AuthorTopic: Blackbox Voxel Tool  (Read 28653 times)

Offline RAV

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Blackbox Voxel Tool

on: December 24, 2015, 07:24:58 pm
First public release experimental demo of Blackbox Voxel Tool. Download here (latest version 020c). Post and discuss art in this thread.


Update April 28 2016:

A lot has happened since my last activity here. Although much remains yet to be done.
Several updates have fixed and upgraded Blackbox into a different nature of creativity.
I would hope you have familiarized yourself enough with the first basics of the principle.
The new mechanics invite much experimentation and exploration of a depth unique to this tool.


These videos give a little hint:










Old introduction to topic:


The hotkey system discussed in the accompanied readme.txt may be a bit much at first, but will make more sense eventually.

This release omits the tiling capabilities shown in the videos previously, as well as the animation discussed on my website.
That will come with the following releases, alongside a better GUI. But it also sports abilities not shown or discussed yet. So do read the readme.

Still, there are a great many more or less obvious features missing that keep this from being an actual tool more than a toy. I consider this tool like the body of a living creature. It has vital organs, a heart, lungs, brain, any of which must be there and work properly, or the body can't live. There is a systemic dependency of functionality, so that the creature can go about the way it's supposed to. But this release right now would cut down from many vital functionality that define its true nature, its workflow, its very usefulness. For example, a selection snapped to grid is just a strange quirk only by itself. It is the crazy possibilities of the new tiling here that decide its usefulness, and entirely change your workflow. But that is not in this release. All you're stuck with is this weird selection then. And there are many other missing features just as important in defining the real identity of this tool.

The purpose of this release is to concentrate on studying the reactive behaviour of the grid, the visual behaviour of coloured cubes by side, the use of perspective on very large scale, and the basic idea behind the control scheme. Try to work around the tight cube limit with what you got, see what kind of visuals you can do with that for a mockup scene. That's enough for now. It will give you a first base of understanding. On the following releases it will start to actually get interesting then going from that.

As you play with it you may eventually notice problems innate to this medium.
Some of it will be solved, some will solve themselves as computers improve, some you may always have to work around.
We are here to study the potential, viability and proper use cases, alongside the limits, of this proposed technique here.

Also a couple more immediate issues remain that will be addressed in the future. Among them:

This project focuses on the very experience of the pixel art medium's process. It attempts to have a natural approach to it. One of its key features is a resilient and efficient Input Interpolation that enables beautiful line drawing, mostly uninterrupted even across corners and complex environment. However this needs more tweaking. For example, aggressive as it is now, it can happen that it paints a hidden side on edge cases, which prevents a reoptimization of the grid upon large overpainting. When you see it, use shift-paint to recolour the location wholesome, so the grid recovers.

Deleting a voxel can sometimes be a bit jumpy on the edge.


Have fun and work hard.

« Last Edit: December 27, 2016, 12:05:02 am by RAV »

Offline RAV

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Re: Blackbox Voxel Tool

Reply #1 on: December 26, 2015, 07:48:23 am
Download new version hotfix 0.1b


Updated readme.txt with corrections and additions. You should give it another look.


Fixed massive performance issue when deleting voxels with the left mouse button instead default right, and also when painting on surface of same colour.
Fixed other various issues tied to not using default controls. Reconfiguring controls broke input interpolation overall. Not anymore.

Fixed Line tool behaviour of Paint mode. Working as intended now.

Some other minor fixes.


New features:

You can toggle on/off the default smart select for a rougher method with key g.
While the finer smart select is more useful most often, sometimes it's really nice to select more sweepingly.


Improved palette management: colours can be moved as whole blocks at once by holding ctrl key while using arrow keys.

Pressing Backspace deactivates/activates the currently selected slot.
While holding ctrl deactivates an entire block of active colours beneath.

Arrow keys up or down to move in colour palette.
while holding shift moves a colour up or down the palette, by swapping the colours of slots.
while holding ctrl moves an entire block of active colours above or beneath up or down the palette;
when block connects with another block in palette, they become one and move together.
while holding ctrl + shift moves an entire block of active colours above or beneath up or down the palette;
when block connects with another block in palette, it passes through it, colour by colour, trading places.

Arrow key left or right changes palette entirely.
While holding shift copies the current slot colour to the same slot of next palette while switching.
While holding ctrl copies the whole block of active slot colours beneath to the same slots of next palette while switching.
While holding ctrl + shift copies all the colours of palette to the next palette while switching.

It's probably most useful in general to organize your palette in separate blocks of active colour.

The first and last slot of a palette are the system colour slots.
They can't be moved or manipulated. But they don't count towards the max colours of a palette.



But further improvements coming.


« Last Edit: April 26, 2016, 05:47:32 pm by RAV »

Offline Gil

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Re: Blackbox Voxel Tool

Reply #2 on: December 26, 2015, 03:08:24 pm
If you could find someone to do a basic video tutorial, that would be very very much appreciated. Going through the program with the readme next to me causes information overload. I'd really love to try this out, but the learning gap seems a bit steep for me.

Offline RAV

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Re: Blackbox Voxel Tool

Reply #3 on: December 26, 2015, 04:17:34 pm
That is understandable. Thanks for your interest. Currently I'm still concentrated working much on the fundaments than that making tutorials would be a good investment of someone's time. This is far away from what it's supposed to be. It is more spontaneous "nightly" releases. Next hotfix update coming soon fixing the last. The many quick changes will make videos confusing soon. And the current hotkey driven state of affairs makes video showcases not much more informative. The releases here are still what I consider "should never have been". After some circumstances in my life changed, it is an attempt of opening up my development for a certain kind of people really interested in experiencing hands-on that sort of rough and dirty behind-the-scenes look on the progression, and provide experimental means for further research on the meaning of what is pixel art in this era. We are going very text intensive, very conceptual, very power user oriented here, for the time being. I do believe for the very basics of toying the tool, it is simple enough and enjoyable even as of now though. Beyond that, the hotkey controls, while reading overwhelming at first, make systemic sense soon.

« Last Edit: December 26, 2015, 05:19:19 pm by RAV »

Offline RAV

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Re: Blackbox Voxel Tool

Reply #4 on: December 27, 2015, 12:25:27 am
Download Hotfix version 0.1c


Fixed moving colour block behaviour in palette, especially on transfers between palettes.
Working as intended now. Remember, first and last colour of palette are unmodifiable system colours now. (not entirely: you can still shift-pick it, but that's fixed next version too)

Changed colour palette quick scrolling from shift to ctrl + mousewheel.
Because using shift/capslock for alternate controls on tool functions,
made the also corresponding size/palette switch on mousewheel annoying.

Before that, the activated Line tool didn't let you do size changes anyway, to keep its integrity.
So having ctrl also switch mouswheel from size change to palette scroll is a nice fit after all.

hope you didn't get too used to it yet, that's annoying too.


more coming.



« Last Edit: April 26, 2016, 05:47:44 pm by RAV »

Offline Ai

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Re: Blackbox Voxel Tool

Reply #5 on: December 27, 2015, 10:31:59 am
Good to see you released some version of this..
FWIW, doesn't work in Wine. Wasn't really expecting it to, but looks like a GLX error:

Quote
X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
  Major opcode of failed request:  154 (GLX)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  3 (X_GLXCreateContext)
  Value in failed request:  0x0
  Serial number of failed request:  171
  Current serial number in output stream:  172
Might be fixable with Wine knowledge beyond what I have (probably whatever it takes to get the average 3d game running would deal with it).

If anybody wants to make a visual cheatsheet for the shortcuts, http://keyboard-layout-editor.com/ makes it pretty easy to do that and get a PNG/SVG/etc out.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline RAV

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Re: Blackbox Voxel Tool

Reply #6 on: December 27, 2015, 02:21:57 pm
Hello AI. Thanks for the notice. And that cheatsheet thing is a good idea.

I am currently developing this through Wine on a crappy netbook running Ubuntu, because my main rig got trashed.

It runs very well there. Actually, in my tests it currently runs much better on Ubuntu than Win7. except for resizing window being very choppy.

Offline RAV

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Re: Blackbox Voxel Tool

Reply #7 on: December 27, 2015, 05:14:14 pm
Download hotfix version 0.1d


Fixed last version's massive performance issue on shift-Delete Shoothrough.

Fixed ctrl + backspace colour block deactivation from first colour of palette

Some other minor fixes.



New feature:

Press key Enter to Mark current colour in the palette.
while ctrl, marks entire block of active colours beneath.

More specifically, key Enter toggles the mark,
and ctrl + enter toggles mark for entire block;
unmarked colours become marked,
marked colours become unmarked.

The mark is remembered when moving colours
and on transfer between different palettes.

When using ctrl with the RGB colour component modifier keys,
the change now affects only all the marked colours in the palette.

This allows more effective colour palette management.



More coming.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2016, 05:47:58 pm by RAV »

Offline RAV

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Re: Blackbox Voxel Tool

Reply #8 on: December 27, 2015, 05:51:09 pm
uh... some weird shit happened on compile..

ctrl + enter and ctrl + backspace do not seem to work on this version..

fixed next.

Offline RAV

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Re: Blackbox Voxel Tool

Reply #9 on: December 27, 2015, 06:09:22 pm
uuuh. getting weird. Talking about linux wine and windows differences...

This last version's ctrl-backspace and ctrl-enter seems to work fine in win7 but not in ubuntu wine now.

no explanation for this right now. one of these WTF moments once in a while.

Or is it just me? my piece of shit computer degrading?

wouldn't be the first time it acts up bogus to make me hunt non-existent bugs for hours. :-/


« Last Edit: December 27, 2015, 06:20:37 pm by RAV »