MJW

Very interesting effect. It sort of looks like close-up photos of minerals.

In cases where the entire image has to be processed as a whole, it's often necessary to do a lot of processing in OnSetRenderInfo (or at least I don't know any other way). If a control changes while OnSetRenderInfo is active, is IsCancelRequested set so the processing can be aborted, or does that only happen after OnRender is called? My question is related to a comment by Rick Brewster, which says. I wasn't sure if that implied that IsCancelRequested was only set during OnRender. EDIT: Actually, I can think of some possible alternatives, such as setting a FirstTime flag in OnSetRenderInfo which is used in OnRender to initiate the entire-image processing. EDIT 2: I believe the answer to my question is Yes. I added a delay loop in OnSetRenderInfo which tested for IsCancelRequested and brought up a MessageBox if it was set. The MessageBox came up regularly when I changed the controls. So unless I made a mistake, or misunderstand something, IsCancelRequested is set in OnSetRenderInfo. (I certainly hope that's true.)

I've released Version 1.1. There aren't a lot of functional changes. The changes include. I fixed some relatively small bugs with how the height values are treated. One bug caused the merged height value to sometimes overflow from 1.0 to 0. Another sometimes changed the low bit, which made Make Unmodified Canvas Heights Transparent not work as well. Because BoltBait complained that there were not enough options, I added a new one: Scale Clipboard Heights by Clipboard Image Size. When enabled, changing the image size will also change the height, For example if the clipboard image is a sphere, enabling this option will make it remain spherical when the size is changed, instead of appearing to stretch out or shrink in height, because the height remains the same while the XY dimensions change. I reworded the command names, in most cases simplifying them. For example, Canvas Height Offset in place of Canvas Height-Map Height Offset. I also changed the order of a few. I replaced Window with Canvas. Instead of an option to multiply the Merged Height Scale by ten, I used the large range, and have an option to divide it by ten. I also increased the range to 2000. I made two changes which I believe are improvements, but about which I'll be interested in hearing opinions. First, I added colors to the sliders. The Clipboard Image sliders are green, the Merged Height sliders are red, the Window Height sliders are blue, the Clipboard Height sliders are cyan, the Antialias slider is orange, and the Shading sliders are gray. I hope it will make it a little easier to find the correct controls, but perhaps it's more distracting than helpful. The slider colors fade from the color to white, but I can as easily make them fade the other way, or make them constant colors. Second, I made the Mapping Displacement and Height Scale sliders non-linear, so that moving the sliders in the low range changes the values less than when in the high range. The idea is that a change from 3 to 6 makes more difference than a change from 103 to 106, so the slider should require a larger movement at 3 than at 103 to produce the change. I'm not sure if the advantage of better control in the low range outweighs the non-intuitiveness.

The title is fine. Exemplary, I would say. Unfortunately, based what I know about PDN, and on the response to a similar recent request, I don't believe there's any way to do that.

Thanks, BoltBait. (I kind of like the old way better, but I suppose there was a good reason for the change.)

In the CodeLap 2.0 release, one of the changes is: BlendOps have been changed from UserBlendOp to BinaryPixelOp. What is the distinction between them? I believe UserBlendOp is a subclass of BinaryPixelOp, but what is the significance of the change? I notice UserBlendOp has an associated class called UserBlendOps that provides a number of helpful methods, while PixelBlendOps is labeled as obsolete.

I'm not certain I understand what you want, but take a look at the Color Clearer plugin. It "removes" a selected color so that if the layer is blended (in the Normal blending mode) to a background of the removed color, the original colors will be produced. For instance, if you have a grayscale image and the selected color is white, the resultant image will be all black, with alpha values that will produce the original image when the layer is above a white layer.

Seerose, assuming you were trying to achieve the gridded look, it appears to me to have too much displacement. I suspect the Merged Texture Height is too high. It's an interesting looking result, nevertheless. (EDIT: I'm not sure if your comment, "I didn't quite understand it," is meant as a request for help to achieve the gridded appearance of my example, or is simply saying you didn't understand it, but now do. If it's the latter, you can probably ignore my initial comment on how to "correct" something you may not want to change.)

No. The sphere image should be in the PDN canvas; the grid should be copied into the clipboard. The Texture Merger will combine them using the selected Merge Method, which for my example is Subtract. EDIT: Thanks to Pixey for providing the answer in a more detailed fashion.

Much, much better!

Very well done! I like different aspects of each, but I think I prefer the first. Mostly, I believe, because the angle of the light adds a sheen to the surface.

Perhaps someone else can add the spacing if Drew can't. If it can't be fixed, I can live with it, but I find it quite confusing, particularly when consecutive entries use very similar colors.

I hate to ask Drew for eggs in my beer (which is both demanding and disgusting), but could spacing could be added between the SOTW entries? They all kind of run together.

The Object Align effects are still plugins, not built in to PDN. I think they ought to be considered for incorporation as standard effects. They're so useful, and it's such basic functionality. I could hardly do without them.

PhotoBucket being down brings up a question (which is probably best asked in another Topic, but it applies to this one at the moment). Because I was unable to upload my entry to PB, and I didn't want to miss the deadline, I used the upload-file Forum-comment feature, and then linked the image into my comment. That seems to have worked just find, but I was unsure if that was a proper thing to do. If it isn't (and probably if it is) I'll link to a PB version once it's back up.

Thank you. I'm happy it was useful.

PDN, except for my avatar Chat Noir cat, and the moon, which came for here. I really hate using a stock image for the moon, but didn't have time to create my own, and have it look like I wanted. (This is a file I uploaded here instead of linking from my PhotoBucket account. PhotoBucket is currently down. When it returns, I can edit this comment.)

You could try the HSV Eraser. It isn't the easiest plugin to use, but it gives quite a bit of control

Thanks, Eli! Very useful idea. I'm glad I asked.

Very impressive, Eli! The skull-mask height map is really well done. I'm curious about your procedure for constructing it. One minor suggestion. If before adding the color, you run Texture Merger's little buddy Texture Smoother, you can eliminate the waterline irregularities on the surface.

That's true, but the version that Maximilian could use on his outdated system is, I believe, VS Express.

That's a very nice result, lynxster4! It's also a lot different from anything I've posted, which is something I like to see.

No headache at all. I'm happy to help if I can.

Thank you, Maximilian! If you can install Visual Studio in some form on your system, I'll be happy to provide the VS project code. There are some things that use features not available in older PDN versions, but I think they can be gotten around without too much difficulty. Perhaps I will get around to making 3.5 versions myself, but I've been busy with other things. I wish you'd get a newer system. Refurbished computers are very reasonably priced. I realize, though, that there are often more pressing needs for money. (I believe Visual Studio Express is what you'd need. It's a free download from Microsoft. As far as I can recall, I don't use any features that aren't available in older versions of C#)

Pixey, I'll give it some thought and try to figure our what could cause that problem. Are you using the two height maps from this comment and this comment? If not, make sure you do. The only way I could get anything close to your result was to slightly shift and scale one of the height maps.