[Plugin] Control points ver. 1.6.

thomthom · 15 May 2013, 22:01

Since so many of these plugins are garbage

You might want to consider that people who spent their time on these plugins offered them for free. They might not be perfect, they might not be doing what you had hoped what they do - but please show some respect.

kirill2008 · 16 May 2013, 05:38

@thomthom said:

but please show some respect.

Thomas thank you for that
But actually vojo is right: it would be nice at least to mark (in some more or less obvious manner) things, which became obsolete. Erasing posts or attachments or any other erasing maybe an unsafe action, but marking is totally OK and it would inform a user an obvious way.
As for this particular thread, I edited the original post to inform people that it became obsolete and provided a link to a new thread and I'll do the same thing with all other obsolete plugins I posted here right now.
I think the good karma is to be responsible for what I've made no matter how I offer results of my efforts (for free or not)

rv1974 · 16 May 2013, 06:03

Kirill thank you for your efforts- very promising tools
P.S. I'd make your videos X1.5-2 times faster, будет намного веселее

kirill2008 · 16 May 2013, 07:17

@rv1974 said:

Kirill thank you for your efforts- very promising tools
P.S. I'd make your videos X1.5-2 times faster, будет намного веселее

Thanks for your compliment!
Initially I used speed acceleration for some of demo-videos, but then I've been reported, that accelerated speed confuses viewer (even when I mention about acceleration somehow in video description). So I decided at last not to mess with speed of a footage in order to demonstrate actual processing performance.
It would be more funny if I'll make plugins work faster instead of making videos faster

rv1974 · 16 May 2013, 08:01

@kirill2008 said:

.
It would be more funny if I'll make plugins work faster instead of making videos faster

Верной дорогой идете, товарищ!

vojo · 16 May 2013, 12:37

Krill....I did download thru the store but since one can not interrogate a script in RBZ format....I downloaded the old one to understand (buried deep in the code is a "pwr*3" statement which, on its face, would throw the whole thing off...ie. pwr= 1/3 might get somebody a 1:1 ration).

As far as my cantankerous tone, it really comes down to this "if somebody is going to dance, then they need to pay the band" Meaning if somebody writes a plugin (free or not) that does not provide the advertised function, then they should accept the criticism and scrutiny"

If a car mechanic offers to fix your car for free but instead really messes it up, are you happy since it was free???? No....free or note, you agreed to have the mech fix it. If I wanted to become an auto mech so I could fix it myself (since the other mech messed it up), I would. Sort of the whole fallacy of open source: Caters to the group the loves to spend hours tinkering with their car vs using the car to get somehwere to get something else done. I dont know about you guys, but even if I wanted to spend hours working on my car, who has that kind of time.

thomthom · 16 May 2013, 13:07

Report bugs and make suggestions - that's all good, just watch the tone of your language and be courteous.

kirill2008 · 17 May 2013, 13:44

@vojo said:

pwr= 1/3 might get somebody a 1:1 ration).

Not sure I got you right, but actually ruby interprets the above code sequence such a way that "pwr=1/3" is literally the same as "pwr=0".
You may try that at ruby console by yourself.
$fraction made of integer values and fraction made of float values$
In case if you need to enter somewhere a fractional value you should use floating point values.

And I must say that actually all plugins I made provide all 'advertised' functions. I never claim any feature unless it actually present (I have no idea why should I do it).

vojo · 18 May 2013, 19:16

point taken about fixed vs floating.

The real point I was trying to make is that, on the face of things, the pwr factor should not be scaled by 3 or 3.0 since that throws everything off. I.e. since power not documented, a user may try 1.0 thinking he gets a 1:1 movement (or at least see that the movement is some linear relationship between the control points...for example, I could see that if the right control point moved and left does not, some sort of half way or avg be done). However, if there is some correction value inside the plugin, its pretty hard for the end user to figure out the value of power that corrects for that so he gets some sort of predictable behavior (the way this is now....set power to some number and get some movoement...do it again and a non intuitive less movement....do it a third time and virtually no movement)

driven · 18 May 2013, 22:29

@vojo said:

since one can not interrogate a script in RBZ format....

it's just a 'zip' by any other name. change .rbz to .zip open with your zip tool than open in an editor... john

kirill2008 · 19 May 2013, 06:41

First of all I have to agree that the plugin is poorly documented, far from intuitive and obsolete after all... I just have to say that initially my intentions were purely good. I wanted to make a tool that may help to model something more complicated than just a basic geometry. It was not intended to make anyone mad or frustrated. Vojo, please accept my apologies for having failed to meet expectations.

@vojo said:

I.e. since power not documented, a user may try 1.0 thinking he gets a 1:1 movement (or at least see that the movement is some linear relationship between the control points...

Speaking specifically about the term "power" I must say I really was not aware about the fact it might be misinterpreted such a way. "Power" means literally "power" here in a mathematical sense (not a linear coefficient or a factor). Actually I gave some more or less explicit explanations here in this thread about how it all works earlier (about three years ago):

@kirill2008 said:

The second method calculates offset vectors lengths of each vertex according to distances from it to all control points. The degree of influence of each control c-point depends on <1/(distance^power)>. Power is an adjustable value.

You may check the original comment here: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=22709&start=60#p218438

In other words algorithm utilizes a type of deterministic method for multivariate interpolation with a known scattered set of points which is known as "inverse distance weighting" (IDW): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_distance_weighting
Plugin interpolates offset value (support of rotation and scale transformations were also added later).

Anyway I highly recommend to stop discussion at this point, because discussion of an obsolete plugin is a kind of pointless to my mind.
Everyone else who was confused please also accept my apologies for not informing about the fact that this plugin has become obsolete at a time.