Rotating objects does not align?

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DreadKatak
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Re: Rotating objects does not align?

Post by DreadKatak »

Oryan77 wrote: I think the problem has been solved. :shock: It may not be possible to "fix" the resizing issue when sizing the objects in MT. MT isn't actually manipulating the pixels when it resizes, which is why it looks funky when zooming.
I successfully verified this! My images were 250x100, so I changed them to 250x250 and had no alignment issues (though I spent an embarrassing amount of time setting up the actual tokens to rotate properly [but they looked beautiful the entire time!!]).

Thank you so much for this! For any future readers:

The golden rule is to size your door images as a square (you'll still want the actual non-transparent pixels to take up only a small portion of actual canvas, of course).

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Re: Rotating objects does not align?

Post by Phergus »

I didn't realize that this knowledge had gotten lost somewhere along the way. If you search way back early on in some of Dorpond's posts you would find discussion of door images and properly orienting the door imagery within a square box such that rotating them maintained alignment. I think there used to be a sticky post on this somewhere but maybe not. It's been years.

I'm not sure what Wolph's door macros are doing that they don't work with any properly configured door image. The macro function setTokenFacing() works correctly with all of the door images I posted except for #1 which is broken by design and #6 which was also intentionally designed to illustrate what happens if you don't get your door pixels centered.

I don't use oversized images for my doors or other decor objects. They are only as big as they need to be though they may be 2x or 3x map resolution. Objects with huge transparent areas around them make it hard or impossible to make use of the Note fields on objects to convey info to the players. This image shows a typical dungeon room for me.
Dungeon Room
Room.png
Room.png (1007.81 KiB) Viewed 321 times
Every object has it's own bit of information for the players.

If the door from the hallway was 2x2 grid squares it would cover up the table and chair to the left unless I made sure to force it below them. Moving and arranging oversized objects in tight confines is also a pain.

In any case, if the discussion has brought to light the information needed so that folks can get their doors rotating properly then that's great.

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Oryan77
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Re: Rotating objects does not align?

Post by Oryan77 »

DreadKatak wrote:Awesome! I'll give it a try now! I am glad you came back to check on this. It annoyed the hell out of me as well!
I'm glad I wasn't the only one bothered and dealing with this. I gave up on it until now.

BTW, WAY off topic, but I see that you're in Santa Clara. I'm over in Fremont. You don't happen to know anyone looking to join a face-2-face D&D game do you? We just lost 2 longtime players that moved away and we're looking to fill the seats at my house. It's an ongoing campaign and a hybrid of 3.5/PF rules set in the Planescape setting. We're about 9th level. No experience is necessary. We just want enjoyable people to play with that won't rules lawyer, powergame, or be disruptive. PM me if you know anyone interested in another game. We're looking for two players. :D

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DreadKatak
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Re: Rotating objects does not align?

Post by DreadKatak »

Oryan77 wrote: BTW, WAY off topic, but I see that you're in Santa Clara. I'm over in Fremont. You don't happen to know anyone looking to join a face-2-face D&D game do you? We just lost 2 longtime players that moved away and we're looking to fill the seats at my house. It's an ongoing campaign and a hybrid of 3.5/PF rules set in the Planescape setting. We're about 9th level. No experience is necessary. We just want enjoyable people to play with that won't rules lawyer, powergame, or be disruptive. PM me if you know anyone interested in another game. We're looking for two players. :D
Unfortunately not. There's a GameKastle in Santa Clara with active tabletop players though if you want to risk recruitment from there. I'm looking for a player, myself, to round out my Starfinder party.

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DreadKatak
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Re: Rotating objects does not align?

Post by DreadKatak »

Phergus wrote: If the door from the hallway was 2x2 grid squares it would cover up the table and chair to the left unless I made sure to force it below them. Moving and arranging oversized objects in tight confines is also a pain.

In any case, if the discussion has brought to light the information needed so that folks can get their doors rotating properly then that's great.
That's a darn good point. Can you please recap the basics on proper setup on a new door object (one that doesn't have to be transparent square). I am not familiar with just using them as you have. Mine are all based on standard token sizes (upscaled by one size so that they fit the grid in the correct location).

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Re: Rotating objects does not align?

Post by Oryan77 »

Phergus wrote:I didn't realize that this knowledge had gotten lost somewhere along the way. If you search way back early on in some of Dorpond's posts you would find discussion of door images and properly orienting the door imagery within a square box such that rotating them maintained alignment. I think there used to be a sticky post on this somewhere but maybe not. It's been years.
Just to clarify, because I get the impression you still think we are referring to a different issue and I don't want anyone reading this thread misunderstanding the problem. We were not having issues with doors "rotating" properly. That was never the problem.

It's always been understood that the objects need to be squared in order to rotate along the correct axis.

The issue has to do specifically with "aligning" double doors and using the animated door macro from the BoT. We can get the doors to rotate all day long just fine. However, double doors will not appear to be aligned properly when closed if the original png graphic is not squared.

If I was to set up your Door, Wooden 2" in your above example to animate as a double door using the BoT macro, neither of your doors would align correctly when closed. You don't have them as squared png files. What I was doing (apparently bad) was to take the door like your "Door, Wooden 2" and resize it within MT as a medium or large sized object in order to make it squared. As a double door, that's bad and the two doors won't align. Sure, they rotate perfectly. They swing open as expected. But when they are closed, they don't appear perfectly lined up.

The solution is to resize the bounding box (or canvas area) in Photoshop to be squared and then bring them into MT. We should not rely on the MT resizing object feature to create medium or large sized squared doors. That's bad. Although, if the original graphic is a squared png file, then resizing to medium or large will still work just fine.
Phergus wrote:I don't use oversized images for my doors or other decor objects. They are only as big as they need to be though they may be 2x or 3x map resolution. Objects with huge transparent areas around them make it hard or impossible to make use of the Note fields on objects to convey info to the players.
I prefer having my objects higher resolution than my maps and size them down within MT so that when you zoom in on the MT map, they don't degrade their quality. This is completely different from making a large bounding box and as you point out, having a big bounding box around the graphic accomplishes nothing except getting in your way. But, you have to have a large bounding box around the door graphic if you want to avoid the issue we are discussing in this thread. No other graphics will have this problem unless you are using the animated double door macro.

Still, as you point out, the door object will get in the way of the other graphics when it has a large bounding box. To deal with this, I always keep all of my moveable objects (in game objects that might physically be moved) on the object layer (chairs, crates, barrels, handheld objects, etc, etc). Objects that probably won't be moved (rugs, tables, beds) go on the background layer. So I put my door graphics on the background layer since I use the BoT switches (placed on the Token layer) to open them. If there is still a static object near the door object that I might want to access but can't if the door's large bounding box covers it, then I make sure the door object is "moved to back" so it is behind other objects.

So, my graphics are all sized like in your example. Except for my animated doors. They have a large squared bounding box in order for the BoT to function properly when animating them. If you are not using the BoT animated door macro, specifically the double door macro, then none of my comments in this thread are relevant. Your posts are still helpful to remind users how to create a door graphic and have it properly rotate, but that is a separate beast than what I was trying to problem solve.

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Re: Rotating objects does not align?

Post by Phergus »

DreadKatak wrote:Can you please recap the basics on proper setup on a new door object (one that doesn't have to be transparent square). I am not familiar with just using them as you have. Mine are all based on standard token sizes (upscaled by one size so that they fit the grid in the correct location).
First I should point out that I don't use BoT to rotate doors. Somewhat rarely I will use a macro to do it but generally I just click on them and use shift-Mouse Wheel to rotate. They are always aligned because I put them on the map aligned.

The test doors 2 & 3 are an example of the configuration of my doors. Those don't have the shadows and other decoration of the ones I use but the principle is the same.

The key is just getting the door imagery properly centered within the vertical dimension of the overall image. If the door imagery is 20 pixels thick not counting any doorknobs, spikes, or decorative bits and those decorative bits stick out 8 pixels on one side then the other side will need 8 pixels of padding making the total height 36 pixels. Width of the overall image is just the width of the door times 2 assuming you want it pivoting from the edge. All the transparent padding is straight out of the end of the door where it will most often be on top of a wall and not in the way.

None of that applies of course if you are relying upon snap-to-grid to get the doors positioned on a grid boundary. Then you pretty much have to use square images that are constrained to some even multiple of the grid size (2x2, 4x4, 6x6, ...).

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Re: Rotating objects does not align?

Post by Phergus »

Oryan77 wrote:Just to clarify, because I get the impression you still think we are referring to a different issue and I don't want anyone reading this thread misunderstanding the problem. We were not having issues with doors "rotating" properly. That was never the problem.
As I understood what you had posted, you were suggesting that rotated images were somehow becoming "misaligned" or otherwise distorted such that an object placed next to a copy of that object that was rotated 180 degrees (so as to make double doors) did not "line up". Much of the early discussion implied the problem was a bug in MT which is not the case.
Oryan77 wrote:It's always been understood that the objects need to be squared in order to rotate along the correct axis.
Not true as a general case but for the purposes of this BoT macro it may be true because of something being done in the macro.
Oryan77 wrote:What I was doing (apparently bad) was to take the door like your "Door, Wooden 2" and resize it within MT as a medium or large sized object in order to make it squared.
I definitely agree that this is likely to cause issues unless the dimensions of the source image were integer factors of the grid size.
Oryan77 wrote:The solution is to resize the bounding box (or canvas area) in Photoshop to be squared and then bring them into MT. We should not rely on the MT resizing object feature to create medium or large sized squared doors.
Totally with you on that as well.
Oryan77 wrote:Although, if the original graphic is a squared png file, then resizing to medium or large will still work just fine.
Yup.
Oryan77 wrote:I prefer having my objects higher resolution than my maps and size them down within MT so that when you zoom in on the MT map, they don't degrade their quality.
To me this is one of the best features of MapTool. Independent resolution for map objects. I like putting in Easter egg objects that are only a few pixels across at typical player zoom levels that can only be fully seen when you zoom in a whole lot.

Anyway it sounds like you have a workable system for producing door images that will work with the animate doors macro so life is good. :D

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