© 2002 Winston Mitchell
Version 8.1 fixes the v8.0 problem that this article and accompanying materials was created to address. However, the fix provides only 1% resolution for the aspect ratio setting. Therefore, I have decided to leave this article on the site for those that need the increased accuracy that the accompanying materials provide and for those that for one reason or another do not wish to upgrade to v8.1
I have created custom, precision, materials to supplement the affected shaders. The scale field of the Arbitrary Wrapper material, instead of representing percent of a drawing unit, is absolute (1.0 = one drawing unit) and accepts decimal values from 1e-6 to 1e+6. Similarly, the aspect ratio field accepts decimals. A square image now has an aspect ratio of 1.0 instead of 100%. The "% sliders" are gone. Similar changes have been made in the Cylindrical Wrapper and Spherical Wrapper materials.
In this update (5/26/03) I have added a precision wrapped bump map shader. This allows increased resolution for the amplitude setting. In the new shader, an amplitude setting of .2 is equivalent to the old setting of 51 and a setting of -.2 is equivalent to the old setting of 49.
The nearby image is a screen shot of the Wrapping Tab of the Materials Editor using the Arbitrary Wrapper material. The three materials can be downloaded below. To use them, add the downloaded file to the v8 materials directory (typically c:\Program Files\IMSI\TCWP80\Program\Materials\) and load it into the materials system (Menu, Options, Materials, Load Materials...). Look for the file "Wrappers". The new materials will appear in the Materials Editor under the new category "Wrapped Images".
Please Note that this does not fix the problem in v8 but can be effective work-around for wrapping images. You can edit the new materials to your heart's content and they will not break. If you try to build a new wrapped material from scratch or using some other material as a base, the old v8 problem will still be there. Start with one of these and it will work.
Also Note that Henry's article "Image wrapping in TurboCAD" still applies except that you need to adjust for the change from "% of drawing unit" to drawing units. This also holds true for my tutorial on "Wrapping Images Around Whole or Partial Cylinders".
To create a new wrapped material, start with one of these and then use the "New" material button in the materials editor. Unfortunately, you are stuck with the category "Wrapped Images".
Download Wrappers
If you have questions or comments about or problems with any of the above, please post on the forum