mcjTracer ( The Line Thing )

by mCasual/Jacques

june 30th 2010

mcjTracer lets you display "ghosts" of objects and figures as wireframes or lines

Those lines are visible in the viewport and can be rendered in Daz Studio's Hardware / OpenGL render modes

The lines will NOT be visible in software renders ( though you could use post-processing ... )

NEW July 1st

mcjTracePath the companion script that creates paths for mcjTracer

http://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcgtracepath-for-mcjtracer

also, to make your animation life easier get the setInterpolation script

http://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/setinterpolation-for-ds2-3

Installation

you will find the plugin at the bottom of this web page in the "attachments" section

the file is mcjTracer.dll

"mcjTracer.dll",must be placed it in your daz studio 3 plugins folder

typically this is the folder : C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio3\plugins

you will also find the documentation you are currently reading in mcjTracerDocs.zip

First Example: A Simple Object

We have a sphere in our scene

Select the sphere;

in Daz Studio's "Create" menus, do a "Create New mcjTracer"

a mcjTracer object should appear in your scene

the mcjTracer can only be selected using the Scene Tab which can be made visible

using Daz Stuio's menus : View / Tabs / Scene

You can move , scale and rotate the mcjTracer object as you wish. Now here's the tricky part,

any change made to the object that was used to create the mcjTracer ( in this case the gray sphere )

will be replicated on the mcj Tracer.

here i created two mcjTracers based on the sphere, i moved them away from the sphere, and i scaled one to make it smaller.

Then i applied and animated a D-Form on the sphere, and as you can see the mcjTracers mimic the sphere.

Second example : a Figure

If you select a figure ( by double-left-clicking on the figure )

and create a mcjTracer, a ''ghost'' is created for the whole figure

That's 75000 faces being ''ghosted'' ! :)

mcjTracer's Parameters

mcjTracer has 10 special parameters

Show Edges

to show or hide the edges

Edges Width ( animatable )

note that the width is animatable,

if you want a stable edge width, set the edge width only once, usually at frame zero

the edges are the same width even if seen from a great distance

Edges Closed

For cases where the 'polygons' to ghost are long curves in disquise, we turn this to OFF

Edges Use Source Materials

By default the Edges are the same color as the edges in the object that is being ghosted,

but the mcjTracer also has its own material named "faces". You can turn "edges use source material"

OFF then adjust the color of the whole ghost

Show Vertices and Vertices Diameter ( animatable )

By default the vertices ( extremities of edges ) are visible but tiny. Here you can show or hide them.

In the image below i changed the Vertices diameter to 4

Vertices Use Source Materials

By default the vertices are the same color as the edges in the object that is being ghosted,

but the mcjTracer also has its own material named "vertices". You can turn "vertices use source material"

OFF then adjust the color of the whole ghost..

Here we see Aiko's hand with "vertices use source material" = ON

Treat Vertices As One Long Line

Sometimes the base object is a specially constructed object that defines a long curve, possibly hundreds of points

( A script named mcjTracePath will be made available soon, it produces those special objects )

turning Treat Vertices As One Long Line to ON lets us display those special objects correctly.

example, a 384 vertices long line

Percent Drawn, Start ( animatable ) and Percent Drawn, End ( animatable )

Sometimes the base object is a specially constructed object that defines a long curve,

possibly hundreds of points

those 2 parameters let us create animate how much of the curves are drawn

here we see the "Jacques" long line, displayed from Start=25% to End=75%

and here is an animation created with this method