Problem with bGUI Text

[amarneethi]

I'm trying to include text for my app's interface, but as soon as I add the GUIText the camera points somewhere else and far away. But if you comment lines 96-98, it will work properly. I googled and found a couple of solutions but it didn't work for me.

Attached the source for reference.

production.zip

[Wingnut]

Not much activity happening in this thread, huh A?  Sorry.  I will DL the zip and see what I can find, today.  But don't anticipate a celebration and parade.    I am not a qualified bGUI pilot, and I have no mobile devices. 

Hope you're well, A.  We'll talk again soon.

[Temechon]

I downloaded the zip, I have to find the time to debug it  But I don't forget you !

[Wingnut]

Thanks T!  I managed to "bang-out" a playground version... using a stolen modified Suzanne that somebody left laying-around, and using a local texture in lines 28/29.  I also did some various scaling, positioning, and de-parenting.

http://playground.babylonjs.com/#1KKOZA#1

You might need to RUN it TWICE.  I really don't know what I am doing.  The text is way out in space... not sure why.

But notice line 71... layerMask.  Adding that line had an effect (affect?) on my home version of the issue.  It made the monkey display again.

Still looking and playing... learning to drive bGUI... a bit.    bGUI source is at https://github.com/BabylonJS/Extensions

I notice "LeaderBoard" is in that folder.  Is that Leaderboard Golf?!  Cooooool!  (ahem) 

[Wingnut]

Here's another.  http://playground.babylonjs.com/#1KKOZA#2

(like the last one, close the error and RUN it second time)

The original problem (in the zip) is...

  -- Turn on bGUI, Suzanne the Chimp... disappeared.

In early tests, I found that gui._camera.layerMask = 0; (line 72) caused Susie to reappear.  Wingy then made the brilliant deduction... that something was blocking something.  (just call me Sherlock Holmes).  SO, then, I decided line 71 should not use engine.getRenderWidth() and engine.getRenderHeight() for its width and height, and I, instead... shoved some smaller numbers in there.

Then, after doing an EXTENSIVE search of the entire planet... to learn the parameters of a bGUI.GUIText() call, I squared-up the text and the camera and the sphere... and got it all into alignment.  That's where I am at, now.  You can see that there is SOMETHING strange happening in this scene.

The layerMask code line still does something, too.  Activate it at will.  Also, the sphere is a backsider... created backside-out.  It also has no diffuseColor.  It also has an emissive color and texture.  Generally speaking, I haven't learned much... but maybe this latest playground will give some indicators of something.  Party on!

[amarneethi]

@Wingnut : Thanks buddy, I will check that and keep you guys posted!

[amarneethi]

I ended up using html elements as ui for the site for now @Wingnut check out the site and let me know what you think. Finally it's live . I will call it an alpha release, there's still a lot of tweaks to be done in terms of user interface, which I'm planning to do over the next 3-4 months

Site Link: retrocurator.com

[Wingnut]

Oh yeah, that looks and works GREAT, A-man!  Well done!

What great looking models, and all in the vintage pastel colors that we know and love!  Nice, nice, nice.

The models all start... facing away from us, though.  That sort-of sucks.  But I can cope'n'deal okay. (sometimes) 

Ok, so, are you going to store models of all the art-deco and other retro things... ever manufactured on the entire planet?  Got storage?  I would be willing to attempt to model some of those cool things.  I'm a huge fan of American Pickers (except I don't like the Valley Girl/High School Girl "I mean, it's like, I mean, like, and I'm like, and he's all..., and she's like, I mean" -crap.  That's annoying. 

On American Pickers, they find stuff that looks like your models, and they almost always buy it... cuz that stuff is hot hot hot, for resale.  But your site... no BS, no ads... just BIG FAT IN-YOUR-FACE gorgeous modeling (and a classy-looking unobtrusive GUI to click-around-upon).  The model gets almost all of the screen space (good thing)... and that lets them, and BJS... shine big.  Excellent!

Hmm, I loaded the site again, and now the models are facing me better... at the start of the rotations.  hmm.  I must have done a forgotten camera move during my first visit. 

I noticed one other "strange" thing about the ENDS (sides) of the radio.  As it rotates past the camera, notice how the white blocks in the reflection on the green material... shoot across the green material rather fast.  When those white-block reflections cross the gray material, they become narrow and go much slower.  I would ALMOST say that the gray material on the radio's back cover... has a different "reflection field-of-view" than the green material.  More concise, the white-block reflections in the green material... are a different size/scale on the gray material.  *shrug*  But maybe... it is because of the difference in width (side view).  The green material covers a wider area of the radio's side... than the gray does.  hmm.  Not sure.  Something looks odd, there.  Am I nit-picking?  Sorry.

I mean, it's like, dude, I mean, like... the gray and the green are not teaming-up and deciding what traversal-speed that the white reflections should travel-at.  The green thinks they should go fast, and the gray thinks they should go slower.  Weird.    No teamwork.  They each want to do it their own way.

Speaking bGui... (which we aren't any longer)... umm... do you ever think about how automatic rotating (such as that on your site)... might change speeds quite a bit... on various platforms?  I have noticed SOME of that... in my few years of doing this stuff.  Maybe we should build an auto-rotate that is based on scene delta-time... or maybe on date() milliseconds, or something.  When I upgraded my computer a few months ago, I noticed that all my auto-rotate demos... were spinning REALLY fast.  I had built them on a slower machine.  *shrug* 

[amarneethi]

Thanks for such a detailed post and kind words, I will answer them one by one.

The rotation and facing of the models away from the camera is a known issue, the thing is I'm not resetting the camera once the user rotates it. So it retains the camera position for the next model also. This will be fixed when I have a shiny new user interface for the site.

You are right about the different reflection field-of-view *smile* (you got an eye for detail). But the reflection only differs in terms of color and number of white blocks. The position of the panels and their scale is the same. It will be great if you can post some screenshots of the issue so I can what exactly you are referring to.

I have also seen such weird differences in speed, but here the rotation speed is tied to the renderloop (similar to your scene delta-time idea). So the speed will only slow down when the frame rate is lesser than 60 FPS and will not speed up more even if it is crazy fast machine.

I will check out American pickers, I have not seen it but I'm assuming its similar to pawn stars in history channel. Am I planning to make all the retro/art-deco models? I would like to, but it takes a lot of time to create those models and texturing them and shading. Right now I'm looking at roughly 25-30 models before the public launch of the site and your suggestions for models are welcome. I'm not from American culture / background so all that I have there is from Google and wikipedia.

[Wingnut]

Hi A!  Hey, sorry it has taken me so long to get a picture posted.  Here we go...

http://urbanproductions.com/wingy/babylon/misc/amar01.jpg

See reflection #1?  It ends... when it hits the gray rear panel.  It is "interrupted" by a thin gray line, and a wider gray line... in the #2 area.  At #3, I see a slight change of... something... between the front case and back case.  Is the back case slightly smaller diameter than the front case?  This could explain the dis-continuous reflection across the "seam".  It COULD be happening because the seam is not "flush"... and the rear case does a slight inward bend at the seam (a slight case-diameter change).  And, sorry for being off-topic... we are no longer talking about bGUI. 

All in all, this is what I see, and it's difficult to get good screenshots while it is rotating.    The reflection has a change of "continuity" as it crosses the seam.  Maybe this is perfectly normal, though.  Perhaps real-world things do this, too.  (I rarely pay much attention to real-world things).    Okay, party on!