Minecraft Forums

Hi everybody.
I posted this on MCSkin3D's Facebook page about all of this, but I'll repost it here just so you guys are aware too:

Hi guys.

A lot of people have asked me on and off about the status of MCSkin3D. I haven't forgotten about it (how could I?) and I certainly haven't let it go, but I've been busy with other things and I really just haven't had the time to go back to it.

I can't really hide the fact that time has been limited for me. Nearly all of my resources have been going to PlanetMinecraft - I recently got a job there, and that's where I've been focusing all of my effort. To say that MCSkin3D is dead isn't really the right wording, though - it is in limbo, however. There are a lot of factors contributing to this - the two main ones are the fact that I've been working on this project largely on my own, and having spent over 6 months working on one project alone has really gotten to me. The second is PlanetMinecraft.

MCSkin3D will likely see one more major release (1.5) before slowing to a halt and running on a patch-only basis. I learned a lot while developing MCSkin3D, and I thank everybody who participated and helped out for being so patient with me. Anything I've learned during this process has already made its way into my future projects, and MSchemV (http://www.planetminecraft.com/mod/mschemv/) is a good projection of things that I've learned here.

1.5 will be both a step forward and a step backwards. All of the new features that I've added between then and now will be in there, but I will also be retiring a large majority of features that I feel are unnecessary due to its short shelf life. Updating, error reporting, among other things will be retired. You will still be able to save error reports for me, but the report feature will be gone.

I can't guarantee that all mobs will be available for MCSkin3D 1.5 either, but I will do what I can do prep them for use.

Thanks everybody.
-P

Hey there, mikeprimm.

Dynmap is excellent, as always - however, I noticed some issues. Ever since 1.0, the Zoom function is broken in Google Chrome. It creates a weird bouncy effect based on where you zoomed. The transition must not be working very well. Not sure if this is a Chrome issue or a Dynmap issue, though; if I get the time I'll look into it further.

If you'd like to test it on my live Dynmap (this is from the PMC Official Server, which I administrate):
http://108.174.57.18:25666/
currently running Chrome: Version 23.0.1271.95 m

Thx,
-P

Quote from mrturkeytoe

why don't you remove the asymmetrical arms and legs? so people can make arms and legs that are different this was really annoying when i was making a david tennant skin when i was doing the pinstripe and i couldn't do it on the legs and was it was dumb so please add a left leg to the template and arm so we can make non asymmetrical arms and legs in 1.5 or sooner or add a button for asymmetrical arms and legs. thank you for your time.

Minecraft doesn't support it. It has nothing to do with MCSkin3D.

Quote from Ieatlego

I might be new, but I'm not a fool.
I support stuff that I like, even though I didn't use this when I started skinning, it would've been a great addition to it.

So, I have a few suggestions, and I can actually try and help you while I'm at it.
If you need any translations I can help out with atleast one, my native language is Swedish, and I'm not all that bad with my English either, so I can bring you a close to flawless translation if you let me.

But I'd rather have this as a fluid running thing, so if you want me to help out with that I'd like to do this over skype.

As for suggestions, I have quite a few, but I'd like to keep them down-low for the time being for one reason, I don't want my idea to get stolen, it might not be unique per se, but the way I'd do it might be.

Thanks for reading, hopefully I get the chance to help out and maybe you can help me out, a win win sitiuation, thanks.

My Skype is paril101. I look forward to your contact.

-P

Quote from EmoWo1f

Paril, you need to update the minelp thing, It's ben updated to 1.3.1

I'm aware of the new MLP version, but the main program comes first.

-P

Quote from Rumikarimu

Dear Paril, I have a suggestion for you. I have been working with SCPcraft. And some of the skins for the mob's skins are to big either vertical, or horizontal. So, my Idea is for a free paint option! No 3D model for it, but just a painting piece. I know people are gonna be like, "Why not just use a different program you lazy piece of crap!" Well I just really, really, really like MCskin3D! I'm so used to its, well, everything! I'd really like you to add this feature.

~Rumi

How do you mean? We have 2D paint option via the Texture (or Hybrid) view.

I wish I had the time I had when I first started this thread to go through each post, but right now I'm swamped. I'm just going to post some general guidelines that I will (eventually) add to the FAQ:

If you're getting crashes and you used the installer version, please try installing the program in an alternate location such as C:\MCSkin3D.
If problems persist, make sure .NET 3.5 is installed & updated.
If they continue to persist, try running it as an administrator (right-click < Run As Administrator).

For those that want to submit error reports; at the time, the error report server is not running as I have to run some optimizations on it and get it prepped for the new format in 1.4.1. If you wish to submit reports, please do so manually by clicking the "View what is in this report" link and pasting the relevant info here.

-P

Sorry for the lateness, I've been busy over at PMC.

The MLP mod is in the Help < Check for Updates area. If it fails to update, try reinstalling outside of Program Files (Windows places extra limitations on it that cause issues).

If it still doesn't work, and you have the ZIP file, extract it to your base MCSkin3D directory. The model will be available in the model picker after that.

I'll check back the other pages I missed tomorrow. Sorry about the delay.

-P

Quote from Zahnradfee

This could be. Due to being a student and therefore poor I'm playing on a laptop bought in 2006.

Oh, but one thing is funny: When I started the game BEFORE downloading the samples, it seemed to work. I just couldn't do much with it since there was no model to paint on. (Is this normal?)

I think this has to do with the way the Golem model is stored. Minecraft has it as a non-power-of-two image, which doesn't bode well.
Try deleting the Golem skins from your Skins folder and see if it works.

Re latter question, yes, that's normal. It comes with no sample skins - Help < Check for Updates has the samples.

-P

Quote from Nuker1337

When I try to install the sample skins, the error message pops up every single time. Help?

Try installing the program outside of Program Files.

-P

Quote from mrmewmew

Something I would love for this to have is A MAC VERSION! Yes, a Mac version. I said it. And I don't want to have to switch to a Windows computer using Boot Camp or Wine or some other piece of crap program that "converts .executable files to mac files." I want the real deal. No loop holes. Just a plain, straight-forward version of this for Mac. I would love this because I know of no other skin editing programs, which sucks. So, will you please make a Mac version of this, Paril?

Or every other page where I answer the same question.
I would hate to have to switch to a Mac computer to compile it on a piece of crap compiler that "converts .cpp files to Mac executables". I don't have the time to spend porting it to C++, nor the time (or money) to buy a Mac just to compile it.

When the C++ port is completed in the future, it will be pretty straightforward for Mac developers to port it to Mac; the only problem then is to find a Mac developer who wishes to help.

-P

Quote from 2domdom22

It doesn't work for me,
The error thing comes up every time I press something, It doesn't let me send the error report.
Whats going on here?
Its also just blue.

I don't see any problem here.
The program doesn't come with skins - you have to make one via New Skin (or get samples via Help < Check for Updates).

I will fix the buttons crashing when no model/skin is selected though, and in the future I'll be sure to note that skins have to be created first.

Quote from Devin0810

Cool! Does this work with texture pack textures too? That would be wonderful!

It works with mobs; not blocks though.

Quote from Krinity

Not as good as one I've had before, and when I use it, some parts that are colored are transparent

This is usually a video card issue.

Quote from GSACommando

I would use this program, but sadly the newest update causes the program to lag because my video card is a bit outdated. So at the moment I'm stuck using Paint.NET and GIMP, but if you can somehow fix the memory usage problem and maybe change the way the 3D aspect renders, then I think you might fix this problem.

Great program, wish I could use...

The memory usage is fine for most everybody; it seems that only people with laptop/crap video cards have this issue, which leads me to believe it has something to do with shared memory usage (GPU is using your RAM for texture storage basically). I will find a fix (or at the very least a workaround) for this in the future though. Lag, however, I have no fix for; the renderer didn't change -that- much from 1.3 to 1.4, I don't know what could be causing that. In fact, I removed animation, which sped up the view quite a bit, as well as a lot of speed improvements.

-P

Quote from Garckbloom

Is there a mac version?

No.

Quote from FillyRarity

I apparently cannot delete the program itself or anything in the 'brushes folder'. I am becoming incredibly annoyed with this and would like to know what is going on. I can't even re-name the folder. What is going on?

Try reinstalling outside of Program Files. Windows will lock & protect anything that is written to Program Files, which causes issues like this.

Quote from Ninjaboy00

ok, thanks, I should be able to manage

Also is there a copy-paste function? I need it for one of my 32x skins

The Stamp tool is about as close as you'll get right now.

-P

Quote from Ninjaboy00

Ok, now this is strange (for me at least), but whenever I use the fill bucket with green or yellow, it just stops responding, but every other colour works fine, if anyone has a fix to this I would love to know it

EDIT: so far it only happens with the RGBA colour selection

EDIT: ok so screw all that above, it's whenever I paint the head (head not helmet/hat) with the fill bucket and that REALLY prevents me from making a skin, so if anyone has a fix to that I'd love to know it

The fill bucket has a bug in 1.4.0 which crashes due to a function recursion (kinda ironic considering the conversation with James here, heh); it was fixed in 1.4.1, although I can't really guess as to when it will be released at this time. For the time being, you can get around it by trying to limit the max area that you're filling by "boxing" it off.

Quote from THEICEFILE

Hey, could you maybe make it so that you could run it in linux? I really want to try it, but my comp runs off Linux that doesn't support windows programs.

Dual-boot XP/7?

Quote from Ninjaboy00

I heard it partially works on WINE if you want to use it

@ whoever got it working on WINE, some screenshots would be super nice

Quote from copperwood

I use this all the time. well right now i got a skin of a website but i am working on my first skin

Quote from im_a_llama

Nice Job Paril, really nice program, also you are an awesome programmer

Thanks.

Quote from spamanator500

this is the problem

Try installing outside of Program Files.

-P

Quote from 787dude

Wow, thanks for making this! It *mostly* works for me so far using WINE on Ubuntu, but the menus seem a bit glitchy. If there's a way to import other users' skins, I haven't seen it yet- but if that isn't in, I recommend adding that functionality. This will be really interesting for a texture pack editor. Great job!

Glad to know that it partially works on WINE. The menus are likely glitchy because I use a special toolbar which is supposed to mimic the "native" look on Windows.

Quote from 24zxr

this thing rules!

Thanks!

Quote from drainkhan

Where are the skins published?

Locally, same place you installed MCSkin3D.

Quote from JamesTheAwesomeDude

It's not a serious issue with the rendering, but the cape is 16px high, 10px wide, and 1px thick, whereas the "cloak" model is 4X8X1.

Recursive function calls are when a function calls itself. When this occurs repeatedly, it can rapidly consunme a LOT of memory, VERY quickly.
pseudocode for the world's fastest memory eater:

//define a function:
function recursing(void) {
//call itself:
recursing();
}

This will eat up memory until it is terminated or the computer crashes.

James; my comment was directed at the fact that you assumed animation was a recursive function, which makes no sense. Why would an animation function be recursive, for one, and for two, it would lock the UI thread (since that's the thread the animation is ran on) if it was. It's just a rather insane and far-fetched assumption to make, especially from somebody that appears to have knowledge about programming.

Also, the code is fully open source (and is available on the main post), so you could have peeked for yourself and found that I used a threaded timer to invoke the animation function on the main thread.

-Also-, it would eat up memory until the program itself ran out of memory. It would have been assigned a limited amount of memory so that something like that _couldn't_ crash the OS. Eventually, malloc will simply return NULL (or operator new would throw an exception; or in the case of .NET, you'd be thrown OutOfMemoryException).

Also, animation was removed (well, disabled) in 1.4 anyways.

As for the cape; thanks for the notes. I'll make sure to fix that in 1.4.1.

Quote from ROFLbukkit

I absolutely LOVE this thing!

Thanks!

Quote from AnimeFreak112233

Hi, so i downloaded it and I make a skin, I logged in so I could send to minecraft and checked save password and auto login. The password was wrong, How do I change it?

Hold shift when you click the button.

Quote from mark828sox

I cannot install the microsoft thing, I'm in Windows 7

.NET 3.5 can be installed on Windows 7; this is what I developed MCSkin3D on.

Quote from Tyriikhiva

Can you make a version of this on Mac? I would appreciate it greatly.

Not offhand, no

Quote from Minecraft4Metal

I heard somewhere that this was hd or at least had more pixels? maybe it was something different or an old version but what disappointed me was no mac version i would have used this program HEAPS if it was for mac.
BTW i know you think PC is better

It supports HD skins, yes. They cannot be uploaded to Minecraft.net though, obviously.
Mac isn't supported at this time.
No, I _know_ PC is better for _me_; this is why I spend my life developing on it as opposed to a Mac.

Quote from Basion

For some reason when I try to get a skin that a player is using, it says "Unable to download the skin from the Minecraft skin storage!" followed by a 403 error. This is the first time it has happened to me. Any ideas what could be causing it?

Usually it means you didn't enter their name properly.

Quote from XXmadmonieXX

hey man i down loaded it and i tryed to run it and all i got was a window that poped up saying my video does not support
a 32-bit pixel format my pc is a 64-bit but that should not prevent any thing right??

It refers to your video card, not your CPU. Your video card is ancient and/or you don't have video drivers installed.

Quote from Regirules

Paril, thank you so much! so much simpler, however (unless you did it already) could make it possible to put the default Steve skin as a "toggle-able" option. It would be nice for a base plan.

Not really planned; drag the Steve skin in on the left and Clone it if you want.

Quote from condiegov

Mac?
:\

No sir.

Quote from Benie

This program is very impressive. I never made a skin in my lifetime, but this thing has helped do that. Thank you, Paril.
This is a lot more simple to use than MC Skin Edit.

Thanks!

Quote from BabaManga

I don't know if anyone else has received this bug, but it appears that whenever I attempt to use the "Fill" tool, the application crashes. I haven't been able to find an actual bug report for this issue, and I am almost sure it is just me, but if there is anyone else experiencing this problem, I'd love to be alerted of it. I really hope i wasn't a bother with my report.question :]

It's a known issue that was fixed in 1.4.1. I dunno when it will be released though.

Quote from Graypup

Idea for TP inplementation: make a separate menu for different blocks in the view menu (the one for selecting mob types). (the idea here does not need to be implemented immediately) Also add support for adding another block (so that it can make textures for mods) in said menu via a dialog that selects the number of separate sides in the texture file, and also group the textures (into separate png files for each mod) and select coordinates on output png.


I have a mac, how the heck am I supposed to compile it?
I'm saying that I'm willing to compile it, I just don't know if it's Qt or wxWidgets or whatevs.

Texture packs will be supported in the future.
Read down for my response to the latter.

Quote from Graypup

I'm having too many ideas today Please implement a way to make parts of the skin read-only so you can scribble all you want without having to erase them later.

Layers will be supported in the future.

Quote from SpitfireROC

On the bottom of the window is a detail link. Could you copy the contents of that here. Preferrably into a spoiler tag.

Here it is

This here is a video card issue; that's all I know without having your specific hardware to test.

Quote from Graypup

Paril, fix the brain fart that caused you to label it right arm instead of arm in texture view.


seen a quote button on the bottom of each post? Use it please.

It's not a brain fart, it's just the way the automatic layout compiler works. Both the left arm and the right arm use the same area, so it just uses the first one when generating the layout; as well, the same identifier is used on the Parts menu, hence why I didn't bother to fix that little annoyance.

Quote from Graypup

I kinda need source code to compile...

The code is on the main post (http://code.google.com/p/mcskin3d). It's written in C# and compiles against the .NET Framework, thus a Mac port probably won't ever work in its current state.

Eventually it will be ported to wxWidgets, but not for any forseeable time.

-P

Quote from petro770

Error reportin doesnt work.
anyway I got error by deleting a folder from a folder, which name I changed once
u got it? =D

I disabled the error reporter as I was working on the next version of it.
Try installing outside of Program Files. Most folder errors can be resolved that way.

Quote from sXSinfulSaintXs

i dont know how to increase pencil size? Eraser? ETC

Click the toolbox icon in the top-center of the render window (it has a wrench on it).

Quote from Solid_one

This application is SUPER usefull but i just want to ask 1 thing: is there any way to turn mirroring off? i want to make a bracelet only on 1 hand.


Is there anyway to turn mirroring off so i can make a bracelet on one hand only

No. Minecraft maps both arms to the same part of the texture. Same way with the legs.

-P

Quote from JamesTheAwesomeDude

hrm, I tried it, and it doesn't quite work with the mod's layout. (but you really need to see it to understand the magnitude of it...)
Screenshot:

The layout of Cape Mod capes: (res increased by 800% to allow enough pixels for legible text; cape texture is 22*17)

well, skinedit has a part-picker; I suppose you could use that. if you need help ripping parts from a skin, you can use Paint.NET. It is fairly easy to use and supports transparency (unlike Windows' built-in Paint.)

The layout of the cape is like that - I'm not sure why it's not appearing properly.. it's basically just a cube, which the model should lay out properly. I'll have to check it out after. I don't think I tested the cloak after the model format overhaul.

Quote from JamesTheAwesomeDude

SCORE! thank you!
One last request: leaving the 3d on with the "animate" and/or "follow cursor" options gradually gives my computer serious lag. I am not sure, but I suspect that this may be caused by the animation being powered by recursive function calls. Is there a possibility that this bit of the code will be cleaned up in some future update? (it's not a BIG bug, but I just have to make sure not to leave it running with animate on...)

Also, try making the chests animate and follow cursor. XD

I don't know why that occurs on your end; either way, the Animate/Follow Cursor functionality was removed in 1.4. You're using an older version.

I suspect that this may be caused by the animation being powered by recursive function calls

There's so much wrong with what you just said that I don't even know.

Quote from xColourTheory

I tried google, didn't help me,
Anyway, how do I go about editing HD skins on this?

There's an "Increase Resolution" button on the left side.

Quote from Pop3464

Erm...I found a bug. I just tried to delete a folder, It had a skin inside it, and..I heard a "Ding" noise, But nothing popped up, Not even on the taskbar at the bottom. And whenever I try to click on it, It Dings, and won't do anything.

The "Ding" happens if the folder you tried to delete is missing. It's kind of a catch-all error that shouldn't happen under normal circumstances (and, in hindsight, I should have caught rather than ignored). Try reinstalling the program -outside- of Program Files.

Quote from Zaukster

Great job. But can you run it on mac? If you can I will be grateful

No sir; sorry.

Quote from MinecraftStunter

Best skin editor ever.

Thanks.

-P