@Gnu Tux
excellent tutorial, also great tip about the value to use for Bump mapping it really improved my results

I still have to read all the pages ( i just read the first ) but at soon i tried ...i was forced to remember that the Lighting Effect plugin has a preview window so microscopic to be unusable, and that was fixed, first roughly by me , then Onkel Hatti improve the idea



Windows users just need to replace the plugin exe , i didn't build yet on linux, but the source code (not only for Lighting Effect , also for Gimpressionist , Fractal Trace , ...basically for all plugins ) is available, built on linux is simple as replace the Plugin folder in the source code before compile with the Patched version
(Onkel Hatti patch are ,as his builds, downloadable from Free Gimp Packagers at sourceforge.net )

I quickly made a replacement pack for Windows inside version for 32 or 64 bit Gimp



Install is trivial just :
first move away (for safety ) the original plugins with same name in a back up folder
In the Zip just extract the content of the "32" or "64" folder in your gimp plugins folders

Mind that are replacements , not extra plugin, first you must move away the originals
LINUX

As now i have no ready binary but here is the patch
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-pa ... p/download

Just apply the patch to the original source code before compile gimp, as usual

PS
Gnu Tux
maybe do you want add the links and the screenshot to your first message ?
that was a simple hack but made a big practical difference in usability , from a preview so microscopic to be unusable, to a decent and usable preview

Edit

Also , related to the lighting plugin i made a little change in my gimp user directory



To have always at hand saved "presets" and environment maps

Getting a Data Execution Prevention error in Windows XP while trying to run the lighting effects plugin.

did you try the right version (i suppose 32bit )?

Thanks for the information, PhotoComix. I split this from the Environment Map Tutorial Thread so it could have its own thread.

I really like that large preview. Due to stability and various other issues, I always use the official Fedora packaged GIMP but perhaps I'll setup a GIMP development environment and give that patch a try, as time allows.

Still a little groggy from my sleep (work weekend nights); thanks a heap PC. Really do like the huge GIMPressionist pre-view.

GNu Tux

"large preview" hack could not give stability issue because consist simply in a variation of the hardcoded preview size.
So ,except for computer with screen resolution smaller then the plugin interface (but i doubt exist such screen if not in museums) should be no possible problems

About the patch O.H. refined also the gui of the others plugins but are esthetic changes (i.e from the preview to the top and controls below to the preview on the left and the controls to the right ) that may modify and improve the look and feel but not create functional problems ...or at least would be very improbable

Humm thinking better i don't know all his list of changes in his build

But as far from the changes for plugins (larger preview, refined interface ) should be no possible problem

If all that needs changing is the Height and Width of the preview box, it seems those values could just be user defined (you could even patch the binary directly if you could find the values). Looking at the patches, there appears to be a bit more code in there for the UI.

It would be really nice to have the preview size be user defined in future GIMP releases.

I only remember about the changes for plugins interface not sure about other changes


Hem..that was exactly my first hack (not those here more polished from OH ) done without know nothing of C
I only was sure that somewhere in the code was a hardcoded value assigned to the preview , and imagine that the value to modify should be close to something as "PREVIEW" or "preview" or "Preview_H" or something alike .

And was a good bet



Some of that plugins were so old that was not defined separately Height and Width for the preview:
but only 1 single "Preview Size" , to be used for both, forcing the preview in a square (while most of images to edit are rectangular .. )

Last time i tried the larger preview plugins they wouldn't run in the newer gimp-2.8.
These work fine if i place them inside the username/.gimp-2.8/plug-ins folder.
I did not have to remove the originals from the program files/gimp-2.8/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins folder.Gimp will auto check on load if their are any duplicate plugins in the user folders and run those first.

Thank you PC.

Woops i get a crash when running any bump maps or env maps in the new larger preview plugins.
Lighting effects crashes but gimp stays open.

thanks to PhotoComix, i have used the larger Lighting Effects preview for quite some time
and never had a problem with it
everything is so much better that way !

i even blogged about it including downloads of the larger preview and my mediafire-folder tells me 11 people used it

Yes but you use Gimp-2.6 do you not?

no 2.8.4

Parthas version of Gimp-2.8.6 doesn't like any of the large preview changes in the plugins. They keep crashing.
Maybe 2.8.4 is different. I could try re compiling for gimp-2.8.6 i guess.

I should add the download and a explicative page to my Sourceforge



That too bad where large images you was working with ?
The problem with the preview seems to be that there is no way to temporary disable it, and when checking boxes or moving sliders tend to to try to render the new preview too quickly without leaving the time to finish to create the new setting.

That tend to make sliders jumpy or even freeze them, and also may accidentally give 2 or more different commands (=previews to render ), in too short time ...i believe that the reason for your crashes

I use the 64bit version and i have 8GB ram, so it never crashed, but yes often get frozen even for few Seconds that always when experimenting different settings (but here i must say that i usually work on VERY large images )

I believe a good fix would add a option to disable "automatic" preview, and then add a "preview" button

PS
"High quality preview" option seems not make any difference in the preview quality but maybe sucks much more resources.
I have no clear what should do the "interactive" (is a box ) but checking or unchecking it seems to not make much difference for the risk of freezing (or to require too much RAM )

(reported here from Envirologo)
I tried the EnviroLogo plug-in in Windows 7 32-bits, Gimp 2.8.6.
It calls (makes use) of "lighting.exe"; and it doesn’t work with the new version of lighting.exe (the one with the large preview)
I reloaded the previous version, and Envirologo script then works;
the problem seems to be in lighting.exe with large preview: after having replaced the small-preview version, I checked whether the preview was large, it was and I did not try to run it (lazy me...); now I tried it per-se and it goes into abend:
GIMP Error
Plug-in crashed: "lighting.exe"
(C:\Program Files\GIMP 2\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins\lighting.exe)

PhotoComics, is it my environment not appropriate for the large preview version?
obviously I installed the 32-bits version, so it is not there the problem
thanks

another post concerning the large preview only (not having performed any "run" test):
for most of the modified plug-ins, the large preview shows up, but:
- fractal explorer and nova continue to show small preview
- map-object goes into abend

I am opening pretty smallish sized environment and bumpmaps PC so i am pretty sure it's the Gimp-2.8.6 api that has a problem with the larger preview plugins and not my RAM. Can you link me the src files for all the fixed C files and i will try and compile with my new environment for Gimp-2.8.6 and see if that works.

I just don't have the src files for all the patches.

hopefully PC could provide the sources to Rod, so that very likely also my problems are solved...(I run on 2.8.6)

PC if you do not have them perhaps Onkel does?