Hi,

As the title says, QuickSaveMaps is now freely available and open source as well. Following the model of bSurfaces for Blender, I have decided it is time to release this software for even less than ten bucks, that is - for free.

But dropping the price tag is not my primary focus - what I am more interested in, is sharing the source code and knowledge with the community. I spent a hell of a lot of time writing this baby and it would be a shame not to share the knowledge. Feel free to read and modify the thoroughly commented code as you wish.

If you have a cool new idea or if you coded a new feature you want to see in the main release, do not hesitate to contact me. This project is also hosted on SourceForge.

So yes, enjoy and spread the word. If there are any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Felix

PS: The title was ought to be: "QSM v0.6.4 - free and open source" but I am on a laptop where all keys are cramped together and I hit enter accidentally

Well, well I bought it not long ago Still has served me well.
I have one thing I did run into, saving with the CryTIF format did not work for me, don't know if anyone else has the same problem.

Excellent tool. I love the ability to save a layer set into the alpha channel automatically.

Can I install this over the free 0.5 version? Do I need to uninstall?

I hope someone can get this working in CS6, because the newest free version did not work with it.

Awesome stuff. I always wanted to know how you dealt with the UI

if your still open to working on features, i think i cool one would be to have a action, that adds the currently selected layer group to the list of maps to be rendered out.

or have it work using prefixes like vtools.

i really like the prefix thing in vtools, since i never have to open the configure dialog of vtools all i have to do is prefix things with "~" and they export as there own targa's.

though yours has better alpha handling, which is why i will likley be moveing to it.

passerby:
better even, QSM detects the layer set you are working on and you can save it anytime. E.g. call your map "SPECULAR" in the config dialog, then make a layerset called "SPECULAR" and work inside of it. With any layer selected inside of it, you can hit F2 and it will be saved. You can even save hidden layersets. Have you checked the tutorial?

haiddasalami,
Yopp that was one of the greatest challenges. I have sort of a little mainloop and have to use javascript closures effectively to prevent memomry leaks when rebuilding the dialog. Rebuilding the dialog is a neccessary evil, since the Photoshop interface tools do not allow to add or remove elements on an exisiting dialog.

Computron,
I would uninstall 0.5 first to be sure. I will look into CS6, I just installed the trial. I also use the alpha feature all the time: Spec + Spec Power, Color + Opacity, Normals + Parallax.
Plus if you get a creative, you will get to like pre-processing actions, too. You could, dor example swizzle your channels before the document is being saved and achieve a well-compressed dxt5nm normal map (by manually moving red to alpha and erasing red and blue).

Stromberg,
I never got a complaint the cryTif format was not working and I was not using it myself, so I never addressed it. This will go on my to-do list. Can you give more info via e-mail? Are you sure you had the cryTif plugin installed?

PS: Can a moderator please fix the title? re first post.

Out of curiosity have you taken a look at flash panels etc? I tried getting them working I think in CS5 with flex and was shit out of luck. Anywho gonna dig through the code and check it out. Thanks again!

Also try contacting a mod for the title. I remember you can change the title if you edit the first post, cant remember though haha (yup just edit the first post and go advanced)

Much appreciated, I changed the title. Sometimes it's those little things.

As to Flash Panels. That's how I initially wanted to go about creating a truely nice looking and modal QuickSaveMaps but the documentation and code examples were so sparse and unclear that I decided not to bother with it. E.g. I remember calling javascript from inside panel code was a mission and resulted in some awkwardly constructed coding patterns. The javascript API, on the other hand, is very mature, sufficiently well-documented and gave me access to all I need.

I have been tinkering with the idea from time to time to add some sort of mini panel that would allow overriding some of the most commonly used settings, such as scale but I never got around to it. If you are interested in learning to use panels, this might be a nice project ;) I would be available to help with it but I cannot dedicate a lot of time to it right now.

Originally Posted by FelixSchl

Computron,
I will look into CS6, I just installed the trial.

It seems to work now for me with this last version actually. I had to redo my config file instead of reimporting it from the old free version. Thanks!

Computron,
That sounds good, I had it spazzing out quite a bit. Could that have to do with it being only the trial? I cannot imagine that.

The Photoshop CS6 Javascript docs actually do not report any changes to the API that would indicate that it should break either but well.. I need to get some dedicated testing time to work on this.

Got a question about this one. Is it possible to save the layersets, but have it ignore non-set layers? What I mean is, what if I have some layer at the top of the document that I wish to overlay on top of all my images? Right now it just isolates the layerset it's exporting. So if I want those layers, I have to duplicate them in every layerset.

Originally Posted by Bigjohn

Got a question about this one. Is it possible to save the layersets, but have it ignore non-set layers? What I mean is, what if I have some layer at the top of the document that I wish to overlay on top of all my images? Right now it just isolates the layerset it's exporting. So if I want those layers, I have to duplicate them in every layerset.

I'm not sure off the top of my head, but one thing you can try if it doesn't work that way is using smart objects.

Computron is correct about smart layers. They will do the job you are after.

@FelixSchl: finally had some time to check this tool. it looks pretty useful and has some nice features my collection of scripts don't have. good job.
one question: is there a way, i can assign a configuration to a hotkey, so i can save my .tga with alpha or without alpha depending on the hotkey i assigned?

Some engines can be set to drop the alpha channel on import.

Otherwise I would just remake a copy of your folders but without the alpha channel and a different name. I think the software ignores empty folders. I like to Save a read-only base .psd and chose which folders set to use right away to start any new texture work..

This comes back to the panel idea, to do quick overrides like these and possibly assign hotkeys, too.

But I was in the same situation as you, where I would not always need to spit out the alpha channel. What I did was to create a duplicate map in the QSM editor, and just name it differently, like appending an _A for alpha. Then, I just rename the layer accordingly when needed. I suppose you could rename the layer with a Photoshop action, and bind that to a hotkey.

Originally Posted by FelixSchl

This comes back to the panel idea, to do quick overrides like these and possibly assign hotkeys, too.

But I was in the same situation as you, where I would not always need to spit out the alpha channel. What I did was to create a duplicate map in the QSM editor, and just name it differently, like appending an _A for alpha. Then, I just rename the layer accordingly when needed. I suppose you could rename the layer with a Photoshop action, and bind that to a hotkey.

thanks for the reply. nothing that is stopping me from using your script ;)QSM does a lot of stuff better then the scripts i currently use. as mentioned i can work around that, with new actions or my old scripts. btw, our coders are too lazy to work into photoshop scripting so we have to stick to ourselves. ;)

Originally Posted by fade1

btw, our coders are too lazy to work into photoshop scripting

I never could understand this. Everything new is exciting. Maybe it's different when you come to coding from an art perspective and background.