Imagine Object Path Editor Manual Written by Darran Williams April 1996 DISCLAIMER ---------- THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, NO WARRANTIES ARE MADE, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. IN NO EVENT WILL I, DARRAN WILLIAMS, BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING FROM ANY USE OR MISUSE OF THIS PROGRAM. Distribution ------------ This program is PUBLIC DOMAIN. You may freely distribute this program as long as the following files are distributed with it. IOPEditor (Program File) IOPEditor.Info (Program 4 Colour Icon) IOPEditor.Guide (AmigaGuide Documentation) IOPEditor.Guide.info (AmigaGuide Icon) IOPEditor.txt (This Documention) IOPEditor.txt.info (Text file Icon) IOPEditor.Install (Install Script) IOPEditor.Install.info (Install script Icon) MagicWB/IOPEditor.Info (Program MagicWB Icon) MagicWB/IOPEditor.Guide.Info (AmigaGuide MagicWB Icon) MagicWB/IOPEditor.txt.info (Text Doc MagicWB Icon) Acknowledgements ---------------- I would like to acknowledge the following companies for their continued support of the Amiga and any copyright information. Imagine is copyright Impulse Inc. HiSpeed Pascal is copyright Hisoft. Amiga is copyright Amiga Technolgies. What is it ? ------------ The Imagine Object Path Editor allows you to change the paths of Brushes and Textures assigned to an Imagine Object without the need to go into Imagine's Attribute requester to change every individual path. It allows you to change individual paths or globally alter all paths in the File. The program can cater for objects saved from versions 2, 3.x and 4 of Imagine. What it does not do. -------------------- You can only change the path of a brush or texture. You cannot change the name of the brush/texture or it's attributes. In order to do that you must go into Imagine and use the attribute requester. You cannot change the version of an object file. An object loaded as a 3.x object will be saved as a 3.x object. If you want to convert the version up load the object into Imagine and resave it. The Object will always be saved in the version of the program being used. You cannot downgrade a version. Apart from loosing information why would you want to ?. Note: Because of changes between versions of Imagine. Imagine 3 (for instance) will not recognise brushes and textures assigned to an Imagine 4 object. It probably wouldn't load anyway (I've not tried), as I expect other changes have been made to the TDDD format other than the Brush and Texture Chunks. Advice on Setting up new Objects -------------------------------- My advice to anyone creating new objects would be to assign a logical device to the directory where the object, brushes and textures are then use this device (volume) name to select the brush or texture. This way if the objects and or brushes/textures are moved only the assigned path need be changed not the object, and this program is not needed. Personally I use Project: which points to a subdirectory containing all my projects, objects, brushes etc. Why write this program? ----------------------- This program was written to save me a lot of time and effort when transferring Imagine Object files about, especially those that either originated off the PC or from one of the numerous CD's available. Apart from labouriously identifying which parts of the object had textures or brushes, complicated objects could have 100 or more textures and brushes, all of which had to be individually changed in the Attribute editor. Also in some 3.x versions of Imagine error messages would appear when in the Attributes requester if the path could not be found which was very annoying (thankfully this feature appears to have been changed in version 4). As most of the brushes or textures are almost always in the same directory I wanted a way of globally changing the paths. I also wanted a quick way of amending the paths so that it could be copied to a PC. I couldn't find a program that already did this so I decided to write one myself. So Here it is. Requirements. ------------- An Amiga. Workbench 2.04 or Above. The program holds the whole file in memory so the minimum would be the size of the file + about 200k.(A 1MB file requires about 1.3MB of memory. The requirement goes up about 1K for each brush/texture). The program currently works with TDDD Files saved from Imagine versions 2, 3.x and 4. I cannot guarantee that it will work with any later versions. This program has been tested on an Amiga 1500 with 5MB ram and an Amiga 4000/030 (50MHz) with 18MB ram. How to Use it. -------------- Click on the IOBEditor Icon. Initially you will be presented with a title window. Select Open from the menu or click on the Open button and select the TDDD File you wish to open. The program uses the standard ASL filerequester. If the TDDD File contains brushes or textures then you will be presented with the path summary list. The List View shows all the unique paths of textures and brushes in the file. Typically there will only be one path displayed but if brushes and textures have been seperated into different directories there will be more. The two methods for changing paths are as follows:- 1. Globally change the paths of all Brushes and Textures. 2. Change indivdual paths of Brushes and Textures. 1. Globally change paths for all Brushes and Textures. ------------------------------------------------------ Initially you are presented with a summary of all the unique paths of the textures and brushes assigned to the object. By changing one of these paths you are affecting all brushes and textures which use that path. Steps to change the path. 1. Select the Summary Path List with the Cycle Gadget. 2. Click on the path to be changed in the Path List. 3. Click in the New Path edit box. 4. Either amend the path by retyping or use the Browse Button to select a path with the standard ASL directory requester. If you make a mistake then pressing the Reset Button will reset the path back to the old one. 5. At this point only the summary info has changed the individual paths are still the same. To save the changes click on the Save Button and enter the object name. By default it is set to the original object name with an extention .new. WARNING: DO NOT overwrite your original, you can never be sure that something will not go wrong during a save. Make backups and check that the new object is as it should be before disposing of the original. 6. There is also an Update Button. This updates the paths in memory ONLY so that you can go into the detailed list and change individual paths without saving the file first. N.B. Once the object file is saved the path list is not automatically updated. You will need to reload the saved object to update the display. PC USERS: If you want to change the path to PC format make sure the path contains a '\' otherwise the program assumes an Amiga path. Add a '\' to the end of the path if it does not contain one. 2. Changing an indivdual path of a Brush or Texture. ---------------------------------------------------- This time the list box displays the Object Part Name and brush/texture name. The old path is listed under the list box as well as the new path. Steps to change the path. 1. Select the Detailed Path List with the Cycle Gadget. 2. Click on the brush/texture from the List box. The old path will be displayed below. 3. Click in the New Path edit box. 4. Either amend the path by retyping or use the Browse Button to select a path with the standard ASL directory requester. 5. To save the changes click on the Save Button. Note that there is no Update Button because individual paths are updated in memory immediately. The Update Button is useful if you want to change all brushes and textures except one or two. You can go to the summary path list, select the path, amend it and then click on update. This will amend all brushes and textures with that path. Now click on the Cycle Gadget to display the detailed list. Each brush/texture with the changed paths will now show the altered path in the New Path Box when selected. Select the brushes/textures which were going to remain unaltered and change them back to the old path either by retyping the path or simply pressing the Reset Button. Now click on the Save Button and select the new filename. Gadgets ------- Path Cycle Gadget - Changes list view between a summary of brush / texture paths and a detailed list of all paths for each indivdual brush and texture. Path List View - With the Summary option this lists all the unique paths used within the TDDD File. With the details option the list contains the object part name and the brushes /textures assigned to it. The path is listed below the list box when an item is selected. New Path Edit Box - New path of Brush/Texture. Initially set to old path from file. editable by user. Browse Button - Selects a new path from a requester list. Reset Button - Resets the New Path setting to the original path. Save Button - Brings up save rquester to save file. Update Button - Updates the new path setting of individual brushes/ (Summary Only) textures in memory, so that the settings appear in the Detailed list. Cancel Button - Exit Program. Technical --------- The program recognises TXT2, TXT3, TXT4, BRS3, BRS4 and BRS5 Chunks as being the chunks in a TDDD file containing texture and brush information. All other chunks are stored in memory and saved back out unchanged with the exception of some size changes to the DESC chunks and TDDD header. Only the path names are changed within these chunks and therefore all other information pertaining to the brush or texture will remain unchanged. A new file specification is expected for the Windows 95 version of Imagine, when it is released I may consider finishing the PC version of this program and also update the Amiga one (If version 4 can read 95 files). Other Information ----------------- Comments,bug reports,suggestions can be emailed to me at the following address:- 101656.2143 @ Compuserve.com (Darran Williams) Future Improvements ------------------- This program has been tested on a wide range of object files and so far I have not hada problem except when I ran out of memory on a 1MB Amiga 1500. The following are ideas I have on improving the program which I may implement at a later date. Other suggestions are welcome. Sizeable window. (Some paths are too long to be displayed in list box) Selectable Font. MUI version. Ability to delete brushes/textures from the object file. Ability to change the short name of Brushes/Textures. (Imagine 3.2 - 4) @EndNode