Eq A Sketch 360 is a serious toy for drawing equirectangular spherical perspectives.

It is programmed and provided free by Antonio Bandeira Araujo - antonio.araujo@uab.pt. 
Personal note: I plan to release the source code as soon as I am not too ashamed of it.



Eq A Sketch 360 allows you to draw any equirectangular line through two selected points. It also provides a free sliding grid. This allows you to draw all sorts of constructions *if* you understand spherical perspective. My purpose is to help you learn it. I will be doing various tutorials which I will provide for free at my YouTube channel and at these locations:


http://www.univ-ab.pt/~aaraujo/eqasketch360.html

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN8aoTK53tk7oCGM2cgWUOA

http://sphericalperspective.blogspot.com


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INSTALLATION
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For any OS version, please make sure you have the latest version of Java installed.

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WINDOWS
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The software comes in a zip file, just unzip it anywhere and run the .exe file. 

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macOS
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Just mount the .dmg file, copy and run the app from the Applications folder or any other folder you like. 

You may have a security error the first time automatically generated by the Apple system. In that case, you must go to Security & Privacy settings and allow the program to run in the general tab. The program may crash when opening the second time due to this update of settings. If so, unmount the .dmg and restart the computer. The third time should run smoothly and without any issue. In case you need help, you may contact Lucas Fabian Olivero at lufo@lufo.art

Latest tested version: Catalina 10.15.7

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LINUX
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There are available on demand Linux compilation in 32, 64, arm64 and arm64hf versions.


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USE
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When you load the software it shows you two windows. One is the drawing window. It represents an equirectangular flat view of the visual sphere. On it you will find a reference grid that you can slide with the direction keys. You draw on top of this with your mouse (press left button and drag). 



The other smaller window provides some data, mainly the angular bearing and elevation of the mouse position. It tells you where the mouse is on the sphere. It also provides you with the current angular shift of the equirectangular reference grid.



Eq A Sketch 360 has very simple commands:



keys: 



left mouse button = draw


n/m = select reference points


shift+n/m = select antipode of point n/m



x = select geodesic by clicking on its apex



v = draw verticals



e = draw a non-vertical line through points n and m (this is the default mode)



f = free drawing



backspace = eraser



s = quick save (it saves onto the main folder in two versions: a .jpg and a .tiff. Tiff has better quality for raster-based repeat edits and it keeps the alpha channel (transparency). Jpg is compressed, easier for uploading/viewing in VR panorama viewers. We recommend you to load the .tiff to continue previous work, and to use the .jpg for display purposes. A good free viewer is FSP viewer, available for many OS at http://www.fsoft.it/FSPViewer)



ctrl+l (also on MAC) = load a previously saved transparent drawing (.png or .tiff)



arrow keys = slide grid left and right (by one degree if using the horizontal directions or by 5 degrees when using the verticals)



arrow keys + shift = move grid to cardinal points (Front, Left, Right, Back)



arrow keys + ctrl = set reference point n at one of the cardinal points



r, b = red, black ink



ctrl + z = undo

ctrl + shift + z = redo



shift + ctrl + del = reset drawing


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Changing Resolution:

To change resolution, note the text file "config.txt" in the  "\data" folder. On the first line of that file you will find an integer number (800 by default). Change it to another integer N of your choice and restart to work in the resolution 2NxN (1600x800 by default). So for instance if you write 500 in that first line of config.txt you will work in 1000x500 resolution.  

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Please note that Eq A Sketch 360 is experimental software, very much in the alpha stage, so you use it at your own risk.