Annotation issue

the annotation in here works great
http://aspectek.com/b4w/store/

the annotation here has DETECT VISIBILITY selected and the page does not work
http://aspectek.com/b4w/store/index2.html

Also, is there a way to have the annotation box scale with the item it is associated with, so when the camera zooms in or out, the annotation box does also? In the 1st example, there would be a lot of annotations and when zoomed out, I would not want them overlapping and looking cluttered.

What is character limit for default annotation box?

Hi,

Really, this is an unexpected behavior. We have found that this is caused because of dynamic loading and detect visibility flag. Thanks for pointing out the bug. Unfortunately, we can't fix this right now and it will be done only in the next release. Would be great to have more bug reports when release candidate is out there.

Also, is there a way to have the annotation box scale with the item it is associated with, so when the camera zooms in or out, the annotation box does also? In the 1st example, there would be a lot of annotations and when zoomed out, I would not want them overlapping and looking cluttered.

Annotations are not the best choice here because they are just simple html-elements and scaling them without some artifacts is a really complicated task. It is better to use billboarded objects with some text inside them.

What is character limit for default annotation box?

A really huge number . Something around Python String length. So, this doesn't have to be a problem, I guess. The only thing to keep in mind - Description must be longer than the Title. This is another issue which will be fixed later.

thanks for the info. I found the bug about 15 minutes after downloading the newest version and installing Blender 2.74, so was not able to give a head's up. I usually wait for the after-RC version to download, but if time permits, I will get onboard sooner in the future.

The annotations are still causing an error with JSON loads. This time, the main JSON will load, but then everything hangs, the scene cannot be rotated and no products load.

Hi!
Unfortunately I can't reproduce the issue (e.g. worked fine on Cartoon Interior). Can you provide us with your example?

I am unable to recreate the freeze now as well, so that is good.

Now, the issue is the "detect visibility" keeps the same annotation always over top of the other, regardless of the angle being looked at

http://aspectek.com/b4w/store

I also seem to have lost all the hotlinks.

First of all, it is better to solve all the warnings in the dynamically loaded jsons. They were exported with 15.02 and your application is using 15.03 right now. This can cause potential bugs.
Detect visibility only hides anchors when they are overlapped by something. So, if you want a correct annotations sorting, you need to manage draw order manually. For example, you can write a callback which will check the distance from an empty object and set corresponding z-index for it's html-element.
In future we'll put this functionality into addon.

the potential bugs in previously exported JSON files is why I request a way to easily batch re-export a folder of Blend files to create new versions of JSON files. This is a prime example of what I want to avoid. Any large project will have to be locked into a specific release if future releases will knock out major functionality.

Also, if you rotate the store around, the walls do not block visibility. What type of object needs to be in front of an annotation to actually block its visibility? And "you can write a callback " is assuming I can actually write a callback, which also assumes I know what a callback is. I will happily wait for the addon addition.

I will assume draw order is simply load order to better control annotation overlaps…?

Also, if you rotate the store around, the walls do not block visibility. What type of object needs to be in front of an annotation to actually block its visibility? And "you can write a callback " is assuming I can actually write a callback, which also assumes I know what a callback is. I will happily wait for the addon addition.

I can't say what is the root of the problem without seeing blend files. Any object has to block annotation's visibility (no matter, transparent or not). I think, annotations have some issues in their settings. You could try to reexport one of dynamically loaded files (If annotation is there) and see if the problem stays. But again it is only suggestions.

I will assume draw order is simply load order to better control annotation overlaps…?

No. Drawing order is actually the order in which objects are drawn. Speaking about html-elements (which annotations are), If some object is closer to the camera it should have greater z-index to be drawn above other html-objects. This is the only way to solve this issue correctly right now.