KPM 1.0

[olivier at linuxgraphic.org]

Hi to all,

I never could use KPM 1.0 before because I couldn't compile the CVS version
before I finally install KDE 3.2. So now I'm playing with the official 1.0 and
I'd like to congratulate you all for the work done.

I think the way the radiosity options and the photons options are separated
under seperate items of the global settings is clever and very satisfactory.

I also appreciate much the wire-preview of the height fields, and I'm waiting
with much impatience the preview of CSG operations.

I'm quite disturbed by the way UV coordinated now appear for the SOR, lathe and
prisms objects, in a tabulated form, but I suppose I'll get an handle on this
soon.

What is very cool with the isosurface is that in the formula field you can make
use of declared parameters (like radius or any other geometric parameter). I
had fears about this but they are now dismissed. In a general way, is it
possible to input a declared parameter in any field of any object or only in
the isosurface formula field (not at home right now, can't check if this is
possible). What is "bad" with the isosurface is that we can't preview it on
screen... wouldn't be easy to return on the wireframe view a frontier line of
the isosurface for parametrized z coordinates? That is, if you use a sphere
formula, you trace the circle computed at height =0 (bottom), at height =0.1,
... up to height =1 (top) so that you get an approximation of the shape of the
sphere by stacking circles upon each other. Of course, the pace (in percent)
between each layer should be parameterizable (say a pace of 10% is .1 in the
appropriate field) as preview in pseudo-wireframe can get long enough, I
suppose...

I hope all of this makes sense.

I took pleasure in discoveing the new eatures, even if I hadn't time to play
with each of them. But I really thank the coders for all the work done.

PS: linuxgraphic.org is back online. The fourth tutorial is available in french,
and should be also in english within a few weeks.

Cheers,
OlivS
http://www.linuxgraphic.org