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    [Plugin] RayTrace & RaySpray

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    • L Offline
      Lobster
      last edited by

      Thanks Tig,

      Will be useful to me i am sure.

      Regards

      Sam

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      • TIGT Offline
        TIG Moderator
        last edited by

        In v8 the 'raytest' method is flaky and it is used by these tools... BUT a fix is promised for MR1...

        TIG

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        • F Offline
          flowheimer
          last edited by

          I just discovered RayTrace/Spray today; I was searching for a plugin with just this sort of functionality and this appears to be the only one of its kind.

          If I may offer some feedback:

          I'm using it in Sketchup 8.0.3117 and am encountering some odd behaviour.
          For some reason, using RayTrace, sometimes a ray will bounce, and sometimes it just stops short of the next plane, even within a fully enclosed volume. As far as I can tell there is no consistency to this behaviour and thus no telling how many bounces (if any) a ray will perform before abruptly terminating mid-flight.

          Any ideas?

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          • thomthomT Offline
            thomthom
            last edited by

            Does it happen in SU7?
            There is a bug in the raytracing function in SU8.

            Thomas Thomassen — SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
            List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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            • F Offline
              flowheimer
              last edited by

              @thomthom said:

              Does it happen in SU7?
              There is a bug in the raytracing function in SU8.

              It seems to work in SU7.
              Guess I'll use 7 till it works in 8.

              Thanks!

              fH

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              • TIGT Offline
                TIG Moderator
                last edited by

                An impending maintenance release for v8 might help with ray-tracing...

                TIG

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                • M Offline
                  mjm6x9
                  last edited by

                  This is just the plugin I've been looking for!
                  I work for a dedicated acoustic consultancy firm and this is incredibly useful for small room acoustics projects.
                  I've several ideas on improvements, but just want to know if you are going to be developing this further in the near future?
                  Or what would be the possibility of buying the existing code from you and looking to develop it further ourselves??

                  The things I'd like to see developed are:

                  1. Specification of number of reflections in RaySpray (1st, 2nd, 3rd order etc)
                  2. Different coloured lines to display reflection order (e.g. 1st reflection blue, 2nd reflection green)
                  3. limit RaySpray to particular rotation angle, i.e. currently it runs through 360 degrees but could it be set to only run through 90 degrees)
                  4. Would it be possibly to highlight the reflecting surface when using RayTrace in order to easily establish which surface you are reflecting off (this is difficult to visualise currently)
                  5. Possible option of setting specific reflecting surface (maybe using Layers) so that reflections only occurred off these surfaces when using RaySpray

                  Look forward to hearing from you

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                  • B Offline
                    BrooksL
                    last edited by

                    Wow TIG - I've been looking all over for a tool like this for a couple weeks! [I avoided the keywords ray trace because it turns up lots of results for rendering]

                    I need such to tool to look at angles of reflection and reflected angles for laser beam vision systems with mirrors - because figuring the angles manually can get quite tedious! Thanks!

                    A few bug/issues I'm finding with V1.2 20100326 - using in SketchUp 8 Pro 8.0.11752 -
                    Sometimes a ray will not reflect; the second point selection was an intersection of guidelines on a plane, but it wasn't reflecting from that point until I deleted the existing guides and guidepoints in that area and re-drew them (the original guides and points were indeed on the plane).
                    I don't see the magenta preview ray.
                    Seems to use a lot of CPU resources to during point selection - noticeable lag in following the mouse, but maybe that's just the SketchUp api.

                    With RaySpray;
                    The cursor inference point indicator is not showing up.
                    Some of the rays do reflect -- and stop when they hit an original sprayed ray -- and original rays stop when they hit a reflected ray. (sample file attached)

                    Still, this is a REALLY helpful plugin! Thanks, TIG!

                    [to help others find these helpful plugins, some additional keywords: Reflected Angle, Reflected Ray, Angle of Reflection, Beam Reflection, Beam Reflect, Reflection Guide ]


                    RaySpray V1.2 erratic in SketchUp 8.0.11752

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                    • L Offline
                      lydfa
                      last edited by

                      Great plugin!
                      Thank you very much.

                      Cheers,
                      Dennis

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                      • Z Offline
                        zlitalien
                        last edited by

                        TIG, this has been a great tool to use! I'm wondering if there's a way to make the ray auto adjust in real time if you move the object its reflecting off of?

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