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SevenCubed
01-06-2007, 01:28 PM
I apologise if this has already been covered, but I went looking and didn't find it. Is there a way that CarveWright Patterns can be converted to bitmaps? I love the ability to load images into patterns, but I'd like the ability to take existing patterns and convert them back into greyscale images so that I can edit them in Photoshop/Mudbox/whatever. Is this possible? Are there plans for a "Pattern Exporter" in the software? If nothing else, it would help me get a feel for how I should paint my images to get the beast results with the Carvewright. Hope someone's got some insight on this! Thanks.

Greybeard
01-06-2007, 01:44 PM
The way I did it in order to print out a "wall chart" of what was available in the library, was to load one pattern onto a blank board with the grain toggled off, enlarge to fill the screen, then do a "print screen".
Pasted into Photopaint....... etc.
John

SevenCubed
01-06-2007, 02:24 PM
Yes. I've seen lots of folks referring to saving pictures of the projects, and for that, printscreen works fine. But I'm talking about exporting the image used to create the pattern. See, if you put the pattern on a blank board and do a print-screen, you're not going to then be able to use that image as a pattern, since the print-screen result will be a render of the finished product. Here. I've included a bitmap that should help explain what I'm talking about. Bear with me.

1.) This is a good image to upload into CarveWright. It uses grayscale to show depth, with black being the farthest back and white being the closest towards the viewer.

A.) This is what it looks like for me to import image 1. Depth information is rendered appropriately.

2.) This is a bad image to upload into Carvewright. This is what I get when I press PrintScreen from Carvewright. This is inappropriate because values show Lighting, not depth. This also illustrates why using a photograph for Carvewright is bad. (Note: Although I made it a grayscale image and I fixed the levels to exxagerate the contrast, this IS a render from within Carvewright)

B.) This is the result of importing image 2 as a pattern. As you can see, the pattern doesn't interpret depth appropriately.

All clear on everything here? So with ALL of this in mind, let me rephrase my original point.

I want to be able to take patterns that come with CarveWright (or, really, any patterns people upload. Whatever), and get the image that was used to make the pattern. That image will look like image 1 in my example. If I press Print-screen, I'm going to get a result that looks like image 2, and I won't have a useable pattern.

I don't think there's any way to do this with the existing software, but if there IS a way, or if there's going to be a way (hopefully it's a trivial implementation), I'd appreciate it greatly.

Hope this all makes sense!

Greybeard
01-06-2007, 02:47 PM
Hi 343.
Thanks for the detailed description of where you want to go, and yes it is very clear now.
I fear you're right that there is no way to work around this at present, and that I guess it might be low on the wish list for Carveright to do.
A lot of people have siad that being able to import vector files is top of their own list, and perhaps an Exporter might come in on the back of that.
Till then, I fear it's trial and error !
John

liquidguitars
01-06-2007, 11:23 PM
I think that a 8 bit depth image saver, based on viewpoint is a good idea. I have found that Photoshop is a nice tool for making addition detail enhancements to the model, and exporting this infomation make practical sense . I sure intergration wil be included soon.

Some grayscale textural map control through the spline would be cool too as a building tool.

Imagine designing organic shapes through gradients and running it into the CW.