Message #800

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Records: Now with moar images!
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:05:18 -0800

Dear Cubists,

Remi did a great job adding images and reformatting the simplex page. Go
to the records page <http://wiki.superliminal.com/wiki/MC4D_Records> and
click on the pictures to see the results. I had sent him some
suggestions which he found useful and which he suggested I send to the
wider group, so here they are below.

Thanks Remi, and thanks in advance to anyone who decides to help him!
-Melinda

Capturing good shots is probably the trickiest part because there’s no
exact measurement of quality. I like the idea of using all length-3
images for the thumbnail images on the records page, and I like to use
the same image for the larger one on the coresponding puzzle page (just
scaled into a smaller space), but maybe that second part is not the best
idea because the small image needs to make clear the construction of the
puzzle, and that means that it might need to be viewed nearly straight
down one of the major axes, and that doesn’t always make for the most
exciting shot in a larger scale. You can therefore choose whether you
want to use the same image on both pages or make two different ones.

First, make the MC4D window larger than needed and then adjust view
scale until the image fits nicely in a 500 pixel square. This is also
probably not a requirement but could be good to standardize on this
size. It may be hard to know when you have the scale just right at the
beginning but you’d be able to adjust it later.

Next, make the background color white, turn off shadows & ground, make
sure "allow antialiasing" is on, and adjust the other sliders to more or
less match the images that I posted.

Next, find a good orientation for each new model. It may help to save an
empty log file at this point because it will save your orientation which
you’ll want to reuse for each puzzle length.

Next, with MC4D as the window with focus, and with none of the stickers
highlighted, use Alt+PrintScrn to capture a snap of it into your system
clipboard. Then paste it into your favorite image editing software. I
like IrfanView.

Next, crop the image to 500x500. If the model does not mostly fill the
frame, then adjust the view scale and try again until you get it right.

Next, save the image in PNG format and named with the Schlafli symbol &
length but without spaces or brackets.

Next, to get similar snaps of different edge lengths, you can edit your
log file with a text editor to change the puzzle length on the first
line and reload into MC4D.

Now upload the images to the wiki.

Now, using that image, insert it into the records page the same way that
I did for the {5}x{4}. Installing this one first will serve to let other
people know that you will be reformatting the corresponding puzzle page
so that it will be unlikely that someone else will duplicate your work.

Finally, edit the puzzle page. This step will require a lot of work
because I changed the formatting a lot by moving the tables around,
deleting sections, arranging the content for each section into invisible
master tables, and adding the images. Just try to follow my pattern and
see if that makes sense. Be sure to use the "Preview" button a lot until
you get good results. You can save intermediate results when they look
good, such as before adding images. You can also delete changes if you
need to, but it’s better to avoid needing to do that if you can.