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Introduction

This page describes a collection of software that extends the functionality of Art Of Illusion (hereafter "AoI"). AoI is a freely available 3D modelling, animation, and rendering package. It offers both a plugin architecture and a scripting feature, allowing 3rd party customization and enhancement. All of the plugins here are collected into a single downloadable file called telefishAOI.jar.


Contents

The current version of the jar contains the following utilities:

Status

The current jar is version number 2.7.2. If you have the Binocular camera filter, you have the latest version. What testing has been done on these plugins was against version 2.7.2 of AoI.
Version 2.7.2
This release includes the following changes:
  • New Binoculars and Scope camera filters were added.
  • All of these camera filters (except for the Text Filter) can now be controlled via pose tracks
  • The DXF Importer will now attempt to import some 2D CAD elements as well as the 3DFace elements previously supported. Note that the camera filter changes could cause problems for any scene files that were made with the old versions. The following should help:
    1. before updating the telefishAOI plugin, re-save the scene without any camera filters
    2. install the new plugin
    3. apply the new version of the filters as needed

    • Version 2.6.0
    This release adds the Spotlight camera filter.
  • Due to internal changes in AoI, this version of the plugin will only work with AoI version 2.6 and later. Likewise, previous versions of the plugin will not work correctly with AoI 2.6.

    • Version 2.5.0
    This release includes the following changes:
  • Due to internal changes in AoI, this version of the plugin will only work with AoI version 2.5 and later. Similarly, previous versions of the plugin will not work with AoI 2.5.
  • The Add Text camera filter now allows the user to specify a font size. Note that this change can make any AoI scene files you saved with the previous Add Text filter fail to load the scene cameras. Something like this should work around the problem:
    1. before updating the telefishAOI plugin, re-save the scene without any Add Text filters
    2. install the new plugin
    3. apply the new version of the filter as needed

    • Version 2.4.0
    This release includes the following changes as well as various bug fixes:
  • The Add Text filter now offers the option of using a transparent background, and will center the text. It also supports an input "script" file.
  • The Emboss filter now allows the user to configure the location of the "light source".
  • The DEM importer has been rewritten.
  • A new tool for creating a "mirror image" copy of a triangle mesh has been added.

    • Version 2.2.0
    This release adds the Highlight RGB and Add Text camera filters. It also offers an experimental option to try to repair imported triangle meshes in several of the file importers. Note that this feature can be very slow. The meshes generated by the Heightfield tool have also been improved.

    Version 2.0.0
    This release adds a few camera filters: the ColorEdge filter, the Emboss filter, and the Invert filter. It also improves the triangle mesh generation in several of the Importers. Note: due to internal changes in AoI, the camera filters included here WILL NOT WORK with the AoI 2.2. I'll post an updated version as soon as possible; stay tuned.

    Version 1.8.0
    UI code was revised to work with the new AoI release. This release adds a simple POV-Tree Triangle Mesh importer, as well as support for the AoI Scripts and Plugins manager. The latter provides a convenient way for the user to get and install these plugins.

    Version 1.7.0
    This release adds a simple ASCII DXF importer.

    Version 1.6.0
    A 3D Studio file importer has been added for this release. All of the importers (DEM, GEO, LWO, 3DS) have been enhanced to append to the current scene rather than generating a new one. Some work has been done to support 4-sided polygons in the Lightwave importer as well.

    Version 1.5.2
    A fractal landscape mode was added to the heightfield tool. General cleanup of heightfield tool.

    Version 1.5.1
    A simple heightfield tool was added for this release. This version generates triangle meshes from input images.

    Version 1.5.0
    A DEM importer has been added in version 1.5.0. Support for both standard USGS files and VistaPro files is included.

    Version 1.4.0
    A maintenance release, that removes some junk from the jar file, and cleans up the Lightwave importer. Note that the jar has been renamed to "telefishAOI.jar". If you still have an old klynn jar, ditch it.

    Initial Release
    The initial release includes an importer for Lightwave object files, and for VideoScape GEO files.
    The GEO importer seems to work with all versions of Aladdin 4D.

    Installation

    To use the plugins with your installation of AoI:
    1. You can get the latest version of the plugins here.

    2. Place it in the Plugins directory (folder) of your AoI installation

    3. Start AoI. The new translators should appear in your Import menu, the new tools should appear in your Tools menu, and the new filters should appear in the filters menu of the AoI camera.

    Of course, you can also download and install the plugins using the AoI Plugins Manager.

    Jar Contents:


    Sample Files

    Here are some of the files I used to test this release of the utilities.

    Credits and Copyright Info

    Some of the utilities included in the jar use "open source" code. See the source code files for copyright notices.
    Thanks to:
    Sun Microsystems. Parts of the LWO importer are adapted from the free Java3D utilities, for which Sun holds the copyright. The source to the Java3D utilities is available at Java.net under the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) License. My initial idea was to write a translation layer that would allow Java3D readers to be used with AoI. This turned out to be difficult in the absence of the Java3D libraries, so I abandoned that approach.


    Kenji Hiranabe, Eiwa System Management, Inc. for parts of the vector math library.


    Y Systems. The ycad library is used as the file reader/parser in the DXF Importer. The source code is available at the YCAD Sourceforge site.


    Gena Obukhov is the author of the excellent POV-Tree utility. Watch for a commercial version from Gena that will offer enhanced features, including the ability to export Wavefront OBJ files.