Box rotation

[Dad72]

why is the light/shadow thing in my editor messed up until I place the first object on the ground? After that it works perfectly fine.

 

 

I'm not sure I understand. but I think that solve this problem by adding the table (renderList) an empty object.

but again I am not quite sure I understand.

 

shadowGenerator.getShadowMap().renderList.push(0);

[iiceman]

Playground for the bonus issue: http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1YXYKP (adds a mesh after 3 seconds)

 

And dad72 is right, it is enough to just push anything to the render list. The line is commented out in the playground.

[Wingnut]

Hey Alby... thanks for the kind and funny reply.  You ask very interesting questions, especially for being new to BJS.

As best I can tell, it is a bit difficult to make scaling not be inherited from the parent.  But I have a cool work-around for you. 

http://playground.babylonjs.com/#1PQ2XT#2

Left sphere is parent, right sphere2 is child.  You can set ANY parent scaling you wish (line 14)... and then use the "de-scaler" (line 26) to "fix" the scaling of the child.  Maybe this will work for your needs, maybe not.  If the parent's scaling is changing often, you might need to put the de-scale line... inside the animation loop (constantly checking parent scaling changes).

Now, about your other question... wanting .alpha not inherited by child:

If you look at line 16 and 17, you can see that material.alpha is not inherited, nor is .visibility.  So, that's good, right?    PARTY!!!  Good luck, sorry for the multiple subjects happening in the thread. 

[iiceman]

Yeah, sorry about that, I should have opened a new thread for my shadow question, but as I said, it's just a side question and I didn't mean to disturb the focus of this thread :-/

[Wingnut]

I think it was my fault, iicer... I asked jcPalmer a question about his dialog system, and then we all climbed aboard the party bus and went on one hell of a road trip!  We might have 5-6 subjects going in this thread, and we're all maintaining composure.  We're hot, baby. 

[JCPalmer]

@JCPalmer: I was more thinking about two simultaneous cameras with scene.activeCameras like here:

http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1IG874#7

I am not quite ready for this yet,  just taking advantage of a BILLBOARD thread.  Did my first test of the DIALOG.Label class & got an amusing result, below.  After the obvious is fixed, I probably need to do character specific kerning, (space between letters).  Do not think Blender is going to help me out though.

 

After that on to Panels, then this, then with other meshes in the scene.

[Alby]

Hey Alby... thanks for the kind and funny reply.  You ask very interesting questions, especially for being new to BJS.

 

As best I can tell, it is a bit difficult to make scaling not be inherited from the parent.  But I have a cool work-around for you. 

 

http://babylonjs-playground.azurewebsites.net/#1PQ2XT#2

 

Left sphere is parent, right sphere2 is child.  You can set ANY parent scaling you wish (line 14)... and then use the "de-scaler" (line 26) to "fix" the scaling of the child.  Maybe this will work for your needs, maybe not.  If the parent's scaling is changing often, you might need to put the de-scale line... inside the animation loop (constantly checking parent scaling changes).

 

Now, about your other question... wanting .alpha not inherited by child:

 

If you look at line 16 and 17, you can see that material.alpha is not inherited, nor is .visibility.  So, that's good, right?    PARTY!!!  Good luck, sorry for the multiple subjects happening in the thread. 

 

 

 

Hi Captain Wingnut,

Thank you for your suggestions as usual always pertinent and helpful.

I try to apply  it with  PlaneMatTexture.drawText.alpha=1 (line 35) but it even if accepted in compilation seems not to work... or maybe did I not good understand what you explain (surely the case! )

 

http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1HWUSR#2

 

 

About scaling to maintain the size of the written text :

PlaneMatTexture.drawText(text, null, 400, "bold 50px Segoe UI", "yellow", null); (line 36) maybe can I change 50px in 50*ratio where ratio is a number to compensate the scaling of the panel?

 

 

Another question is how can I change the direction of the text in the panels?

My goal is to have a panel of a defined small height that goes from the sphere to each box where I can write a text;.... there is no drawRectangle (height,width,color, etc..) so must use CreatePlane

In the case in my demo the direction of the text is perpendicular to the direction of the panel (red sphere to box), but I want a text with same direction as the panel, I try every kind of rotation of the panel but did not find one that suit to my desire, it makes you feel dizzy !

 

Can you  maybe shed some light on the subject?

Another question , when I put the bilboardmode on (line 146,147), the little panel under the boxes don't stay at the right place, jumping in background any idea why ?

Thank you in advance to look at my questions!

Alby

[Wingnut]

Alby, you changed your name?!  Such influence I have, eh? 

 

I did a little experimenting. (actually lots)

 

http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#12ZRI0

 

- I changed all text planes... to "grounds".  Our CreateGround lets you build planes that have settable width and height.  That allowed me to build planes that better fit the text.

 

- I tweaked the dynamicTexture .vScale settings to make text taller (in two places).

 

- I removed billboardMode from the text under the pictures.  They are now parented-to the picture box, and therefore "ride-along" while the picture does its billboarding.

 

- I added .hasAlpha = true; for the green and blue text panels.  This allows us to use the word "transparent" in a drawText command... like the one seen in line 131 (enable that line, and disable the following line... for transparent backgrounds on picture labels).

 

- I BROKE your PlaneBetweenPoints function.... because... I am now using "ground" instead of a plane.  And I don't want to scale my grounds... because that stretches the text into ugly.  Maybe somebody can help us fix that.

 

But, if we think-of the "Art is Sh*t" label as a...

 

Pardon?  What's that?

 

Oh... ok... the label reads "This is Art".  My mistake. 

 

Think of the "This is Art" label... as a clone-able "sticker", that you can stick-to both sides (via parenting)... of a scale-stretched plane.  In other words... use the original PlaneBetweenPoints to make some green planes scale-stretch between the sphere and the boxes.  Don't put any text on THOSE planes.  AFTER you have made each "green plane span", paste one of those "This is Art" stickers to each side of it.  That way, you never stretch/scale the text, because the text is simply an unstretched ground-plane which is stuck to the sides of a heavily scaled plane (which has no dynamic texture, just green diffuseColor).

 

If you did that, each green span would consist of one (1) scaled plane, and two (2) un-scaled grounds with text on them.  You can clone those "This is Art" stickers by the thousands! 

 

In this demo, the green text spans are being scaled to the correct length, and it does distort the text somewhat, but not too bad.  The rotation/direction of the text is obviously broken.  (help?)  Maybe somebody can give us a quick fix in the lines 35-57 area.

 

Ok, that's what's I have done, Alby, my friend.  If you want your text unstretched, you have work to do.  Maybe you need to adjust your function.  Maybe now call it... ScaledPlaneBetweenPointsWithUnScaledTextStickersOnEachSide()  ?? 

 

Talk soon, good luck!  Ideas from everyone, welcome.

[Alby]

Alby, you changed your name?!  Such influence I have, eh? 

 

I did a little experimenting. (actually lots)

 

http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#12ZRI0

 

- I changed all text planes... to "grounds".  Our CreateGround lets you build planes that have settable width and height.  That allowed me to build planes that better fit the text.

 

- I tweaked the dynamicTexture .vScale settings to make text taller (in two places).

 

- I removed billboardMode from the text under the pictures.  They are now parented-to the picture box, and therefore "ride-along" while the picture does its billboarding.

 

- I added .hasAlpha = true; for the green and blue text panels.  This allows us to use the word "transparent" in a drawText command... like the one seen in line 131 (enable that line, and disable the following line... for transparent backgrounds on picture labels).

 

- I BROKE your PlaneBetweenPoints function.... because... I am now using "ground" instead of a plane.  And I don't want to scale my grounds... because that stretches the text into ugly.  Maybe somebody can help us fix that.

 

But, if we think-of the "Art is Sh*t" label as a...

 

Pardon?  What's that?

 

Oh... ok... the label reads "This is Art".  My mistake. 

 

Think of the "This is Art" label... as a clone-able "sticker", that you can stick-to both sides (via parenting)... of a scale-stretched plane.  In other words... use the original PlaneBetweenPoints to make some green planes scale-stretch between the sphere and the boxes.  Don't put any text on THOSE planes.  AFTER you have made each "green plane span", paste one of those "This is Art" stickers to each side of it.  That way, you never stretch/scale the text, because the text is simply an unstretched ground-plane which is stuck to the sides of a heavily scaled plane (which has no dynamic texture, just green diffuseColor).

 

If you did that, each green span would consist of one (1) scaled plane, and two (2) un-scaled grounds with text on them.  You can clone those "This is Art" stickers by the thousands! 

 

In this demo, the green text spans are being scaled to the correct length, and it does distort the text somewhat, but not too bad.  The rotation/direction of the text is obviously broken.  (help?)  Maybe somebody can give us a quick fix in the lines 35-57 area.

 

Ok, that's what's I have done, Alby, my friend.  If you want your text unstretched, you have work to do.  Maybe you need to adjust your function.  Maybe now call it... ScaledPlaneBetweenPointsWithUnScaledTextStickersOnEachSide()  ?? 

 

Talk soon, good luck!  Ideas from everyone, welcome.

 

 

 

 

Hi Captain!

 

 

A pleasant day today when I opened the forum... I found about what to eat (in 3d!) for the rest of the day (and maybe longer), really thank you, Wingnut, I appreciate your teachings, hoping not to be a bad student, we'll see!

You should write a book, babylon.js for the dummies!

Now I will carefully try to understand each instruction you use, I m still in the nursery 3d school, but I don't despair to reach very soon in the primary 3d school!

 

 

So no questions today, I  have first to digest your class (classy indeed!)!

 

 

 

Have  a good WE!

 

Alby

Ps : I find Alby more easy to articulate than Albruno, it spent less energy!... and as long people don't call me albi(noooo!), it's okay!

[Wingnut]

Thanks Alby!  There's nothing too fancy in there, and you are not the first to struggle with making planes that are properly sized for text.  CreateGround has handy parameters that work for us.  CreateGround(name, width, height, subdivs, scene, etc);

 

You had most of it in place already.  I just turned some knobs, and I made a bunch of assumptions about what you were building.

 

I could easily be steering you in the wrong direction.  And you still need a GroundBetweenPoints because I broke your PlaneBetweenPoints. 

 

I adjusted your indenting, too.  Proper indenting is rather important. 

 

There's another "device" that lives underneath a BJS dynamicTexture... called a context2D object (essentially, context2D is a 2D canvas, with LOTS of knobs and settings).  In your project, and in MOST BJS projects, you don't need to deal-with the context2D object.  But know that there is a whole other level of hell for dynamicTextures... should you decide that you like pain.  The context2D object is not a BJS object.  It is a browser object used by the dynamicTexture.  Thank goodness we didn't need to do battle with THAT thing.

 

You COULD scale/stretch a box... for the green spans, too.  Easy to put "This is Art" text panels on 2-4 sides of a stretched box, right?  Also, you will find that sometimes the font family needs to be chosen carefully.  I often find that tall narrow fonts work best.

 

Working with 2D text in 3D systems is not very easy for the framework, or for the people using it.  2D is an alien planet for a 3D framework.    Don't sell youself short, Alby.  You are working with a rather advanced project, and DOING GREAT!  Your scene is already real nice!  I can't wait to see it later, when you kick its butt thoroughly. 

 

Your last post sure looks goofy, though.  Did you REALLY want to quote my miserably-long post?  And did you want to type your reply inside-of the quote box?   I think you drive BJS much better than your drive its forum software.  hehe.  (Just having some fun with you, Alby - please don't be offended.)

[Alby]

Hi Wingy!

 

I understand now that "quote" means to highlight something that seems to be important, sorry for the "inconvenience", just thought it was a way to answer directly to the person who wrote a message!

 

Surely what you write is important for my understanding, but not sure for skilly ones it is, they already knows all what you patiently tries to instil in my goofy brain !

If you can "dequote", no problem and don't worry I'm not offended!

 

Again, thank you Wingy to grant  your time to reduce my ignorance!

 

Alby

[Wingnut]

Everything is ok, Alby, and you can edit your forum messages, if you wish.  No problems, either way.  You are free to do your posting however you please, and its ok with me.  I was just curious. 

 

Sometimes, when I post, my cursor gets stuck in a code area, quote area, or I can't get it to go below an added picture.  To prevent that, I hit a few ENTERS, then cursor-up, and then add my quote block, code block, or picture block.  (block = area)  Then I can easily cursor to below that block... because there are extra lines below the block... lines that i made with the ENTERS/up-cursors I did before making the block.

 

Difficult to explain.  Briefly, if I need to add a quote block, code block, or picture block, I hit ENTER 3 times, up-cursor 2 times, and make my block there, amongst the blank lines. 

 

You are NOT ignorant at all.  Not a bit.  Maybe just a little inexperienced, but I am, too.  We'll be inexperienced together, eh?  I am interested in your code/project... so I can get more BJS experience WITH you.  I suck knowledge from your creative project and adventures.    I'm a robber!  hah

 

If you want to see true ignorance, go read a few posts from the early days of The Wingnut Chronicles.  THERE you will see some serious ignorance.    As a matter of fact, you can see it in my recent posts, there, too.  I'm quite a newbie myself.

 

It takes a bit of time to learn the forum software.  I don't operate it very well.  I'm certainly no expert... not in anything around here.  But it does make me happy when someone can use something from my talk talk talks.  It gives me purpose in life. 

 

For webGL scenes, we don't need to be experts because BabylonJS framework makes things easy (in theory).  It's our magic toolbox of 3D toys.  Or is it our magic toybox of 3D tools?  heh

 

Did you try to get the "This is Art" ground plane to span between the boxes and the sphere, yet?  In the demo I did, they are 90 degrees incorrect. They are in the correct positions, but rotated incorrectly.  *shrug*

 

I haven't done any more work on that, yet.  I was sort-of hoping that some math/directional expert on the forum would show us how to adjust that part.  No volunteers yet, apparently. 

 

PS:  These "conversations" we have... might be boring to super-experts, but this forum is searchable, and many future new users can read our conversation and see the beginnings of your cool project... and learn what we learn.  We are building a knowledge repository, eh?  YOU are already a contributor to the framework!  Well done, Alby! 

[Alby]

Hi Wingy,

 

I think there are some different degrees in inexperience! I think mine is a little bigger than yours, don't you think, mister inexperienced? (I'm the best in that field!)

 

I did not yet plunge again in the demo, just a question of free time, but impatient to do it and playng sorcerer's apprentice !

 

Next step I intend to reach will be to put on each face of a box a different picture and text panel and with a key change the bilboard face I look at when I walk.

 

I'm in a way happy that you encounter that incorrect rotation, because I try too to rotate the text in my panel and it makes me fuzzy when I saw the result, my mathematical skill in 3d is a  very low (that's why I love babylon because you don't have to know to much about, except in some situation... as we see , let us pray for a skilly angel in that field! )

 

See you soon!

 

Alby

[Alby]

Hi Wingy,

 

I'm back as you see.

 

Life is not always a quiet river and I'm coming back from the Cap Horn,...

 

But I'm ready to plunge again in babylon waters with my life belt!

Just hope if I sink I will still count on you!

 

Ok, let's go to... back to the starting point!

 

Have a nice day!

 

Alby

[Wingnut]

Good to have you back, Alby!  I really like your BJS project because its very unique/different, including its purpose.  I'm just like you.  I use BJS because I don't need fancy math, yet its a great way to learn and play-with fancy math, if wanted.

 

I have a dream.  I would like to use BJS itself... to teach those "more challenging" math things.  Jerome's math things are really great, by the way.  His path/ribbon stuff is excellent, and he does great commenting and many informative playgrounds.  I have learned a ton from looking at his demos, with much more to come.

 

It seems to me that two things really stand in the way of understanding local/world transforms and quaternion rotations and the like:  1. Visualizing what's happening, and 2. Learning the terminology USED for that.

 

So, its probably time for the BJS Transforming Playground/Lab.  Of course, I will try to farm it out to someone who already understands transforms.  There are people nearby that could fix the orientation of your demo's text... in 10 minutes or less.  I worked on it for 90 minutes and realized I was just "feeling around in the dark".  When orientation things stump me like that, it just reminds me ONCE AGAIN... how much I (we) could use a transformation learning center (the transforming lab).

 

To me, there's 3 real ugly areas.  Matrices, quaternions, and vector3's when used as a "direction vector" (often with an "amplitude" which the Gods call "magnitude").  But it should be known that I failed high school Algebra 2 (a prereq for graduation) for three years in a row... and it eventually caused me to drop out of high school.  So, mathematics, for me, is my arch nemesis.  I WILL win, because I have a really cool visualization system now.... called BabylonJS. 

 

But, I'm 153 years old now, so I guess I better head for the battlegrounds and take care of business.  (Do you think I was subtle enough with my beg to Jerome to begin the BJS Transforming Lab for us?) 

[Alby]

So...Welcome to the club of people more than 150 years, Wingy!

 

I'm too part of it and my ugly monsters in math are the same as yours : matrice, rotation, and all kind of multidimensionnal geometries (two is enough for me).

 

I prefer empirism than theory, but it has some limits as we can see, theory is sometimes...needed...despite our secret wish

 

So if there is  some teachers or generous soul  for dummies in that field... with a few examples in addition ....

 

 

Let us  put a candel to saint Jerome : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome  ... maybe will he hear our call!

 

Ps: any resemblance to existing persons is purely coincidental!

[jerome]

Well, it seems I can see a candle far away in the dark ... 

 

I don't remind your problem exactly : is there a PG example somewhere ?

 

Don't expect to much from me... I don't know many things about BJS rotations, neither about local/word system swaping. I haven't been using them so far.

(and my excited 9 years old son is back home after one vacation week in Britain, this doesn't help for my mind concentration either).

 

But a new point of view on your problem may help ... perhaps

[Alby]

Well God hear us, Wingy! our candle was seen by our Math saint :  Jerome!

 

 

Thank you, Jerome to pay attention to our request!

 

I put the last version of what I intend to develop, corrected by Wingy, but with some problem we cannot yet solve because our lack of deep knowledge of rotations, quaternions, etc

 

Here are the result with comments of Wingy:

 

 --------------------------------------------------------

 

Posted 21 February 2015 - 09:12 AM

Alby, you changed your name?!  Such influence I have, eh? 

 

I did a little experimenting. (actually lots)

 

http://www.babylonjs...und.com/#12ZRI0

 

- I changed all text planes... to "grounds".  Our CreateGround lets you build planes that have settable width and height.  That allowed me to build planes that better fit the text.

 

- I tweaked the dynamicTexture .vScale settings to make text taller (in two places).

 

- I removed billboardMode from the text under the pictures.  They are now parented-to the picture box, and therefore "ride-along" while the picture does its billboarding.

 

- I added .hasAlpha = true; for the green and blue text panels.  This allows us to use the word "transparent" in a drawText command... like the one seen in line 131 (enable that line, and disable the following line... for transparent backgrounds on picture labels).

 

- I BROKE your PlaneBetweenPoints function.... because... I am now using "ground" instead of a plane.  And I don't want to scale my grounds... because that stretches the text into ugly.  Maybe somebody can help us fix that.

 

But, if we think-of the "Art is Sh*t" label as a...

 

Pardon?  What's that?

 

Oh... ok... the label reads "This is Art".  My mistake. 

 

Think of the "This is Art" label... as a clone-able "sticker", that you can stick-to both sides (via parenting)... of a scale-stretched plane.  In other words... use the original PlaneBetweenPoints to make some green planes scale-stretch between the sphere and the boxes.  Don't put any text on THOSE planes.  AFTER you have made each "green plane span", paste one of those "This is Art" stickers to each side of it.  That way, you never stretch/scale the text, because the text is simply an unstretched ground-plane which is stuck to the sides of a heavily scaled plane (which has no dynamic texture, just green diffuseColor).

 

If you did that, each green span would consist of one (1) scaled plane, and two (2) un-scaled grounds with text on them.  You can clone those "This is Art" stickers by the thousands! 

 

In this demo, the green text spans are being scaled to the correct length, and it does distort the text somewhat, but not too bad.  The rotation/direction of the text is obviously broken.  (help?)  Maybe somebody can give us a quick fix in the lines 35-57 area.

 

Ok, that's what's I have done, Alby, my friend.  If you want your text unstretched, you have work to do.  Maybe you need to adjust your function.  Maybe now call it... ScaledPlaneBetweenPointsWithUnScaledTextStickersOnEachSide()  ?? 

 

Talk soon, good luck!  Ideas from everyone, welcome.

--------------------------------------------------------

 

So the problem is we cannot rotate the text correctly so the text  is written from the sphere to a picture always readable (not backward) from the spectator... hope I'm enough clear!

 

If you could have a look to see how we could arrange it, you will be an angel (a step further than a saint! )

 

But it doesn't hurry, take your time, I' ve a son too, but he is 17 and very very often on his computer, so more easy to concentrate!

 

Any way thank you in advance for the time you will spend for us.

 

 

Alby

[Wingnut]

http://www.babylonjs...und.com/#12ZRI0  yep.  The text is in the correct positions... but we got some serious rotational problems, yet. 

 

@jerome - it is fine that you aren't an expert in rotations.  Alby and I will retain more of our self-worth that way. 

 

Deltakosh is nearby, too, and he is definitely a god of 3d transformations, but he MIGHT have baby poo on his hands and keyboard, these days.  Others are nearby, too.  But it would be nice if we ALL could learn transforms, easily, and then we could stop bothering the experts, and instead, BECOME experts.  That would be something, eh? 

 

So, yep, short term goal... fix the demo.  Long term goal, fix our brains, I suppose.  hehe.

 

I have no (real) job, girl, or children, so you can understand why my posts are so long.  I have no life, but I DO have available space for a life... should one come along.

 

What's that you say?  Playing in bands and selling pot to children ARE jobs?  Oh, well, then yes, I have a part time job or two.      There's not very many kids who smoke pot these days, though.  Most often, the kids re-sell it to their parents... with a HUGE profit markup.  heh.

[jerome]

let's clarify 

it is this PG : http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#12ZRI0 ?

you want the text "This is Art" to be oriented from left to right and the caracter not to be upside down from the user point of view

and you don't want these planes ("this is art") to be in billboard mode, but you want they their current orientation and position from the central sphere 

 

am I right ?

[Alby]

Hi Jerome,

 

I'm happy to have been enough clear in my explanations, it happens sometimes, yeah!

 

it is exactly what you describe, so that if we move around the "entity" the text will be always  readable from the user point of view... oriented from left to right

now thinking a bit further maybe best in billboard mode, so the text will be always  clearly readable from user point of view, is he above or beneath the entity.

 

But why not the  two options so we learn a little bit more about rotations, quaternions, and so on,

but only if you have time, Jerome, it is already very kind that you check our problem, thank you very much!

[Alby]

Hum, hum...

 

Rectification... I think I'm wrong with billboard mode : it will be a little difficult for the text to switch in this mode  if it is attached to the sphere and a picture,no? (because the plane or ground where the text is written cannot be perpendicular to the line determinated by the  user view point and the point of the plane or ground where he looks at - if I undersand well what is billboard mode!)...

 

So  .I just want that the text attached to both, will be readable from left to right wherever is the user point of view.... sorry for the mistake!

 

I'll by a dunce's cap!

[Wingnut]

  Maybe not billboarded for the text, but maybe two-sided.  Maybe 3-4 sided.    The camera won't go overly high or low, because there are beta limits on the camera to keep the billboard picture panels from trying to rotate. 

 

To get to the point, the only axis you would want to billboard AROUND... is x.  If you billboard around Y or Z, I think that will take the text out of alignment (won't be a 'connector' anymore).  So X (following an arc camera up and down on its beta)... could be billboard... but that beta limit on the camera might make doing that... unnecessary.  Who knows?  Its all part of the fun. 

[Alby]

Thanks for your explanations Wingy... it is a nice attempt to explain the situation to a dummy... I appreciate your effort, captain!

 

Now i'm trying to understand, but don't be desperate... it takes sometimes a long time: slowly but surely! That's too part of the fun!

[Wingnut]

  You give me more credit than I deserve.  I was thinking of ideas for the scene... and not really trying to explain anything.  I'm not sure I know enough about anything... to teach it. 

 

Let's give a name to that "connecting" between red sphere and pictures.  Let's name it a "stride". 

 

Our stride has good position, thanks-to the PlaneBetweenPoints function, but the strides need some kind of rotation... 90 or 180 degrees.  A "stride angle"?  Is that a good name for it?  Stride angle.  I like it.  

 

The upside-down text needs plane rotating or maybe adjusting of the wAng on the text texture. 

 

The backwards text needs 90 degree plane rotation, or two-siding.  (two text planes back-to-back).  (yawn)

 

Billboard mode will not fix our current stride angle problem.  It is a possible option for AFTER the stride angle is fixed (but maybe not then, either).

 

What we REALLY could use... is a SPECIAL lookAt() function for THIS application.  This special lookAt() would only activate... if the camera alpha angle hit certain values... based on right angles to any given text plane.  When it DID activate, it would flip the plane (reverse the text), left-to-right.

 

It would be a snap-rotation of 180 degrees around the Y axis, which is known as an x-invert, oddly enough. 

 

So, Jerome and/or other pro transformers... will try to fix our stride angle, first. (thx).  Maybe deltakosh will give us some hints, too, if he's not neck-deep in baby poop.  (He's been neck-deep in puppy poop for years, now, so he should be accustomed to it). 

 

I think this issue might have to do with "calculating an UP-vector" for the text panels, but I'm not sure.

 

Or maybe... "calculating a FORWARD vector".  I know the same amount about doing THAT. (nothing at all).    It is likely something like...

 

if plane1.getWorldMatrix().subtract(scene.getWorldMatrix() > 90 degrees... 

then rotate this plane 180 degrees around the y axis (x-invert).

else don't flip, or maybe un-flip.

 

Pathetic pseudo code, eh? 

 

You're certainly no dummy, Alby, so you can stop saying that about yourself.  You have not said any dumb things in this entire thread.

 

SO MANY others would have modeled a museum building and hung the art on the walls... but not you, Alby.  You present the art by building a solar system from it!  That... is unique and innovative, and cool.  And, it's not all that easy (as we have well-noticed). 

 

This is a different kind of Babylon project, and I can predict many uses for visualization like this.  It was no "dummy" that thought-up this "art galaxy" idea.  It was Alby, the innovative visualization-system designer, and I get to hang-out with him sometimes.  Pretty cool, huh? 

 

Another cool thing... is that Jerome uses a 3D "galaxy"-like map to visualize his network nodes, so he is uber-qualified to help us with this.  In doing so, he might use some of the learned things.... for his network mappings.  We got a fine team happening here, so far.  I hope it grows.  Jerome, could you please re-paste some urls to some of your network maps?  Thanks.