3) Open the Block's contents, drag the Block script inside to your inventory.
4) Delete the Block from the world and from ShapeGen's contents.
5) Create a box prim. Name it Block.
6) Drag the Block script into your new Block.
7) Take the Block into your inventory.
Drop the Block from your inventory to the ShapeGen's contents.
9) For convenience, rename ShapeGen to ShapeGen Me or something.
10) Take ShapeGen Me into your inventory.

If this doesn't work, please let me know.

works great, thank you

Cool, glad it worked. I was too lazy to get an alt to test it

Kickass. Gratitude for the update, Cadroe!

Amen! Holy !@#$! I've been doing this for two weeks now with nothing but an Excel spreadsheet, my foggy recollections of trig class, and a lot of typing, selecting and PAIN.

If I'd gone without knowing about this for about another week, I might have started to study scripting harder (omg, quatloos, or whatever they are called, make my head hurt!) and would have made my own! Your timely announcement (and a little boost from SL Insider) has saved you from having an (undoubetedly inferior) competitor in the marketplace!

Thank you thank you thank you!

First and most importantly Cadroe: wow, what a great tool! And how very generous to make it freely available.

Second, I may have found a bug, or perhaps more likely, a terminal case of user-error.

I'm trying to create a large sphere that I can fly around inside. From the inside I want to see out, but I don't want anyone outside to be able to see in. Accordingly, I issued the following commands:

/88 sides 16
/88 radius 16
/88 set alpha 1 top
/88 set alpha 0 bottom
/88 sphere

The resultant sphere has perfect shape. And if you imagine it as the earth, the one-way transparency is perfect too in the "Northern Hemisphere". But in the "southern Hemisphere" the latitude-band-rings alternate from correct, to having the one-way transparency going the wrong way (outside can see in, I can't see out), in alternating sequence.

I've had a quick look at the script, and my un-informed guess would be that the problem was linked to "FlipBlockSettings" (if its not just me), but it'd take me a little while to work out exactly what was going on.

Just a FYI, and if it user-error, please accept my apologies.

Cale.

Cale - Thanks for the detailed info on the bug. I spent a little time on it and was able to mostly fix it. Now when there is no vertical ring at the equator, the settings are applied correctly. When there is an equator ring, only that ring's settings are incorrectly flipped, the rest are fine. You get an equator ring when the number of sides divided by 2 is an even number (16/2 = 8, versus 14/2 = 7). I have an idea what's going on, and I'll work on it more when I get a chance. In the meantime, I dropped version .95x on your inventory, and I hope it at least makes the bug less invonvenient.

Ya know, this would be a great tool for someone to make a HUD for.

If I wasn't in the middle of designing a grid-wide ghost hunting game, I might try. Someone else should, though...

Cadroe:

Many thanks for the ultra-speedy response. I had a quick look at v0.95 last night before the server came down.

a) I left one copy of SG in the Sandbox I use by mistake, and one person bought a copy. The single Linden dollar went to me, not you. I'll be more careful in future, but will you make whatever permission changes are required in future releases, or should I? (I'm new, and confess I haven't studied permissions yet). Also, should I IM you $1L, or is not worth the postage?

b) Tested the sphere-generation on sides=16 and sides=18 cases, and got the results you suggest: sides=18 was perfect, sides=16 was close, just the equator problem. I could certainly live with that, its a pretty minor limitation.

c) Rather than continually type in the sequence of commands, I wanted to create an object that rezzed the ShapeGen object and issued commands to it via a script. To get this to work, I made a couple of minor changes to the Listen creation and event-handler:

Init()
{
    integer num = llListen(gCmdChannel,"" ,NULL_KEY,"");  //******* CHANGE ******
    llOwnerSay("Listening on channel 88.");
    DisplayStatus(FALSE);
}

default
{
    on_rez(integer start_param) { Init(); }
    state_entry() { Init(); }

    listen(integer chan, string name, key id, string text)
    {
        if (llGetOwnerKey(id) == llGetOwner()) // ******** CHANGE *********
            HandleCommand(text);
    }
    
}

I don't want to distract you too much from your core development, but perhaps you could just flag if this was a sensible way to proceed?

- - - - - -

Thanks again for a great tool. I'm hoping, eventually, to have a "push-button-house" system, and ShapeGen will be a key system component. Look out for newbies in Spherical Houses, floating casually over your local sandbox by Christmas!

Cale.

Cale - That change looks like it would work to me, but you'd want to test it. One idea I had in the past for controlling the tool with a set of commands was to put them in a notecard and have a script echo them to chat (basically piping from a file on a command line). I don't know if that would be a useful idea for you to try.

Don't worry about the money. I only put them at $1 on my land so I can see how many people actually pick one up.

Is there anywhere that version .94 is still available? I went to Ohno and evidently Cadroe has picked up and left his parcel there since this thread

Tiarnalalon - Sorry, I should have updated the thread. I have indeed left Ohno for a private island where I can't sell stuff. But Dolmere was kind enough to put my building tools in his store.

You can find them at Osterhout(219, 31).

Hey Cadroe, I don't think that word means what you think it means.

p.s. Of course I'm talking about the "inconceivable" title under his name. Anyone who can make a tool like this would really have a hard time making me believe that they know what this word means.

I cant get my Shape Maker to work and can't find the shapegen. If anyone has a LM for a place to get the newest version please let me know. I need to make a BIG sphere for a project. grrrrrrr goes the tiger

Gabriel Tiger

Have you tried contacting Cadroe?

I tried out ShapeMaker and ShapeGen in a sandbox and they seemed to work OK. Gabriel IM'd me and I gave him new copies of each, so hopefully that will solve the problem.

P.S. Another thread reminded me of a bezier tool I worked on a while ago so I sort of polsihed it up and am getting ready to release it. I don't know if it will be that useful to people but it's kind of fun. The ultimate goal is to combine in it with ShapeGen to create a spline-based lathe tool, but we'll see how much time I can find!

ive had no issues with it, altho maby for v0.9X (whatever is next) a command echo would be handy,... becuase when i first got this thing i was feeding it /12 messages and not really shure if the object really set anything up or not

which eventho it shouldnt have, it did make me think it wasnt working, untill i got it to do what i wanted the 2nd or 3rd attempt

Bump*