3dx Tools

Hi all,

the download contains 4 files:

• 3dxToolChain.exe (an installer, that installs all tools as installers will usually do  )
• a zip file, that contains all files, that the installer would install. you can extract it and use the tools from the bin folder directly.
• 3dxWorldPictureManual.pdf - the manual for the world picture tool (same as here)
• 3dxImportExportManual.pdf - the manual for the import export tool (same as here) 

3dxWorldPicture

WorldPicture is a tool to convert computer images (such as png, jpg, etc.) into a 3dx *.world file. The result can be stored locally on the disk to load it with 3dx or it can be uploaded directly to 3dx.

When starting WorldPicture, you get the following:

To create a picture for 3dx you typically do the following steps:

1. Load the picture
2. Edit the picture (resize, smooth, etc.)
3. Create the Objects for preview
4. Save the world file or upload the objects to 3dx directly

Application Areas

On the top (without colors), the menu bar and the tool bars:

Main tool bar:

The Program Areas are marked in Colors:

Load the Picture
In the following tutorial, the Guide on the right is hidden, to show more of the rest of the app.

On the Picture Edit Area, click the  "Load Image” button.

We will use the following picture in this tutorial:

Select the image in the file dialog and click load. The image is loaded and shown as background image, like in the following Picture:

Edit the picture

The next step is to edit the Image. Therefore, You use the Picture Edit Commands on the top left.

Here you can resize and use some basic edit operations on the image. 

At least resize should be used, as a too big image creates a too huge object model in 3dx (e.g. a 100x100 pixel image created 10.000 objects, and so on).

At the bottom left of the application, the state is shown, like here:

This is the original size of the picture, including the number of pixels in the image.
The number of elements is shown, when the user pressed on 

If a change in the picture should be undone, use the Undo button at the bottom left of the Picture Edit commands.

The Example Picture has an original size of 1440x815, which is 1.173.600 Pixels. If we create a 3dx picture out of it, it will be about 1.2 million elements. This is way too much, which is displayed by the highlighted size boxes

So, at least resize should be done. But resizing the image also looses details. So all other commands could make the picture better after resizing (Smoothing, edge detection, …) Just try a bit.

In Our Example, we just resize the picture:

We use the size 240x135 in our example. After changing the X-value in the spin box, press the button "Resize to" to resize the image.

The size is still shown as critical, as it’s more then 150x150 pixels, but we decide to stay with it. The bigger the picture, the longer the calculation will take later on.

Create the Objects for preview

The next step is to configure the image creation. This can be done in the next boxes.

The Settings are the most important parameters, which you maybe change for each Picture:

Material is the object type, that is created, boxes, prism, hearts, etc. Typically, you use Box if you create pixel art.

The next important step is to choose Alpha Values and Value for equal. These need to be set once, maybe modified per picture. Alpha means, whether transparent (or semitransparent) pixels should result in objects in 3dx or not. A value of 0 means, all pixels which are not fully transparent are created as 3dx elements, 0.5 means, all pixels that are at least half transparent are ignored. A value of 1 would mean also non-transparent pixels are ignored (which would result in an empty picture, so it makes no sense to use it).

Value for equal is used to create a segmented picture. Segmentation is the process of recognizing equal pixels and combine them to a bigger rectangle. This results in a picture with less details but also with less elements in 3dx. Look down for examples of segmented pictures. The bigger the value of Value for equal is, the bigger the difference of colors might be to get combined. 

Just play with these parameters a bit and click on Create Elements, to create the resulting block picture in the preview area. If you want to see the original image again, just click on Clear Elements. Clicking these buttons also updates the status and will show you, how many elements will be in the resulting picture.

The Picture Elements only affect the creation of the world file and have no visual effect in the tool itself. They influence the position of the picture in world coordinates, the rotation of the single objects and the scaling and offset. Scaling results in the size of the single elements.

If you are in normal mode, you only can modify position and scale. Modifying X-Scale will automatically modify Y, Z and Offset in the same way, as it is expected to create cubes, which should touch the next ones. If you want to modify these values manually (and also rotation of elements), tick the checkbox Enable expert settings. Be aware that this might result in unexpected visual effects, if you modify the values independently.

A value of 1000 means about 10 cm. In our example, we used 200, which means, each pixel will be about 2 cm high (from the perspective).

A picture of 240x135 with a scaling of 200 results in a picture of 3 m.

If wished, the program can also create a picture frame around the image. The frame has the width and thickness which are given in the frame settings:

They are displayed in yellow in the program but will be wood in 3dx.

Examples for segmented pictures

Picture, which is not segmented (32.400 elements in 3dx):

Picture segmented with an equal value of 2.0 (7.153 elements in 3dx):

Picture segmented with an equal value of 5.0 (2.930 elements in 3dx):

Picture segmented with an equal value of 15.0 (1.059 elements in 3dx):

The created world files of the eagle picture are available in the data/examples folder of the app.

Save the world file or upload the objects to 3dx directly

Now you can save the *.world file (use ) Save or  SaveAs)

Result

Uploading the picture from this manual with the shown parameters (Value for equal=5, Alpha Values=0.5) results in:

3dxImportExport

• Load old and new files into the tool and save them in any format (*.xml, *.dat, *.world)
• Merge files inside the tool (button: add props from file)
• Shift the complete room by x, y, z
• on the right side, you see some statistics about the loaded file. Here you can
  • remove duplicates
  • switch property types
    • remove selected properties from the statictics table from the loaded room
  • in the tab "single Elements" you can edit each single element each value

The new version of my Import / export for 3dx with Wolrd Editor.

Main Features:

• Load old and new files into the tool and save them in any format (*.xml, *.dat, *.world)
• Merge files inside the tool (button: add props from file)
• Shift the complete room by x, y, z
• on the right side, you see some statistics about the loaded file. Here you can
  • remove duplicates
  • switch property types
  • remove selected properties from the statictics table from the loaded room
  • in the tab "single Elements" you can edit each single element each value
• Online Tools
  • Login
  • Upload room
  • Download room
  • Reset room on server
  • Clear room on server
  • Merge currently loaded file with room on server