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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sat Jun 24, 2017 2:20 pm 
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Gene, have you been able to make an outline-first CAM design? I'm testing out the new app on a piece of triangle-ish rough I have. When I try to make the trillion, I can easily generate a two-tier girdle outline that looks like it'll work for the stone, and I can make a P1 CAM tier...but when I try to make the P2 CAM tier that meets both the culet and the girdle line (i.e. when I try to make a girdle-levelling P2 that also meets the culet), there's no way for me to snap to that second meetpoint.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sat Jun 24, 2017 7:06 pm 
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Rej, Thanks for letting me help test this! This is an awesome program! Very easy to use. Just starting to try some designs and really excited about it. I printed the first design but did not see how I could label the facets, did I miss something or is that not an option yet? Does anyone know how to do this? Arya?


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sat Jun 24, 2017 9:57 pm 
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I am working on Arya's "Longer and Steelier" design, on the pavilion, I cannot figure out how to keep G1 and G2 as separate lines, it keeps combining them into G1. I have the design to work out just fine, only the instructions are off due to this. I absolutely LOVE the rendering and tilt performance. The graph on a rectangular cut is a little confusing with the different axis of rotation but being able to adjust the angles via Tangent Ratio is the coolest thing. Being able to put any design in and then tweak it is very easy and helpful. The mirror is a little different but easy once you get use to it. Very helpful! Enough playing for tonight. More fun tomorrow!


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sat Jun 24, 2017 11:52 pm 
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Sorry Alex, I'm still trying to figure out the app myself.

Rej, I sent you a hilariously massive email. I managed to break the PC version a couple of ways and there are a few features that should probably be added before release. Summarized highlights below :D



2) When using the "meet" button and the "lock" option, I successfully broke it. A LOT! Example:
G1: 90.00(94/02-22/26-46/50-70/74)
P1: 45.00(94/02-22/26-46/50-70/74)
Now, when trying to create a P2 tier that meets the girdle line...
P2: 43.00(94/02-22/26-46/50-70/74)
I slide the depth feature until the Meet marker appears at the girdle line. I click the Meet button and the new P2 facets snap to the girdle line. Now, I click Lock, and the depth slider disappears appropriately. However...when I'm sliding the angle slider, even on the Fine setting, the meetpoint of P2 at the girdle line doesn't actually stay locked. If I make the angle steeper, the tip of the facet slides away from the girdle line. If I make the angle shallower, the tip of the facet goes past the girdle line.

Something similar happened with doing the crown on a trillion. I made my C1 facets, then I tried to make C2 girdle-levelling facets. I could make those and snap those to the girdle line, but when I try to lock those so I can adjust the angle, any kind of angle adjustments will instead make that C2 facet move in the Z direction, obliterating the girdle.

After I've clicked Meet and then clicked Lock, for some circumstances that I can't narrow down yet, if I so much as click once on the angle slider, the facet will jump randomly to a new depth.

The odd thing is that when I'm copying your SRB example, the Lock feature works perfectly fine.

3) I can't seem to figure out how to make a CAM. There are two methods I normally use - generate a multi-tier girdle outline, then make a multi-tier culet-centered pavilion that defines the depths of those girdle facets, or randomly make a multi-tier pavilion and then create girdle facets with a level girdle to generate a random girdle outline.

A) Girdle outline first
I'm making a trillion with girdle facets at the 02 and the 05. I have my girdle outline. Now I create a P1 tier, 43* at the 02. When I try and establish a P2 tier, I can use the Meet-Lock buttons to snap this new tier to the culet point. Now, I use the fine angle slider to try and get the P2 facets to hit that meetpoint of (G1, G2, P1). The Snap-To-Meet marker appears...but there's no way to make use of it. I basically have to blindly assume that my current fine angle slider setting is accurate, because there's no way to actually use that meetpoint information.

B) Pavilion first
So many things went wrong here that I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong. Will figure it out and email you later.

5) When I use the Lock feature, it doesn't lock the facet to a meetpoint as I change the index setting. For example, I'll cut a pavilion facet that meets the girdle line, but then if I try to see what happens when I change the index setting the facet doesn't stay locked to that meet.

6) I'm not sure how I did this, but I somehow created a tier on a fractional index without ever going into the X/Y scaling feature.

FEATURES FOR FIRST RELEASE:

1) For the "snap-to" meetpoint feature, there's a critical feature that's missing from this release - from the main window, we can't manually click on a meetpoint in the Design mini-window, then click the snap-to-meet button. The automatic estimator is great, but if I have 4 potential meetpoints all nearby it's a lot easier to be able to just click a point then click the "Meet" button. Without this feature, it's pretty slow to make designs.

2) Another critical issue - I do a lot of designs where a single facet tier will meet two unique sets of meetpoints. The app has no way of handling that. In GemCAD, I can select two meetpoints and an index setting, and it will create that new facet with whatever angle makes it work.

4) There's no drag-and-drop option for rearranging the instructions yet. When I have a 30-tier design for a 25mm stone, it's a massive, massive asspain to manually move stuff. Am I just missing something?


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sun Jun 25, 2017 2:51 am 
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Rej

I am trying to create a design for a pavilion of a specific size.
I figured out how to create a 3 sided girdle, and make it larger, as well as delete the original girdle. I cannot find out how to see the size of the resulting triangular girdle.? I see how I can make it bigger, but I do not see how to measure it.

I did crash the program once, when deleting the original girdle, but have not successfully duplicated it, so that does not help much. I will continue to try and duplicate the process.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sun Jun 25, 2017 7:21 am 
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Decided to post this after catching up with this thread and testing a few things listed here, namely points 2, 3, and 5 on Arya's post, plus documenting a few of my own. That way you get even more points of data for bugs that can be reproduced!

Other than those issues and my antivirus being cagey about allowing execution of the program, it's fairly stable and doesn't freeze unpredictably or cause performance issues. Even rolling the Arkenstone around only gives 0.5FPS in the window, which isn't too bad.

Using the program, the integrated renderer definitely cuts down the time needed for tweaking when designing step cuts.
But the lack of functioning anchors means you can't really create anything else without knowing the angles beforehand.
That being said, creating a decent Asscher cut in 15 minutes with only angles to work off really shows how much the work speed is improved when you consider a similar cut takes 45 minutes or more in GemCAD with the same information given.

The same goes with Single and Mirage cuts, as you can position tiers for maximum scintillation without having to switch between two programs every time a facet width (not angle) needs to be checked and adjusted. Without comments or a way to measure edge length though, they won't be very reproducible though, but that should be added when tier comments are implemented.

Having a raytrace that adapts as you design is definitely going to make learning how facets affect patterns quicker for everyone, it is something that makes it better than GemCAD for these designs.

Custom light maps also work well, and giving a design opposite material and lightmap colours doesn't cause any issues. I haven't had any issues with the settings in the "Render" window either, even with designs with nonsensical optical values like RI>4 and negative indexes.

Also, if your trilliants look a bit flat in this, turn up the number of bounces, in Jeff's Signature 4 going below 5 seems to get rid of those dark lines produced by girdle reflections. In one of my more extreme designs it doesn't show most of the reflections until you hit 8 bounces.

Here's an imgur album with some renders from the program and a pair of screenshots regardling the "lock" issue: http://imgur.com/a/HItZt


Things I've noticed:

1. The raytraced render often won't render the higher resolution image when reset or left sitting still for a while when the "Render" sub-window is maximised. This seems to occur after adjusting the Colour Density and High Resolution bars, and I can't really prevent this outside of making max and min render the same resolution. It doesn't take very long to render at what would be the high resolution either, so the instructions might not be getting through.

2. The "nearest meet" reticle (the gray dot for me, yellow on the video) lacks contrast and has an ambiguous center. GemCAD has a similar problem with its circle reticle which has sometimes caused design errors when dealing facet junctions where many facets intersect. My advice would be to use a sprite for the reticle with a single transparent pixel at the center bordered by filled pixels to isolate it. The lack of hue is a mystery to me however.

3. "Lock" won't anchor on the chosen meet correctly, causing angle changes to cut through the culet and girdle when attempting a CAM preform, and in the case of one barion oval, cutting away the entire cone when trying to level the girdle. I'm not sure where it is anchoring those planes...

4. If I type a large enough number into the "Symmetry" and "Mirror" boxes it instead changes to the higher whole number it can provide. This can be a bit annoying when trying to type in a number while the current value isn't highlighted but is more of a UI issue.

5. Changing Index Gears causes the program to become unresponsive when "Round to the nearest index" is UNTICKED. It'll load fractional indices and even custom Index Gear numbers fine, it's just changing the Gear and keeping the fractions that is a problem. GemCAD uses a modular arithmetic system for Indices to prevent issues with this and with overloading the index box.

6. Light return graph data doesn't display, just putting this here to say that it isn't working for me either.


If this gets finished, it will make history in the faceting field alright... :D


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sun Jun 25, 2017 8:49 am 
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Faceting 101 by Arya wrote:
Gene, have you been able to make an outline-first CAM design? I'm testing out the new app on a piece of triangle-ish rough I have. When I try to make the trillion, I can easily generate a two-tier girdle outline that looks like it'll work for the stone, and I can make a P1 CAM tier...but when I try to make the P2 CAM tier that meets both the culet and the girdle line (i.e. when I try to make a girdle-levelling P2 that also meets the culet), there's no way for me to snap to that second meetpoint.

Well, in the image I posted I was able to get the first barion facet located and the second only because I knew the angle and index. Every attempt to select a first meet point an then lock it wouldn't work. However if I did follow along in the video Rej provided, locking the meet point did work in that type of example.

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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:14 pm 
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I've definitely broken the meet/lock function a few times too, where it seems to lock but snaps to a different tier as soon as the slider is shifted. Particularly when the meet lock is on a pavilion girdle meet, it snaps to the opposing crown meet in many cases.

That said, I've also a H&A look round with sapphire angles instead of for the typical diamond. I used the meet/lock and it worked perfectly, and in combination with the live render so I could exactly what was happening - that's a function I'd been dreaming of. It worked flawlessly in that case - which also included a locked meet at a pavilion/girdle meet.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 11:19 pm 
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Firstly thanks very much Reg for this app.
Been super busy lately so haven't done much with it apart from playing with the rendering.
The color setting is much easier and a better match than that found on Gemray. Fantastic to get real time feedback with the rendering as you change something.
Not too sure what the "color density"does. Is it light being absorbed by the stone - so the more bounces a ray takes it will appear deeper?
How does the "clarity" do it's job. Does it actually put obstacles in the stone or is it just blurring the image?
My version came without any extra light models in the folder. I do hope these will be available. Most of my buyers are sitting in an brightly fluorescent lit office with a one or two windows behind them, with a daylight table lamp if needed. Just a hint!
Love the way that my gemcad designs were already waiting in the open folder with the face design showing.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2017 7:05 pm 
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Richard Burton wrote:
Firstly thanks very much Reg for this app.
Been super busy lately so haven't done much with it apart from playing with the rendering.
The color setting is much easier and a better match than that found on Gemray. Fantastic to get real time feedback with the rendering as you change something.
Not too sure what the "color density"does. Is it light being absorbed by the stone - so the more bounces a ray takes it will appear deeper?
How does the "clarity" do it's job. Does it actually put obstacles in the stone or is it just blurring the image?
My version came without any extra light models in the folder. I do hope these will be available. Most of my buyers are sitting in an brightly fluorescent lit office with a one or two windows behind them, with a daylight table lamp if needed. Just a hint!
Love the way that my gemcad designs were already waiting in the open folder with the face design showing.

Colour Density is the equivalent of "tone" for gemstone grading, Whereas GemRay combined this with Hue and Saturation, all of these are separate in GemCut Studio. I don't know the equation used, but it dictates the proportion of hue and lightness that is applied to the light ray, as it travels a given distance through the stone.
The amethyst material is a pretty good match for the super dark Uruguayan rough when this slider is maxed out.

Clarity is a bit hard for me to determine, but it seems to do a similar thing to Colour Density, except it tints the rays towards white, before any hue or tone changes occur. Most of the time it just looks like a white mask being placed over the render, but if you have a design that does have reflections that take a very long path inside the stone, it will turn them white-ish (to the point of whiting out a design that relies entirely on them). It doesn't make it blurry or any of the effects you would expect from less clarity, it only affects colour.

You can also add your own images to the Lighting Models folder and they will show up next time you start the program, provided they are 256x256 pixels in size. First thing I tried was a quartered square as an attempt to model pleochroism, but the lack of a way to rotate the stone around the z axis means I have to rotate the light map instead, with another program, which gets tedious.
Making accurate ones from photos may be difficult, but geometric ones are easily done if you design them as a cylindrical projection, then convert it to what I am assuming is equidistant azimuthal projection using some kind of map software.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 12:53 pm 
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Shifter55 wrote:
Clarity is a bit hard for me to determine, but it seems to do a similar thing to Colour Density, except it tints the rays towards white, before any hue or tone changes occur. Most of the time it just looks like a white mask being placed over the render, but if you have a design that does have reflections that take a very long path inside the stone, it will turn them white-ish (to the point of whiting out a design that relies entirely on them). It doesn't make it blurry or any of the effects you would expect from less clarity, it only affects colour.


This is my experience as well. It seem to be more of a clarity slider from transparent to "rose quartz" and the like. A general haziness instead of actual inclusions or debris.

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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 2:29 pm 
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Notes: For testing I decided to model existing cuts, so I started with Nicks_Formee12 for Sapphire
I decided to cut it from scratch instead of opening the file.

I may open the file soon and see what it decides to do with indexes at the same angle that are not a single symmetry.

When trying to cut a rectangle. I took the following steps:
Select G1 – edit tier, change symmetry to 2
G2 appears in the cut order but it is after P1.
NICE TO HAVE: It would be nice if it were after G1

Adjusted G2 to try and get L/w of 1.190 but could only get to 1.5 (which is fine)

BUG So Selected G1 and it kept going back to 4 symmetry
I then tried to get l/w correct by selecting G1 and G2 to adjust
BUG: When I select G2 and edit, G2 disapears from the table, but G1 shows up with all indexes, some repeated. In the past, if I did the edit ore than once, the same thing happened, but I ended up wit multiple repeated indexes.


I adjusted G2 and cut, I ended up with repeated indexes on G2.


I had problems getting the indexes I wanted. I was shooting for 3.10,12,20,12,28,36,38,45,51,58,60,68,72,76,84,56,93
I
NICE TO HAVE
It would be VERY NICE to be able to see the indexes as you changed the symmetry.
I was trying to get a specific set of indexes to repeat a design and found it very hard to do.
After editing P1 several times, I settled on symetry of 2, and decided to cut the next set at P1
BUG: OI could set the angle, and depth, but the cut button never turned yellow.
I had to shut down and start over.

FOUND MY ERROR:
CUT does not show up until you adjust the depth until it has something to cut..... my mistake..... easy to get use to, no need to change...... I will continue to work on this design.


I will send am email with screen prints, right now have to get to a DR apt, and do not have time to post to ingur and insert here. BUt wanted to get this in.

I will try this again, and try a series of cuts at 42 with symmetry at 2 or 4 to get the indexes I want.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sat Jul 01, 2017 9:26 am 
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Hi everyone, I'm back from the gem hunting trip. Found a few cutters and the family had fun so I'm happy.

First HUGE thanks for the feedback so far. I'm still making sense of all the comments, emails and PMs and putting together a list of things to do. I appreciate everyone taking time to help out.

I'll be requesting more info from a few people on certain points but I think I understand most of what's been raised so far. My TODO list has grown quite a bit from the issues I *thought* I had left.

Again, thanks for the testing, I'm glad to finally have it in people's hands. Now begins the fun part of fixing things, putting out new builds and narrowing in on a release!

Has anyone incorporated the app into their workflow for anything yet (TanRatio maybe?). I know there are still issues for building new cuts from scratch, just curious... :D

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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sat Jul 01, 2017 1:45 pm 
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Rej wrote:
Has anyone incorporated the app into their workflow for anything yet (TanRatio maybe?). I know there are still issues for building new cuts from scratch, just curious... :D

Renders and scaling optimization. MUCH easier in GemRej than GemRay. Also optimizing for dispersion. Since I can't get the actual designing part to work well I haven't started using it for identifying trouble areas and modifying them on the fly, but that's an upcoming future task.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:52 am 
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connection problems sorry about a dupe post


Last edited by wilsonintexas on Mon Jul 03, 2017 1:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

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