@Simeon Thanks for the explanation on the lines. It makes sense now. As for the Group node, is it’s purpose so you can place multiple nodes on it and move them around as a group. If so, I noticed that if I have multiple nodes on it and keep moving it around in little steps, the nodes can eventually move off the Group node.
@Simeon, @John - found a bug. Playing with the file loading, which I like, all the relevant files for Shade are prominent whereas others are greyed out. That is with the exception of zip files, also possibly some text and ePub files which are bright white. I found an ePub/pdf file in the shaders example directory.
Also, tapping on some of the highlited documents resulted in Shade trying to load it and firing out an error.
@Simeon, @John - on reflection this may not be a bug. I have tried to reproduce it without success. When I open Shade it opens into a directory view, possibly because that is where I closed Shade from in its previous use.
When it opened up, it opened in the examples directory with the three level example directories present plus a book file ePub or pdf. Text in the top right in green is <Location Examples - but it is two separate action points - one for Location and the other for examples. Possibly a different colour here might help.
Trying to load the book file results in a Shade error in usual way - red text in output window, obviously due to incompatible file - but it is trying to read the file. Perhaps a check for a valid file header and dialog error window would be better here.
@Simeon One thing I noticed that I find kind of annoying. When I try to move a node, if I happen to touch a variable area inside the node, the node won’t move and I have to find a non variable area to touch. What would be nice is if I tap the variable area, it brings up the variable slider. If I touch a variable area and slide my finger, the variable should be ignored and the node should slide.
@Simeon, @John - just noticed an issue, may be it is due to my lack of knowledge but - I was playing with one of my shades and expanded the output window by dragging from top left corner. I ended up with the window filling the top half. On shrinking the output window it ended up centrally down the left hand side. Trying to duplicate this now. Is the output window moveable, and how do we return it/anchor it back in the bottom right corner?
@Simeon, @John - found out what I did. After loading my Shade and moving the components around I clicked on the install button at the top, followed by the top option. When I clicked on install the install options window appeared and the output window moved more central screen. After clicking on later the install screen disappeared but the output window stayed central. Trivial but suggests there is something not tied down in the install routines.
Anyone, just thought it could be useful to have an output display to check values generated by a Shade. You know like a little LED display for x/y/z, r/g/b or just a or b etc. Then I found get local variable, but can’t connect - error no local variables. Anyone know how to use this?
There’s now a Trello board for logging bugs — this will help ensure they don’t get lost in forum threads. I’ll try to capture everything from here but feel free to add, comment or do anything to the board.
https://trello.com/invite/b/KcQn3GhD/c8197f8f9a4e932469cd02440a505ed7/shade-feedback
@Bri_G Before you can use getLocalVar, you have to create a variable using createLocalVar. If you create several variables, you’ll get a list of variables to choose from.
@dave1707 - so can you set a local variable say a vector named pos and connect up in parallel to the output of the Shade to display the values generated from the Shade and display them in an output window. Not the pixel but the values of pos.x, pos.y and pos.z ?
Just a trace to help debug the shader.
iPhone X (first gen) gets pretty hot when running shade longer than a few minutes. is that normal workload?
Also it’s annoying that I can not move the canvas by two finger gesture, as nodes that are right under the finger move along too. Zooming is same problem: instead of zooming it does nothing when pinching over a node.
@Bri_G Other than setting a variable name to a value using set and getting that variable with get, I’m not sure what they do.
@se24vad I had the same frustrations with iPhone interaction. I think we’ll add a delay to node touches so that zooming and pinching takes priority.
@dave1707 they just let you clean up your graph a bit. You can just connect nodes together directly, but in a complicated graph you might want to segregate functions that write to a local variable which is then used by a separate sub-graph.
The interior mapping graph uses them a lot to create separate sub-graphs which implement the whole shader.
@Simeon Thanks for the info on the create and get. I wonder if it would be possible to create a group of nodes that do a certain thing that can be saved and then included into other shaders. Sort of like dependencies.
@Simeon Is there somewhere in Shade that shows the current version number of Shade.
@Simeon I tried the create and get nodes in the Checker example and it worked great. I disconnected the Checker Pattern group from the Colours group. In the Checker Pattern group I created a variable with the create node. In the Colours group I retrieved the variable with the get node and connected the output where the original connection went. So the 2 groups were disconnected from each other but the shader still worked. So using groups with the create and get nodes might be a way to eliminate a lot of connections on large shaders.
@dave1707 I think eventually we’ll have the ability to collapse groups into a re-useable nodes, but not for the initial release of Shade. We just want to get a very solid node-based editor out first.
Edit: good point on the current version number. Added it to trello
@Simeon - posted a note in bugs on Trello regarding repurchase vs purchased restore. Also need for info on preview window in the library window. To see this loaded sound demo shader (think it’s from @dave1707) which gives a white preview window, tapping on the preview window opens the empty library preview window.
Also just loaded one of @TokOut ‘s shaders and it fired up a shader error in the library window, with listings etc. Very impressive, if I understood the detail displayed I would be ecstatic - still a way to go for me.
Need to tap on the error message text to get the error message up, tapping on the preview window elsewhere resulted in the slider window scrolling up to overlay the error window. Then need to re-tap project window to close and error text in preview window to review the error text again.