Hi everyone.

Just in order to keep Project Elephant's stuff straighten up a little bit, I created this new thread :

"Project Elephant's UNOFFICIAL Repository"
at http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=8197.1

I hope that it will be useful for everyone.

Best!

Hello,

I've started a documentation. Michael allowed me to use his Wiki-System. Many thanks for that. I hope the structure and infos are o.k. A lot of infos are missing at the moment, but it's a start. If you have ideas for improvements or find mistakes - let me know, or ask Michael to get an account and improve it by yourself.

http://moi3d.com/wiki/Nodeeditor

I hope it is in the sense/intention of Max.

Have a nice day
Karsten

Excellent!
Don't forget to speak about your modifyed Elephant!

I will make the French adaptation (but not with the Wiki - with a Web site, it's more easy for me)

Hello Pilou,

first the core - later the rest;-) I think it's more important to descibe the base system for someone want to start with. And it's not clear, which of the nodes I made are useful at the end (I hope at the end we will have only one mighty @'y'@). So I will make also my notices in the excel sheet.

Have a nice day
Karsten

Hi Karsten and good morning!

It was bound to happen and finally it did!!

Thank you very much for your work!!!

I think that now we are going into the right direction, in order to straighten up a all the (actually) messy things related to Project Elephant.

Your idea goes exactly in the same direction I wanted to take with my "Project Elephant's UNOFFICIAL Repository" thread,
that i created some days ago (http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=8197.1).

But IMHO using Moi's Wiki-System it's definitely the best thing!!

With your page, my "Project Elephant's UNOFFICIAL Repository" thread it's now totally useless, and it's for the best.

> "..If you have ideas for improvements or find mistakes - let me know"

Well, I think that could be a very good thing to replicate in those Wiki pages,
a section where anyone can easily seek and download all the various versions of Projects Elephant written right now.
A section similar to that I described in my "Project Elephant's UNOFFICIAL Repository" thread.

I'd like to suggest a standardized format for its entries :

########################
- (<Version Code>) Project Elephant version : <Versione Name>
- downloadable at <Download Url>
- Support files :
     - <Support file title 1>
       <Support file Download Url 1>
     ...
     ...
     - <Support file title N>
       <Support file Download Url N>
########################


Where :

- <Version Code> : simply an incremental counter starting from 0 (zero)
   If you want, you can even get rid of this information.

- <Version Name> : for example : "Project Elephant v.0.85mod3"

- <Download Url> : a public link to download the ZIPPED version of that Project Elephant

- Support files : i think that this is the most important section.

  It should include anything useful to easily know and learn all the updates occurred in that version.
  For example it could include a list like this :
       - Latest changes
         <Url to a txt file>
        (I think that TXT format it's the best because it's readable by anyone.)
      - A video or some screen capture of the nodes in action
        <Url of the video or the pictures>
     - One or more .nod files (this is very important in order to easily learn latest functionality)
        <Url of the .nod file>
     - A TXT file that explain the .NOD files
        <Url of the .TXT file>

I sincerely hope that Max will appreciate all these efforts.

See you and thanks again Karsten.

Please, let me know what do you think of this ideas.

Best,

- Marco (mkdm)

Hi Karsten:
The wiki is an excellent beginning.
May I suggest "MoI" with capital "I", and "MoI's" for possessive form.
Humor: As a native English speaker, with slightly imperfect grammer after all these years of experience and school, I looked up "geometric,"
and "geometrical." "Geometrical" seems to be a wee bit more general. Your use looks perfectly acceptable to me.
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/171509/geometric-or-geometrical

- Brian

Hello Brian,

thanks for the advice:-) and I hope, I've made no bigger mistakes ...

Have a nice day
Karsten

Hi Max.

What do you say ? How are you ? I hope that all is ok for you.

I don't know if you followed the "Nodebundle for playing with nodes" thread, but much has happened lately regarding your Project Elephant.

Many new nodes, many very interesting and promising experiments, tons of comments and sharing about new strategies and new ideas.

At this point it seems that the true only limit of Project Elephant lies in the Moi's Api and its Javascript engine that cannot offer decent performances
for the elaboration of large (or even medium) amount of data.

What do you thing of all these studies and efforts ?
What about all your scripts and your Project Elephant with the upcoming Moi V4 ?

Are you planning to release a new official version of Project Elephant that will include an optimized version of all the most interesting nodes
written by the community ?

If you're there, knock once... :)

See you,

- Marco (mkdm)

Thanks Karsten for doing this.

I find it difficult to navigate as there's no "Table of Contents for Elephant" I can find.
Also, I would suggest adding examples if possible.

Hi guys! I'm back for a while.
Right now I'll check all questions you asked me.

But at first I'll write all my thoughts about future of this project.
It seems like evolution of this project goes exactly that way as I planned. I write an engine - you write a nodes.
This project is pretty close to v1.0 release. I'll try to finish it at this New Year vacations (here in Russia nobody works from 30 Dec to 10 Jan, so I'll have a lot of time to do it) ;)
I have no plans to make a significant changes in the engine. Here a list of changes which I plan to implement:
- Add Average mode to processInOut function (I didn't check Karsten's version yet, so I know will I write a new method or use an existing one)
- Add an external nodes autoload
- Improve .nod file loading in the case when some nodes are missing

Upd: Forgot to say, that I don't like idea about logical variables type. I think it will be much better to use numarray type for logical operations. X>0 = True, X<=0 False.
Anyway it's not a final decision. We can discuss it :)

Hi Marco

>> I don't know if you followed the "Nodebundle for playing with nodes" thread, but much has happened lately regarding your Project Elephant.
I read that thread from time to time, but I didn't tested any new written node.

>>Many new nodes, many very interesting and promising experiments, tons of comments and sharing about new strategies and new ideas.
I saw few screenshots from this thread. I really impressed. Great work! We need to add new nodes in the main pack.

>>At this point it seems that the true only limit of Project Elephant lies in the Moi's Api and its Javascript engine that cannot offer decent performances for the elaboration of large (or even medium) amount of data.
Yes, I know it. The current geometry engine is not fast enough. Let's hope it will be faster in the next version of MoI.

>> What do you thing of all these studies and efforts ?
It's great, I'll try to not break it in the next versions of this project.

>>What about all your scripts and your Project Elephant with the upcoming Moi V4 ?
Let's wait until first release of MoI v4

>>Are you planning to release a new official version of Project Elephant that will include an optimized version of all the most interesting nodes
written by the community ?
I can help to optimize the new nodes, and include them to the main package as external nodes.

Hello Max,

that's really good news. I will try to get a better systematic in the additional nodes then.
But next I will share a draft for vectors. I have used the data[3-5] for storing a location for the display. When I try to set scale to zero, it dosen't work!? The idea was to distinguish points from vectors. Anyway - With -1 it works.

Have a nice evening
Karsten

Keep the good work and see you soon the next year for the new opus! :)

Hi Max !!

I'm very glad to hear you again!!

> "Forgot to say, that I don't like idea about logical variables type. I think it will be much better to use numarray type for logical operations. X>0 = True, X<=0 False."

I agree with you. I think is useless add a new variable typ for this kind of data. Int num is more than enough.> "Yes, I know it. The current geometry engine is not fast enough. Let's hope it will be faster in the next version of MoI."

Hmmm...I fear that the bottle neck not lies on the strength of the geometry engine but on the Javascript engine and its execution environment.
I suppose that Grasshopper for Rhino is so fast because it's closely linked to the internal command pipeline of Rhino.
Let's hope that Michael in the next V4 will improve the overall performances of the script engine.

> "It's great, I'll try to not break it in the next versions of this project.
I can help to optimize the new nodes, and include them to the main package as external nodes."

Wow! This is really a great news!!

Max don't forget that a very important aspect of your Project Elephant should be also its documentation.
We (the community) are putting a big effort to find a good way to keep things organized and well documented,
for example with the new Wiki page, but I think that a direct involvement of you might be of great help.

Lastly, I have a question...just out of curiosity...

In all these years I didn't see on this forum, any 3D model created by you, but only (super excellent) javascript code.
So...I just tried to guess what's your job.
Are you a software developer specialized in mathematics ?

Thanks for all and see you.

Ciao!

<< in all these years I didn't see on this forum, any 3D model created by you

Max made some 3D models with each of its scripts! :)

These are my favorites
By Max Smirnov







etc...

Hi Pilou and good morning.

> "Max made some 3D models with each of its scripts! :)"

Yes, of course this is true, but I meant not "matematichal" models derived from his scripts but 3D Nurbs models in general
(concept design, charachter, and so on...)

Ciao.

It's very difficult to be on each sides! :)
The few that I know are Ofer Alon for ZBrush(even this one seems have now no many time for the artistic side
and Taron for Verve! :)
After some exotic like Curvy 3D, Neobarok...are more made for their conceptors! :)

Hello Max,

>>>>>Upd: Forgot to say, that I don't like idea about logical variables type. I think it will be much better to use numarray type for logical operations. X>0 = True, X<=0 False.
Anyway it's not a final decision. We can discuss it :)

I choosed boolean type, because your nodeeditor supports it and you have a clear separation between the datatypes (colors and connection behavior). But I think we can switch to numarray. Numarray is already available as additional output in the compare node, so the changes are not complex. I don't know how much performace and memory is lost by using booleans, but I think thats your minds behind your objection.

Have a nice day
Karsten