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History of RT!

  Published by Bart on April 2nd, 2007 in Development, Miscellaneous

rt.jpgI had a lot of fun reading yesterday's comments on the 'Hidden 3DS Max Display Mode' - thanks, everyone! :) Although it's not widely known, the RT button DOES have a function. I had a chat about it with Ton Roosendaal and he wrote the following article:

The "rt" button in Blender is there for developers to allow debugging or to hide testing. This value is by-definition not saved in (or read from) a Blender file, so you have to set it each time when you start Blender.

The name comes from an old convention I introduced in the NeoGeo animation studio long ago. We were saving a lot of files with variations of "temp" in the names, and it was never clear what to do with these. The deal we made was that any file named with "rt" would become a deleteable file, free for anyone to remove if you think it's in the way. I still use this a lot, check for example the file http://www.blender.org/bf/rt.jpg , which just is the debug image-of-the-day I upload while discussing coding issues.

What the name comes from I don't know really… I just happened to type it easily. Maybe it's because it has my initials? :)

Here are the current active "rt" hacks in Blender:

  • rt==1
    Hold ctrl, you can drag buttons around. Used to be 'UI edit mode'. Still saves file "butsetup" in current directory with button coordinates.
  • rt==2
    Use alternative OpenGL calls for reveiling UI refreshes like button highlights or pulldown menu updates. Seems to work faster on certain older ATI cards.
  • rt==2, rt==3
    3d window, Transform Manipulator in rotate mode, shows alternative designs
  • rt==8
    LSCM unwrap on selecting seams in face mode (ALT+Select) or on CTRL+E "mark seam"
  • rt!=0
    Debug print for each multilayer image loaded when image type is Image Sequence

Have fun!

-Ton-

Note: you can find the RT button in the Anim panel on the Scene Buttons window (F10)



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29 Responses to “History of RT!”  

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  1. 1 Howitzer Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 7:15 am

    Neat!

  2. 2 nam Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 8:06 am

    haha, you got us again!! april fools just never ends!! :P jk, that button thing is fun…reminds me of solitaire when you beat it, and all the cards start falling out and bouncing…maybe if we beat blender, it could have the same effect…

  3. 3 Grzesiek Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 8:23 am

    actualy, it works. :P and its april 2nd :P

  4. 4 Satish "ILuvBlender" Goda Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 8:37 am

    i love easter eggs. :)

  5. 5 gauravanim Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 9:34 am

    woow wonderful info

  6. 6 Joel Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 10:23 am

    Hehe, I was fooled by the joke yesterday! I can't find the RT button though, is that a joke too?

  7. 7 Kram1032 Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 11:48 am

    It's not a joke!
    Here you have a screen shot, where it's placed ;)
    http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s244/kram1032/bcc5adc3.jpg

  8. 8 Erik Sejersen Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 12:07 pm

    So that's how they did that vid with the LSCM unwrap on the feature site :o

  9. 9 Omar Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    I though this thing was standing for "Roosendaal Ton" . :)

  10. 10 De_Dood Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    It could stand for "Remove This"

  11. 11 Peng You Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    rt==8
    LSCM unwrap on selecting seams in face mode (ALT+Select) or on CTRL+E "mark seam"

    why a tool so interesting is hidden? it was since 2.42 (http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-242/uv-unwrapping/ see demo movie) that I searched for this feature…

  12. 12 Ls777 Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 2:36 pm

    ooooooooohhhhhh………… thats what its for……………….
    :)
    I always thought that had something to do with rendering, i just could never find out.
    Cool.

  13. 13 simhar Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 3:08 pm

    that rt==8 / LSCM is so great… I started once a thread on blenderartists to ask about that, but nobody knows… why isn't that excellent feature in the "real" version??… it's working great, what's the reason!!

    S.

  14. 14 epat Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 4:20 pm

    hehe - I've known about the rt button and what it's for for ages but I never could uncover what values do what (I suppose I could have looked at the code) - maybe these things should be documented better somewhere so that interested people can test them?…

    Just a thought.
    -epat. :)

  15. 15 Lasphere Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 6:18 pm

    I still dont get what it does.. ?

  16. 16 Carlos87 Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 7:10 pm

    Yesss It workS!!!! is not just another joke!!!!

  17. 17 Kram1032 Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    @epat:
    In that ase, there never will be such a great april fool :P

  18. 18 Kram1032 Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    case* (sry for double)

  19. 19 Bart Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 7:21 pm

    Of course it's not a joke :) It's posted on April 2nd!

  20. 20 Malcolm Zaloon Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 8:40 pm

    Cool tricks, but actually RT == 5 make buttons appear like XSI skin button style. This is for future UI design?

  21. 21 Bmud Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 10:14 pm

    Huh… and I thought the "RT button" was part of the prank. I stand corrected. Weird…

  22. 22 steve Edit Link Apr 2nd, 2007 at 10:40 pm

    I always thought the http://www.blender.org/bf/rt.jpg means "RenderTest" ….

  23. 23 Cloudsk!per Edit Link Apr 3rd, 2007 at 12:50 am

    @Malcolm
    It doesnt works for me. What im making wrong ?

  24. 24 Malcolm Zaloon Edit Link Apr 3rd, 2007 at 1:29 am

    The XSI thing is a little joke too.(my revenge for be fooled yesterday!)
    Only for enter in espirit of 1 april! Sorry ;)

  25. 25 Tynach Edit Link Apr 3rd, 2007 at 1:59 am

    Am I the only one who got the 3DS MAX one working :P.

    Nah, I knew it was a joke, since I knew the Blender Devs wouldn't want to have a lawsuit in their hands. Still, this RT thing is pretty cool. Are there any other except the fw mentioned here?

  26. 26 Bmud Edit Link Apr 3rd, 2007 at 2:43 am

    I just want to throw it out there that I have an ATi All-in-Wonder X1800XL, which is fairly recent. And after trying rt=2, the menus for the node editor which used to (for some reason) take ages to load its [spacebar] menu items now is like greased lightning. Thanks. Even if ATi cards are never fully figured out for Blender, this is a nice trick to have up my sleeve! :D

  27. 27 JiriH Edit Link Apr 3rd, 2007 at 10:05 pm

    Finaly we know how this 2.42 release notes ( http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-242/uv-unwrapping/ ) video http://download.blender.org/demo/movies/seamcut_blender242.mov
    was made.

    It is quite a shame that such great function is hidden even being promoted by release notes. We had to wait nearly one year for Ton himself to be learned how to activate this in Blender :-/

  28. 28 Omar Edit Link Apr 5th, 2007 at 2:19 am

    @De_dood: no kidding? is it not the Ton's name? :)

  29. 29 Jasper Edit Link Apr 6th, 2007 at 1:22 am

    holding down Ctrl in the Ipo Curve Editor. That's fun, never knew that..

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