EZ3D
(for Windows NT/95)
User Manual
RSI
Electronic Publishing
Berkeley
Part A User's Guide
Ez3d 2.0 series from Radiance Software consists of the following products:
Ez3d VRML Author - Professional 3-D/VRML authoring with 3-D modeling
and ray-tracing
Ez3d Modeler Pro - Professional 3D modeling and ray-tracing
Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder - Easy VRML authoring and 3D modeling
Ez3d Lite - Entry-level, try-and-buy VRML authoring
This manual describes all the features in Ez3d VRML Author. In the other products, some of the features may not be available or may be simplified. The Ez3d series of products offers the following (and more!):
Based on the standard Open Inventor 3-D framework with a completely
graphical and integrated interface, Ez3d provides native VRML authoring
capabilities without the need for an external translator.
Radiance Software International
1726 Francisco Street
Berkeley, Ca 94703
Tel: (510) 848-7621
Fax: (510) 848-7613
E-mail: Ez3d@radiance.com (for product information)
E-mail: support@radiance.com (for product support)
http://www.radiance.com/~radiance
The manual is divided into two parts:
Part A: User's Guide contains the following chapters:
Chapter A1 provides a brief introduction to Ez3d.
Chapter A2 describes the Ez3d Installation process.
Chapter A3 gives a short tutorial to get you started with Ez3d.
Part B: Reference Guide contains the following chapters:
Chapter B1 provides a complete description of "Model" which explains all the modeling tools in Ez3d.
Chapter B2 provides a complete description of "Attribute",
which explains the tools to map materials and textures.
Chapter B3 provides a complete description of "Scene" which explains all the rendering tools in Ez3d.
Chapter B4 provides a complete description of "Options",
which explains how to customize your Ez3d environment.
Chapter B5 provides a complete description of "Help",
Ez3d's on-line help system.
The following notation is used throughout the
manual:
"File - New", for example, describes a tool or a functionality that is accessed using the "New" option available under the "File" pull-down menu.
Courier font is used for all literals such as directory paths, values typed in a text-field, shell, etc. Example: "Ez3d_projects"
Italicized text is used to describe an interface selection. Example: "Spline Steps".
The terms "Folder" and "Directory" are used inter-changeably
in this manual to refer to directories on your file system.
The following conventions are used in the Ez3d interface:
1. Blue colored items in the interface refer to features that affect only the photo-realistic rendering (ray-tracing) module. Setting values for these items will cause no change in the appearance of the Ez3d scene. Example: "Mist" in the "Environment Editor".
2. Grayed-out items in the interface refer to features that are non-functional in the current mode. Example: "samples" slider in "Render Options" when you have "Open-GL" set as your "render program".
3. "Option..." (interface items with a "..." next to their name) signify that selecting these items will bring up a new interface interface.
4. Toolbar items can also be accessed from the main interface.
Neither this manual nor the product requires an in-depth knowledge of
3D computer graphics to use. All it needs is your creative imagination
and a willingness to learn and experiment with new intuitive tools.
If you want to learn more about the technical aspects of 3D computer
graphics, the following reference is recommended:
"Introduction to Computer Graphics", Foley, J.D., A.
van Dam, S. Feiner, J.F. Hughes and Phillips, Addison-Wesley, 1993
If you want to learn more about the technical aspects of VRML, the following
reference is recommended:
"VRML - Browsing & Building Cyberspace", Mark Pesce,
New-Riders Publishing, 1995
The following Web site will give all the information you ever wanted
on VRML and 3D Web page creation:
http://www.sdsc.edu/VRML
Hardware Requirements
Ez3d has the following system requirements at the minimum:
Windows NT 3.51 or higher OR Windows 95 operating system
Hardware with CPU that supports the above operating system
At least 16 Megabytes of memory
We recommend the following for "power" usage of Ez3d:
32 Megabytes of memory
A 24-bit 3D graphics accelerator card that speeds up OpenGL.
A 17-inch high-resolution monitor
Internet access using "Netscape" or similar Web browsers
with 3D browsing capability
1. Insert the CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive.
2. Next double click on the "Setup.exe" icon in the
CD-ROM directory (usually D:\).
3. Now follow instructions in the user interface.
1. Download the Ez3d 2.0 system from our web site (http://www.radiance.com/~radiance),
or our FTP site (ftp://www.radiance.com/pub/radiance/www/ftp).
2. Follow instructions in the Web page or README.
We give you a very brief overview of Ez3d, to get you started immediately,
before you start on a "real" project. Since Ez3d is extremely
user-friendly, it will be far easier to learn than other software packages
of this nature. Use the on-line context-sensitive help cards to get detailed
help on the various tools.
When you start Ez3d, the system gives you a default project. Choose
"File - Save As", and choose an appropriate location and
name for your tutorial project, say, "Test".
The interface in front of you has a main 3D viewer with a title bar
and a tool bar on top, and a status bar below. The pull-down menus in the
title bar, the icons in the tool bar and the information bar have a similar
look-and-feel to other desktop programs that you may be familiar with (such
as Microsoft Word). In addition, the main viewer (and any more viewers
that you bring up) have a tool bar on the right.
The title bar has several pull-down menus. "File" contains
operations to manage your project. "Edit" contains common
editing operations like "Cut" and "Undo".
"Model" contains all the modeling operations. "Attribute"
contains operations to assign colors, materials and textures to objects.
"Scene" contains operations to set lights and environment,
and to create a photo-realistic image of the scene. "Options"
contains interfaces to customize your work settings. "Help"
gives you help in using the program. The tool bar is a shortcut for some
of the more important operations in the title bar menus.
Basic help on a particular feature is provided in the status bar at
the bottom, when you move the cursor over an icon, or over a pull-down
menu item in the title bar. When you move the cursor over an icon, you
also get "balloon" help right at the cursor.
For more elaborate help, choose "Help - On Context"
in the main title bar. This will bring up the help card on opening a new
project. As you go on to do more things, the help card will constantly
update to give you help on whatever you are doing. If you have "Help
- Help Mode" on, and then click on a button, Ez3d does not perform
the action, but only gives you help on it.
Choose "Help - On Topic". Select a topic from this
list to obtain help on that particular topic.
Hint: It is recommended that you constantly refer to "Help"
while you are still learning the product. Depending on your style, you
may either follow the tutorials as it is, or experiment on your own as
you go along.
Your computer screen and mouse are essentially 2D devices. For someone
new to 3D modeling, it takes some time to get used to creating and moving
in a 3D world on the computer. What you see in front of you is the main
3D view with a magenta grid representing the ground. Notice the hand-shaped
cursor. Press down with the left mouse button and move the hand. Notice
how the scene rotates. What is actually happening is that "you"
are moving around the scene. There is a camera placed at your eye that
is capturing a "perspective" view of the scene and projecting
it onto the screen. Press down on the left mouse with the <Shift>
key pressed, and move up and down or left and right. Press the left mouse
button with both <Shift> and <Ctrl> keys
pressed. Notice how you get closer and further from the center of the scene.
(Optional) Now let us set up a traditional "CAD"-style
viewer interface. Choose "Options - New Viewer - Front". This
brings up a 2D front view. A 2D viewer has a camera that projects one of
six right angle (front, back, left, right, top or bottom) views of the
scene. Bring up two more 2D viewers using "Options - New Viewer
- Top" and "Options - New Viewer - Right". Now resize
and rearrange the windows to your taste. If you are reasonably familiar
with 3D interfaces, you may want to get rid of one or more viewers (by
double-clicking on the top-left corner). Having more viewers slows down
the display.
Let us insert an object into this scene now. Choose "Model -
Primitive". Double-click on "Cylinder". Notice
the various camera views of the object. Notice the green box around the
object in all four views. This is called a "3D manipulator",
because it allows you to move, resize and rotate the object in 3D space.
Get familiar with moving in the 2D viewers. Use <Shift>+<Left
mouse> to zoom in and out. Notice how the object appears to get
bigger or smaller in that one viewer alone. This means that you are only
changing that viewer's camera to zoom closer or farther, not re-sizing
the object itself. Use <Left Mouse> to "pan",
that is, move in the plane of the camera.
The viewer has a pop-up menu that you access by pressing the right mouse
inside it. Choose "Draw Style - move wireframe". If you
move the view, you will notice that the object is displayed as "wireframe"
(using lines) when the view is changing, but "as is" (shaded)
when you stop moving. Experiment with different draw styles.
Click on the "?" icon in the viewer tool bar to get
detailed help on all the viewer functions and keyboard/mouse shortcuts.
Now let us try to move and resize the object using the intuitive "3D
manipulator". The viewer has two modes. So far, we have been in
"View" mode and have been moving the camera only. To interact
with the objects in a viewer, go into "Edit" by pressing
the <Esc> key, or by clicking on the "Arrow"
icon in the viewer decoration, or turning off "Viewing"
in the viewer pop-up menu (using the right mouse button). Press down the
left mouse button somewhere inside the green box, and start moving. Notice
that the manipulator turns yellow when you select it. Notice how the object
moves in the various views. Notice in the 3D view, that the object is moving
on the ground. Move the object in all directions in all views, and observe
the results.
Let us try to resize the object. Using the left mouse button, grab the
little cube in the corner of the manipulator, and pull outward. Notice
the object growing in size. Do the same thing, but with the <Shift>
key pressed. Notice the object grow or shrink in the direction in which
you move.
Let us try to rotate the object. Grab the sphere in the middle of one
of the sides. 2 circles appear, indicating the possible directions along
which you can rotate. Move, and notice how the object rotates. Note that
if you keep <Shift> pressed, the object rotates about the
opposite side.
Choose "Attribute - Transform". This tool allows you
to type in precise values for the position, scale and rotation attributes
of the object. Type in a value, and notice how the position of the object
changes. You can also use this tool as a replacement for the 3D manipulator.
Choose "Options - Selection Highlight - Box". Notice that
the 3D manipulator around the object is replaced by a bright green box.
You can now move the object only using "Attribute - Transform",
but the display will be faster.
Go back and forth between moving the object, and moving the camera(s)
to get a better view. Use the <Esc> key to switch between
the "View" and "Edit" modes.
Use "Edit - Undo" to undo the last change. Notice that
if you repeatedly use "Undo", the system keeps undoing
the history of changes. Use Edit - Redo" to undo the undo!
Choose "Edit - Cut" or click on the "Cut"
icon to remove the object from the scene.
Choose "Edit - Duplicate" or click on the "duplicate"
icon. Then use the left mouse to drag the copy of the cylinder to a new
location.
Click on the first object. Notice how the first object is selected instead
of the duplicate. Now click on the duplicate object, while keeping the
<Shift> key pressed. Notice how both objects are now selected.
Click on an empty space in the screen and notice how all objects get deselected.
Choose "Scene - Object List" or click on its icon.
Notice that there are two objects listed. Select the first object in the
list. Select another object by clicking on its name. You can deselect the
objects by selecting the selected (highlighted) entries in the object list.
The "Object List" is a convenient alternative to selecting
objects by picking in the viewer (especially when the scene is very crowded).
If you have two objects selected, and move one
of them, notice that both the objects move. You can change this behavior
using another option in "Attribute - Transform - Move". An
interesting option is "Snap to Object". When you move
one of the objects, Ez3d will try to snap to the other selected object
in the direction of movement. This is useful for assembling objects together.
Choose "Edit - Group". Notice that the two objects
now move as one group. Choose "Edit - Ungroup" to ungroup
them.
Pick one object, and choose "Edit - Hide - Selected".
Notice how the other object disappears. Use this operation to concentrate
on the object that you are currently working on. Chose "Edit -
Show" to redisplay all objects. Click on a region outside of all
the objects to deselect all selected objects.
Choose "Edit - Select All", then "Edit - Cut"
or the "Cut" icon to delete all objects in the scene.
This ends our section on getting used to the 3D environment and manipulating
simple objects. If you want to end this session, Ez3d will remember all
the options you have set (such as number of viewers, and their positions).
The next time you invoke Ez3d, it will come up in your customized style.
Choose "Model - Potter" or click on the icon. This
brings up the "Potter" interface. If you like, bring up
the help card and read the introduction to Potter. The cubical object in
the scene is built by using a straight profile (in the lower "main"
Potter window) and a square section (in the upper window).
Move the cursor over a spline point in the main "Potter"
window, until a green box appears. Press down and move the spline point.
Notice how the object changes shape. Move the cursor over the spline curve,
and click once, to add a new spline point. Change "Spline Steps"
to make the object curved. You can move two or more points by drawing
a box around ("box-selecting") them, and moving the manipulator
that comes up. There are many other things you can do in the spline editor.
Read the help card for more details.
(Optional) In "Potter", choose "File
- Section Hole - Spline Primitive". This brings up a list of pre-defined
spline templates. Choose "Circle". Notice how a circular
extruded hole appears in the object.
Choose "Profile" to edit the profile curve. Try moving
the "Spline steps" slider to make the object denser. If
you have a circular section (using "File - Spline Primitive",
changing the profile has the effect of creating a "surface of revolution".
(Optional) Choose "Axis". Notice how a red axis
spline appears in the viewer window(s). Choose "Viewer Type - Front"
in the viewer pop up menu.(or click on the "Front" icon
in the left decoration. Move your cursor over the end of the axis spline,
and when a green box appears, press down with the left mouse button and
move it vertically. Notice how the object stretches as you change the axis.
Click on the middle of the axis to create a new spline point. Now move
any spline point and see how the object bends.
"Potter" is the central modeling tool in Ez3d. It offers
simultaneous use of basic modeling operations such as "Extrude",
"Surface of Revolution" and "Extrude along a 3D path"
in one compact interface. As you learn more about it and become more comfortable
with it, you will realize that this tool can be used to make incredibly
complicated shapes such as machines, snakes and even dinosaurs.
(Not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
Select an object that you built with "Potter" and choose
"Model - Spline Surfer". Little blue spline points appear
on the surface of the object. You can now drag these points any way you
want. "Close" the "Spline Surfer" tool,
and "Delete" all objects.
Let us now make an object by directly creating faces (triangles). Let
us make an outline for a flat stage "prop" (such as the New York
city skyline, or a person's silhouette). Bring up a front view by choosing
"Options - New Viewer - Front".
(Optional) You can also create the outline from an image. In
the viewer pop-up, choose "Background", and use the file
selector to choose an appropriate image. Notice that the viewer now has
the image in the background (which does not change even if you move the
camera). Use "Remove" to get rid of the background image.
Choose "Model - Face Builder". With the <Ctrl> key pressed all the time, click once on the left mouse button. This creates a vertex, and gives you a green rubber band. Click again. This creates a green line (one side of the face you are creating). Keep on clicking until you get a nice outline. If you want to select an existing vertex, just move the cursor over it until a green box shows up, then click. When you are done, double-click on the last point or release the <Ctrl> key. The outline gets "triangulated" into a set of faces.
Move the cursor over a vertex. A green box comes
up on the vertex. Press down and move. Draw a box and select more than
one vertices. A "3D manipulator" comes up around the selected
vertices. Move or resize. Click again on the left mouse to get rid of the
3D manipulator. Select a face using the left mouse. Choose "Finer".
Notice how the face is split into 3 triangles. You can make portions
of the object finer in this fashion.
There are more modeling tools like "Mold", "Slice"
and "Mirror", that you can learn as you go along (or
play with now, if you like!)
Select an object. Choose "Attribute - Color". This
brings up the color editor. Move the little marker on the color wheel,
and observe the color change on the object.
Choose "Attribute- Material" or click on the "Material"
icon. This brings up the Material editor. Click on the buttons to the left
of "Diffuse". This brings up a color editor. Change the
color. Move the "Diffuse" slider to change the brightness
of the color. Play around with "Transparency" and other
values. Use the color editor to change the color back to white.
Select an object and choose "Attribute - Texture" or
click on the icon. This brings up the texture editor interface and brings
up a file selector, giving you a default "palette" of texture
images.
Click on one of the images, and see the object in the preview window
get texture mapped. Try different textures by clicking on them. Try translating,
scaling and rotating the texture map using the sliders on the left. Once
you have the texture map set up right, click on "Update"
for the texture map to appear on the main scene. "Close"
the texture interface.
Choose "Scene - Lights". This brings up the light editor,
and the "Transform" tool. Let us create a new light. Select
"Spot" light type to create a new spotlight and click
on "Create". Notice the spotlight icon in the viewer window(s).
You can move the light by moving the sliders in the "Transform"
tool with "Translate" or "Rotate" selected. If you
grab the thin cylinder in the center of the light icon, you can move the
light up and down. If you grab the end of the arrow, it allows you to change
the direction of the spotlight. Try changing its color. Select an object
in the main viewer, then choose "Point at Object" in the
"Light Editor". Notice how the light now shines on the selected
object. You can "Remove" the light or turn off the icon
(but retain the lighting effect) by turning off "Display - Show
Icon". Try other types of lights.
(Not available in Ez3d Modeler Pro)
Let us now create a very simple 3D Web page in VRML (Virtual Reality
Modeling Language) ".wrl" format.
Start a Project:
Choose "File -New" or "File - Open"
to start on a fresh project. Since the VRML files need to be in
a location different from your Ez3d projects (usually, along with all your
other Web-related files), you can specify a "Publish Folder"
in the "Options - Preferences" interface, say, "\users\you\WWW".
Modeling:
Let us say that we want to create a simple room with walls, some furniture,
a TV, and so on. You can either create the objects using the modeling tools
available in Ez3d, or import them using "File - Import". If
you are using Ez3d modeling tools, keep "Attribute - Complexity"
up, to keep track of the polygon count, which should be kept to the
minimum.
To save time while learning about VRML, you may just want to use some
simple "Primitive" and "Potter" objects,
instead of doing some elaborate modeling. If you have fast access to the
Internet, you can look around for appropriate clip art objects in formats
that Ez3d supports (the VRML format itself is your best bet).
When you are assigning textures to the objects, choose "Texture
- Texture Storage", and set the "Relative to Current Folder"
option (if not already set), so that the references to external texture
files are relative to the location of the VRML files.
VR Scene Composition:
Composing a scene for VR is trickier than building the scene for ray-tracing.
The scene needs to be interesting as well as interactive (the user should
be able to walk through the scene in real-time).
Inlining:
One way to make the scene interactive is to have the VR browser load
objects only when needed. This is done by "inlining" the object,
that is, storing the description of the object in a file, and only including
a reference to the file in the main scene. Select an object, and choose
"Model - WWW Inline". This will output the object onto
a ".wrl" file in the "Publish Folder",
and create an "Inline" reference to the file.
Level of Detail:
You can specify multiple representations of the object, any one of which
gets displayed at any given time, based on the distance from the eye to
the object. Thus you can make an object become more detailed as the user
comes closer to it. Select an object (preferable a curved "Potter"
object), and choose "Attribute - Level of Detail".
By default, the original object is the first representation. Move the "Level"
slider to 2. By default, the second level of detail is a copy of the first.
Now in the "Complexity" interface (which comes up as a
companion tool to "Level of Detail"), set the number of
triangles to be about half the original, and press "Ok". Create
1-2 more levels of detail, and set "Last Level Empty".
Now choose "Idle", and zoom in and out in the main viewer.
Notice that the object changes from one level of detail to the next as
you zoom. You can set the ranges for the levels, by going into "Edit"
mode, changing the camera in the main viewer, and choose "Set
to View", to set the transition points between any two levels.
WWW Links:
You can link 3D objects in the scene to WWW resources. Select an object,
and choose "Attribute - WWW Anchor". Type in "http://www.yahoo.com",
and press "Apply". You can choose "Browseà"
and use the file selector to choose a local file (in your Web page folder
hierarchy), and Ez3d will automatically set the relative path as your WWW
link.
Camera Viewpoints:
Choose "Scene - Camera Viewpoints". Zoom in to an interesting
location in your scene. Choose "Create" and give it a
descriptive name. Create many camera vantage points - all of them will
be automatically listed while browsing using a Web browser.
Previewing:
If you have a 3D browser configured in your Web browser system, you
can directly preview your VRML scene without having to export files. Choose
"Scene - VR Browser" or click on the "VR"
icon. If you have problems, set your browser command in "Options
- Preferences".
Publishing VRML:
To write out selected objects or the entire scene, choose "File
- Publish". By default, files get written to the "Publish
Location". Set a "Title" (this title will show up
in the Web browser). Turn on the options "Compress after Save",
because compression is almost the norm for VRML. You may also want to turn
on "Optimize Output", if you are not going to edit the
file by hand. This utility will merge, rearrange and make the resulting
VRML scene more efficient.
Congratulations! You've just created a 3D Web page using Ez3d!!
(Not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder,
and demo versions)
Create a simple scene (or use your current scene). Choose "Scene
- Render Options" . Click on "Test Render". After
some time, the image will be completely rendered and the system may try
to bring up an image viewer for you to see. Depending on your scene, you
may notice shadows and reflections. When you are satisfied with the way
the test rendered image looks, you may want to perform a complete rendering
by clicking on "Render". You may have noticed that some
of the interface items in Ez3d (such as "Layer" in the
"Texture Editor") are colored blue. This means
that you will see the effect of your actions only in the rendering stage,
not in the viewer window(s).
(Optional) In the "Render Options" interface,
choose "Program Selection". You will see two or more different
renderers listed. "Rayshade" is a high-quality ray-tracer
(that supports shadows, reflections, multiple layers of textures, and so
on), but rendering takes a longer time. Choose "Open GL"
if you want a quicker rendering. To set high-quality options for "Open
GL", choose "Options - Viewer - Anti-aliasing"
and "Options - Viewer - Transparency" , and set appropriate
values.
Save your project by choosing "File - Save" or clicking
on the "Save" icon. Choose "File - Exit"
to quit your current Ez3d session. The next time you start Ez3d, the interface
will come up exactly as you leave it now. This allows you to customize
the interface to suit your needs.
Hopefully you have now got a head start on Ez3d. However, the best way
to learn Ez3d is by working on a real project on your own and using on-line
help as you go along.
Part B Reference Guide
The operations under "File" deal with managing your
Ez3d project and export/import of files.
New Ctrl+N
Open Ctrl+O
Save Ctrl+S
Save as...
Revert to Saved
Import Ctrl+I
Export Ctrl+E
Publish Ctrl+Alt+P
Notes
Printà Ctrl+P
Print Preview
Print Setupà
Exit Ctrl+Q
By being both restrictive and flexible at the same time, Ez3d tries
to make the task of managing complex projects as easy as possible. Some
of the operations can be accessed through their icon in the tool bar, or
by using the "hot key" while the cursor is in the main window
(for example, using <Ctrl-N> for "File - New").
Hot Key: Ctrl+N
This is used to start a new Ez3d project. A project file contains the
current state of your project. A default name, "UNTITLED",
is given to the project. As soon as you start a new project, We recommend
that you do two things:
Choose "File - Save As", and give it a meaningful location
and name using the file selector. It is recommended that you keep your
Ez3d projects together in a single folder.
(VRML only) Set a "Publish" folder using "Options
- Preferences". If you starting on a new VRML project, We recommend
that you immediately set the location where all the VRML files are going
to be created (these will perhaps be along with other Web-related files
such as HTML and image files, and hence separate from your Ez3d project
files). Relative paths for auto-inlining (See "Model - WWW Inline")
will be computed with this location as a base.
Hot Key: Ctrl+O
This is used to open an existing Ez3d project using a file selector.
The project file contains all the information about the current state of
an Ez3d project, including objects, lights, cameras, and so on.
You can also open an existing project by dragging it from the desktop
file manager into the Ez3d viewer. If the file is not an Ez3d project,
but an ordinary 3D file, Ez3d will try to load it into the current project.
Hot Key: Ctrl+S
"Save" is used to save your current project. It saves
the entire scene (including objects, lights, environment, and so on) on
the main scene file. Do not remove or overwrite this file. To save off
selected objects onto separate files, use "File - Export".
You can also turn on the auto-save option to make a backup at regular
intervals (see "Options - Preferences"). Note that
the backup file is different from the original, and is used while restarting
the program after an abnormal exit (like a system crash, a power failure
etc.). So it is recommended that you use "Save" frequently,
to make your changes permanent.
Hint: If you are at that stage of the project where you are just
building several objects (not setting up the scene), then use "File
- Export" to save off each object to a separate file after you
build it, and remove it from the current scene. This will not only keep
the main scene uncluttered, but will also speed up saving and auto-saving
of the scene.
"Save As" is used to save the current project using
a different file name. This option is used as soon as you start a new project,
and wish to give it a meaningful location and name. This options is also
used at a point in a project where you wish to save the project and try
something different but do not want to permanently alter the existing project.
"Save as" makes a complete copy of the existing project
that you can revert back to at a later point.
This allows you to restore the state of the project
to when it was last saved.
Hint: If you are embarking on some wild experimentation, checkpoint
your project by saving it. When you find that things are too wild for comfort,
you can "Revert to Saved", rather than press "Undo"
50 times!
This option is used to load object and scene files into your current
Ez3d project. The default load location is the project scene folder, but
you may use the file selector to choose another location.
Select a location and file using the file selector. You can also drag
a file icon from your desktop and drop it into the main viewer. The system
will automatically translate it (if the format is supported), and load
the contents in!
While loading, if the file contains one or more objects, all the objects
are added to the current scene. If the file contains a scene, all objects
and lights in the file are added to the current scene.
Options
You can set some options for importing files.
Format:
The interface displays a list of supported formats. The following formats
are supported directly:
EZ3D-INVENTOR: This is the native Ez3d format, and maintains
Ez3d-specific information that may otherwise be lost when converting to
other formats.
OPEN-INVENTOR (.iv):is the standard Open Inventor 2.1 format.
VRML (.wrl): VRML format is rapidly becoming the standard for
3D data viewing and interchange on the Internet and beyond. There are vast
repositories of free 3D clip art in VRML format, that you can directly
import in Ez3d, by just typing in the URL in "File - Import".
3DSTUDIO (.3ds): Autodesk 3D Studio format
AUTODESK (.dxf): AutoCAD DXF format
You do not have to choose a format before loading a file. Ez3d will
automatically read in a file that is in any of the supported formats. If
the file has been compressed (using "gzip", and has
a ".gz" filename extension), the system will automatically
uncompress before loading.
Format Info
You can get information (if available) on a particular format by clicking
on the name in the list and choosing "Format Info".
Non-Ez3d Files
The file you are loading could be in the "OPEN-INVENTOR"
format, or in an external format (such as "AUTODESK").
If it is an external format, Ez3d first converts it to "OPEN-INVENTOR".
Now you have a choice of converting the objects in the file into "EZ3D-INVENTOR"
object, or leaving them as-is.
If you have the toggle set to "Convert to Ez3d", Ez3d
will do the best job to convert them. You will now be able to use the modeling
tools on these objects, as well as set materials and textures. However,
some object geometries and material properties may change. Also note that
some Ez3d will "leave as-is", some "OPEN-INVENTOR.iv"
primitives such as lines and points . In these cases, Ez3d will either
ignore the primitives, or leave them "as-is", as with the objects
described below.
If you set the toggle to "Leave As-is", you will not
be able to do any further modeling on the loaded objects. But you will
be able to set colors, materials and textures (if the object does not already
have these attributes set), as well as move and resize them in the scene.
Resize to Fit World:
Sometimes the loaded object may be too big or may be positioned too
far to fit into the Ez3d world (whose extents are defined by the grid).
If the "Resize to Fit World" option is on, Ez3d will automatically
resize and reposition these objects.
Hot Key: Ctrl+E
This allows you to save parts of the current scene to a separate file
(different from the project scene file).
This operation allows you to create a library of objects, or save off
multiple versions, or save off objects in different formats for use by
other applications, while keeping the current scene uncluttered.
Options
You can set the following options for the export operation:
Save Options
You can save one of the following items:
Entire Scene
This option will cause the entire scene (including objects, lights,
environment, etc.) to be saved to a file.
All objects
This option will cause all the objects in the current scene to be written
out to a file. Scene information (such as lights, environment etc.) will
not be saved.
Selected objects
This option will cause the selected object(s) to be written out to a
file. This can be particularly useful if you are done working on an object
and want to now concentrate on modeling another object. The file name for
the object defaults to the object's name. Therefore all you have to do
is to click on "Ok".
Hint: You will find it more productive if you model each object
separately, save it off to a file after modeling. Finally, when you have
modeled all the objects in the scene, you can use "File - Import"
to read them all back in to assemble your final scene.
The file can be saved in one of the following forms:
Ascii Text: This format is useful if you want to save the file
in a readable Ascii text form.
Binary: This format is faster to read and write than the "Ascii
Text" format. The "Binary" option may not be
available on some versions of Ez3d.
Decimal Places
By default, upto 6 decimal digits are written out for floating point
values. You can set it to any number from 0 to 8. The less the number
of decimal digits per number, the more compact the file, and less precise
the 3D description.
Hint: For high-precision design or ray-tracing, use more decimal
places (or, don't change the default). For VR applications, esp. VRML/Internet,
use as few decimal places as possible, because loading time will be reduced.
Accuracy is not critical for VR browsing.
Optimize Output
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
By default, the file that is written out preserves all object names, the object grouping hierarchy, and so on. While this may be good for a scene that is "under construction", it may not be optimal for fast browsing in VR, or other applications that will use the file. If you turn on "Optimize Output", the system does its best to merge several objects, get rid of unnecessary grouping hierarchies, and so on when it writes to the output file. The current scene remains unaffected.
Hint: "Optimize Output" is highly recommended for the final output of VRML files.
Compress After Save
If this option is turned on, the output file is compressed using the
"gzip" utility. The resulting file will have a ".gz"
extension. This option will save disk space, but loading the files back
into Ez3d may be a little slower.
Hint: For VRML file creation, "Compress after Save"
should almost be the norm. Compression is critical for reducing WWW download
time.
Verify Local / Remote Links (VRML only)
If the option(s) are turned on, the system will check for undefined
WWW Inline and WWW Anchor references to local and remote items respectively.
The file will be saved anyway, but the system will provide a warning message
on all undefined links. In the case of remote links, Ez3d actually tries
to fetch the URL. If your machine is not connected to the Internet, you
can get an error, even if your link is legitimate.
See "Model - WWW Inline" and "Attribute - WWW
Anchor" for more details.
File Title (VRML only)
This sets a title for the output file. The VRML browser makes use of
this information to set a title while browsing.
File Format
Finally, choose the file format to write to.
EZ3D-INVENTOR: This is the default native Ez3d format. It is
recommended that you save all your work in this format, even if your desired
output is some other format. This is because this format is the most "intelligent"
format, and maintains Ez3d-specific information which may be lost when
converting to other formats. EZ3D-INVENTOR files cannot be loaded or viewed
by other Open Inventor programs.
OPEN-INVENTOR(.iv): This is the standard Open Inventor 2.1 format.
VRML(.wrl): The VRML format is rapidly becoming the standard
for 3D data viewing and interchange on the Internet and beyond. There are
vast repositories of free 3D clip art in VRML format, that you can directly
import in Ez3d, by just typing in the URL in "File - Import".
The following are popular modeling formats that are used by other applications
in animation, design and ray-tracing.
AUTODESK(.dxf): The most popular CAD 3D format
WAVEFRONT(.obj): A popular format for 3D modeling/animation
3DSTUDIO(.3ds): A popular format for 3D modeling/animation
You just have to type in a name (Example: "dinosaur"),
and Ez3d will automatically add the extensions for file type and file format
(Example: "dinosaur.iv", or "carbody.wrl").
If the file needs to be compressed, the name will have a ".gz"
extension.
Format Info
This brings up some information on the selected format.
Hot Key: Ctrl+P
"Publish" is a more specific version of "File
- Export", used for VRML Web authoring. The default file location
is the user-defined "Publish Folder" (see "File
- Open" and "Options - Preferences"). Also, "Publish"
applies only to the VRML file format. To choose other formats, use "File
- Export".
Hint: For VRML authoring, use "File - Export"
to save off individual objects or scenes in EZ3D-INVENTOR format
(so that the current state of the project is relatively uncluttered). But
use "File - Publish" to export VRML output files for Web
authoring.
"Notes" is a tool which you can bring up to save important
information about the project you are currently working on. It brings up
a text window to edit the information.
Hint: "Notes" can be used to write down the
concept of your project, before you actually start the work, and can be
updated as you go along. It can also be used as log of time spent, resources
used and so on.
"File - Printà", "File - Print Preview"
and "File - Print Setup" allow you to print the main window
scene to a printer or file. It is useful to get high-quality wireframe
or draft hard-copies of your project scene.
If you have not already done so in your desktop, the first thing you
may want to choose is "File - Print Setup" to set up your
system to recognize one or more printers connected to your computer. Refer
to the Operating System help pages in case of difficulty.
"Print Preview" gives you a preview of the picture
that will be sent to the printer. "Print" brings up the
standard interface for printing documents.
Note: "Print" is a fairly time-consuming operation.
For large projects, "Print" may take up to 10 minutes
or longer to create a file for the printer.
Hot Key: Ctrl+Q
"Exit" will save the project
if needed, clean up the system and close down
Ez3d.
The "Edit" drop down menu contains the following options:
Undo Ctrl+Z
Redo Ctrl+Shift+Z
Cut Ctrl+X
Copy Ctrl+C
Paste Ctrl+V
Delete Ctrl+Shift+X
Duplicate Ctrl+2
Select Parent
Select All Ctrl+A
Deselect All Ctrl+Shift+A
Group Ctrl+G
Ungroup Ctrl+Shift+G
Hide > Selected Ctrl+J
Unselected Ctrl+H
Show Ctrl+Shift+H
Show Clipboard
These are generic operations performed on objects in the Ez3d scene.
Most of the operations work on the currently selected object(s). To select
an object, just click on it in any of the viewers, or select using "Scene
- Object List". To select another object instead of the first,
just click on the second object. But if you want to select the second object
in addition to the first, click on it while keeping <Shift>
pressed. To deselect all objects, click on an empty part of the scene,
or choose "Edit - Deselect All".
When an object is selected, by default, a 3D manipulator appears around
it. You can use the manipulator to move and scale the object (see "Attribute
- Transform"). You can also set the selection highlight to other
forms by using "Options - Selection Highlight".
Hot Key: Ctrl+Z
"Undo" is used to undo or step back in the work you
are doing with the program. The menu tells you the last operation that
you did, that can be undone. For example, if you moved an object, then
use "Undo", and the object will move back to where it
used to be. To undo the "Undo", use "Edit - Redo".
Ez3d provides multiple levels of Undo and Redo. That is, you can repeatedly
use "Undo" and "Redo" to step backward
and forward in the history of your editing session.
You can set the number of levels of undo (the maximum number of times
you can go back in your editing history) using "Options - Preferences".
The more the number of levels, the more you can undo, but the more memory
the system needs for "remembering" your actions.
Note: From time to time, the system empties the undo stack even
if it is not full. For example, after you open a new project, the operations
performed in the old project cannot be undone. The undo stack also gets
emptied when a modeling tool is closed.
Hint: The "Undo" and "Redo"
menu items update dynamically to tell you what operation you can undo at
any moment. If either item is grayed out, it means that there is nothing
to be undone.
Hot Key: Ctrl+Shift+Z
See "Edit - Undo"
Hot Key: Ctrl+X
"Cut" is used to remove the selected object or group
of objects from the scene. "Cut" copies the object(s)
to a 3D clipboard. The contents of clipboard can be "pasted"
back onto the scene, or into another Open-Inventor based program.
Hint: Because it copies objects to a clipboard, "Cut"
can be slower than "Delete". Use "Edit - Delete"
if you are sure you are not going to use "Paste" in Ez3d
or another program. To undo the "Cut", use "Undo"
rather than "Paste" the objects back.
Hot Key: Ctrl+C
"Copy" copies the selected object(s) onto a 3D clipboard.
The contents of the clipboard can then be "pasted" back into
the Ez3d scene, into any OpenInventor-based application.
The 3D clipboard can only contain one object at any time. You can use
"Edit - Show Clipboard" to view the contents of the clipboard.
The clipboard contents don't change until you do a "Cut"
or "Copy" again.
Hint: If you are going to paste the selection back to the scene
to make an identical copy, use "Duplicate" rather than
"Copy" and "Paste". It is not only easier,
but also memory-efficient, because only one copy of the geometry is maintained
in the system's memory. This is particularly relevant for scenes with several
identical geometries (Example: a city).
Hot Key: Ctrl+V
"Paste" adds the contents of the 3D clipboard onto
the main scene. The contents may be the result of a "Cut"
or "Copy" within Ez3d, or by an Open-Inventor based application.
Hot Key: Ctrl+Shift+X
"Delete" is similar to "Cut" in that
it removes the selected object(s) from the scene, but it does not copy
the removed object(s) to the clipboard. Hence you cannot re-paste the removed
objects using "Paste". You can use "Undo"
however to reverse the action of "Delete".
Hint: "Delete" is faster than "Cut.
So if you know you are not going to use the 3D clipboard to "Paste",
use "Delete".
Hot Key: Ctrl+2
"Duplicate" makes identical copies of the selected
objects, and adds them to scene.
Hint: Use "Duplicate" rather than "Copy"
+ "Paste". It is not only easier, but also memory-efficient,
because only one copy of the geometry is maintained in the system's memory.
This is particularly relevant for scenes with several identical geometries
(Example: a city).
"Select Parent" is used to select
the parent of an object, in the
hierarchically linked scene. Object hierarchies are typically created
using "Edit - Group" or "Attribute - Level of
Detail".
Hint: Use "Scene - Object List" to view and
edit object hierarchies.
Hot Key: Ctrl+A
"Select All" is used to select all objects in the scene.
It is typically used when you want to group or delete all the objects in
the scene.
Hint: <Ctrl+A><Ctrl+X> will delete all objects
in the scene. <Ctrl+A><Ctrl+G> will group all of them
(See "Edit - Group").
Hot Key: Ctrl+Shift+A
"Deselect All" is used to deselect all currently selected
objects. This is equivalent to clicking on an empty area in the viewer
window(s). You may use this when there is very little empty space in the
scene.
Hot Key: Ctrl+G
"Group" is used to create a group of objects from several
unrelated objects for selection and manipulation purposes. If you select
two or more objects and use "Group", a new "Group"
object is created, with the selected objects as its children. From then
on, the objects acts a single group for selection and manipulation. You
can use "Ungroup" to ungroup them later on.
The newly created "Group" object can only be moved and re-sized.
You cannot perform any modeling operations on it. If you click on any object
in the group, the entire group will be selected. To select an individual
sub-object, use "Scene - Object List".
Grouping objects can be particularly useful under the following circumstances:
a. When you want to organize your objects in a cohesive structure (similar
to organizing files on your computer disk!). Use "Scene - Object
List" to view the hierarchy.
b. When you want to move a group of objects together as though it were
one whole object. (Note: You can also move two ungrouped objects together
by selecting both of them and manipulating one of the objects. However,
this operation does not preserve the connection between the two objects).
c. When you want to assign the same attribute (such as color or display
style) to all objects in the group. (Note: Again, you can do this in a
non-permanent fashion by selecting more than one object and changing the
color, and so on).
If you "Cut" the "Group" object, all objects
that belong to the group will be removed.
Note: You cannot apply a texture map to a grouped object. You
will need to ungroup the objects (or select using "Scene - Object
List") and apply texture maps on each object individually.
Hot Key: Ctrl+U
"Ungroup" is used to break an existing group of objects.
The "Ungroup" option will only work on groups created
with "Group".
See "Edit - Group" for a description of the grouping
operation.
Hot Key: Selected: Ctrl+J
Unselected: Ctrl+H
"Hide" is used to hide objects in the scene so that
only the objects you are currently working on are displayed and edited.
This option is very handy to keep object creation speed at its peak. It
is also very useful in placing tightly grouped objects. "Show"
will re-display the hidden objects. "Hide" option contains
two sub-choices:
a. "Hide - Selected" will hide all the currently selected objects.
b. "Hide - Unselected" will hide all objects not selected.
The latter is useful to hide away all objects that you are not working
on.
Hot Key: Ctrl+Shift+H
"Show" is used to re-display
all the objects hidden using "Hide". (See "Edit
- Hide").
Ez3d and other Inventor-based 3D applications feature a clipboard,
much like word-processors. This can be particularly useful for sharing/
inter-changing objects between different Inventor-based 3D applications.
The "Show clipboard" option brings up a window that
shows the contents of this virtual 3D clipboard. When you do a "Cut"
or "Copy" in Ez3d, the selected object(s) gets copied
to this virtual clipboard. You can then "Paste" the object(s)
inside Ez3d or another Inventor-based product. Or you can "Copy"
an object in another product and use "Paste" in Ez3d to
insert the object into your scene. This just presents an elegant alternative
to the tedious task of writing and reading files.
This title menu has a set of modeling operations that can be used to
create and manipulate 3D objects. Ez3d offers a simple yet powerful spectrum
of modeling tools to meet the most demanding needs, while keeping the interface
as simple as possible. "Model" has the following options:
Primitives...
Potter...
Spline Surfer...
Face Builder...
3D Text...
2D Text...
Lines...
Merge...
Mold...
Slice...
Mirror...
WWWInline...
Ez3d has a top-down approach to 3D modeling, going from high-level "Primitive"
or "Potter" objects down to "Faces". As you go from
one level down to the next, you are offered more flexibility at the cost
of losing the ability to edit at a higher level. Hence when an object is
selected, only a certain set of tools can be applied to it (The Ez3d interface
grays out those tools that cannot be applied). The following are the object
types:
"Primitive": For normal modeling, you usually start
with one of the "Primitives". You can choose from a simple
set of primitives such as cube or cylinder.
"Potter": For modifying the basic shape, you can invoke
the powerful "Potter" tool. This spline-based tool allows
you to modify the profile/sections/axis spline curves of the basic object,
and create a more complicated object. You will find "Potter"
adequate for a majority of your basic modeling needs.
"Spline": If you want to fine tune the shape of the
object, invoke "Spline Surfer". This tool allows you to
directly manipulate the surface spline control points.
"Faces": The next level is "Face Builder",
which allows you to directly manipulate the triangles of the object's surface.
You can also invoke "Face Builder" directly, to create
polygonal objects from scratch.
"3D Text": You can use the "3D Text"
tool to create 3D lettering.
"2D Text": This is used to create 2D annotations located
in 3D space
"Lines": This is used to create 3D lines.
"WWW Inline": For VRML users, the WWW Inline tool is
a way of "auto-inlining" objects in the scene, as well as include
objects from across the Web.
"Group": When you take two objects together and group them together, a parent of type "Group" is created.
"Unknown": When you read in an external file and want
to leave the contents "as-is", the contents are read in as an
"Unknown" object, which cannot be modeled using any tool.
This tool allows you to create basic shapes such as cubes and cylinders.
You can then transform them (stretch, compress, rotate and so on) and place
them on the scene. There are several advantages to using these primitives
instead of using the polygonal tools:
These primitives are simple and high level - you can change the fineness (polygon count) using a single slider.
Since they are represented as such in the output file (VRML, Open Inventor
and so on) the resultant file will be compact and efficient for VR browsers,
ray-tracing engines and other programs that process the file.
Object Name: You can give a meaningful name to the object using the "Object Name" text field, and pressing "Ok".
Hint: We recommend that you give meaningful names to your objects
as soon as you create them, rather than name them afterwards using the
"Object List". This will help you immensely as your scene
gets more complex.
Complexity:
This affects the smoothness of the primitive. The more the complexity,
the more the sphere or cone will appear, and more the number of polygons
(triangles) in the object. Hence use a smaller complexity for interactive
world building.
Note: Both VRML browsers (at this time) and ray-tracers do not
support the concept of complexity for primitives, and decide on their own
how fine the primitive should be. Hence, unless you plan to edit the polygons
of the primitive during the modeling process, you may as well create primitives
with lesser complexity for more interactivity.
Create: Select a primitive from the list, and choose "Create"
.
Info: This gives information about the primitives selected in the list.
"Potter" is the primary object creation tool in Ez3d.
"Potter" is a unique tool, because it combines many traditional
tools (extrude, sweep/spin, axis path and twist) into a single new approach
to modeling 3D objects. In its simplest form this tool extrudes and spins
or sweeps at the same time. If you take a little time and understand the
concepts behind "Potter", you will find creative ways
to create both simple and complex objects using a combination of spline
curves.
By default, "Potter" comes up with a square "Section"
(in the main Potter window) and a straight "Profile" (in
the smaller window below). The section and profile are each 2-dimensional
curves. Sweeping the profile about the section results in a 3-dimensional
object. For example, sweeping a vertical line about a square results in
a cube. If the section is a circle, the 3D object will be a cylinder. If
the section is a circle, and the profile is a sloping line, the object
will be a cone. You can also create holes in the section, and the holes
are extruded all along the profile. "Potter" also allows
you to modify the section "locally". For example, an object can
be round at the top, then square around the middle, and so on. By default
the object has a straight "Axis" (backbone). You can actually
specify and modify an axis spline path in the viewer window, and see the
object contort itself about the axis! Finally, you can specify a twist
to be applied to each sectional plate. The profile/sections/axis/twist
curves can be a continuous set of both lines and splines. The resulting
object will be a mesh of spline surfaces, and treated as a single continuous
mesh of vertices for rendering.
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the object using the "Object
Name" text field.
Current Operation
There are 5 choices:
Profile
Section
Axis
Local Section
Twist
These options control what parts of the "Potter" object
you will be working on. Except in the case of Axis, the spline that has
been chosen appears in the main Potter window. The Axis spline is edited
in the scene viewer(s). All the operations in the interface now operate
on the chosen spline. See "Spline Editing" later on this
section, to learn how to modify the spline.
Profile
This selects the "Profile spline" for editing in the
main spline editor (Large window). The "Section spline"
will appear on the smaller window.
Section
This selects the "Section spline" for editing in the
main spline editor (Large Window). The profile spline appears on the smaller
window.
Local Section
This allows one or more sections to be edited without affecting any
of the remaining sections. Select one or more points in the Profile editor
(using the left mouse drag box). These are the points, whose local sections
you want to modify. Then choose "Local Section". It brings
up the local section in the editor window, which you can now modify. To
restore a group of sections back to the shape of the "global section",
select the points in the Profile window (using the left mouse), and choose
"Section". The local section effects go away.
Axis
This selects the object's "Axis" (backbone) for editing.
The 3D axis spline should be edited in the viewer window(s). See "Spline
Editing" later on in this section, to learn how to modify the
axis spline. The axis may be bent or formed into almost any curve shape,
and the object will extend and contort itself along that curve. Axis editing
is best done in a 2D view (by choosing "Options - New Viewer ").
Note: If you have "Axis" selected, all the Potter
operations will work on the axis in the main Ez3d viewer, not the spline
in the two Potter viewers. However what you do inside the "Potter"
viewers will affect the spline there (profile or section). This can be
a little confusing, but it allows you the flexibility of modifying the
section, profile and axis all at the same time. For example, while manipulating
the "Axis", you can increase the number of points
in the "Profile", so that you get smooth bending.
Twist
The twist spline specifies how much each section plate rotates with
regard to the previous. By default, the twist spline is a vertical line,
so the object is not twisted. If you move the top or bottom point, you
will see the 3D object twisting by a proportional amount. You can twist
specific portions of the object by creating more points within the twist
spline, and moving them.
Spline Editing
This is a very powerful 3D curve editor used for creating and modifying
splines. In the "Potter" tool, it is used for editing
the section/profile/axis curves. In the "3D text" tool,
it is used to edit the bevel of the text. The spline is usually colored
white, and the spline control points are colored blue, except for the starting
point, which is red. The cursor is a red cross-hair. A green rubber-band
extends from the current cursor position to the nearest end of the spline.
If you move the cursor over the spline, that part of the spline turns green.
If you move the cursor over a spline point, a green box appears over it.
Note: If you are editing the axis spline in the main window,
to activate the sensitivity of the manipulator, first move the cursor over
an end point of the spline until the green box appears. From then on, you
should have no problem.
Moving a Spline Point
To move a spline point, move your cursor over it until a green box appears.
Press on the left mouse button. The green box turns yellow. Move the point
while keeping the mouse button pressed. Notice how the spline changes shape!
In a 2D viewer such as the "Potter" viewer, the point
can only be moved in the viewing plane. In a 3D viewer, you can actually
move it in any direction. The manipulator chooses to move along the X,
Y or Z axis direction based on the side of the box that the cursor is touching.
If you keep the <Shift> key pressed, the movement will be
constrained along the nearest axis. If you keep the <Ctrl>
key pressed, the movement will be constrained perpendicular to the plane.
You can constrain the movement of points by choosing "Options
- Snap To Grid". You can even set the coarseness of the invisible
"snap" grid in "Options - Grid Options".
Moving a Group of Spline Points
To move a group of points together, press down the left mouse button
and drag a rectangular box around the required points. When you let up
on the button, a 3D manipulator shows up around the box. You can now press
down on the left mouse to move the box (and the points inside it). If you
are in the 3D viewer, you will notice that the manipulator box (and the
points inside it) move in the plane of the side that the mouse touches.
You can also resize or rotate the box by pressing down on the corner and
side "handles". For more details on the 3D manipulator, please
see "Options - Selection Highlight - 3D manipulator".
To select more points, keep <Shift> pressed while dragging
the left mouse around the points. The 3D manipulator will then expand to
surround both the original and additional points.
Hint: You can create gears or corrugated pipes by <Shift>-selecting
every alternate spline point in a section!
If you have the "Transform" tool up (see Attribute
- Transform), the text boxes will indicate the accurate cursor position
during spline editing. If you box-select one or more points, the text boxes
will indicate the center of the selected region. You can specify an accurate
location for the spline points by typing a value, or moving the thumb wheels
in the "Transform" tool.
Adding a Spline Point
To add a new spline point, simply click on the left mouse button at
the desired location in the spline window. The green rubber band indicates
which end of the spline will be extended. To add a new point in the middle
of the spline, go over the spline until that part of the spline turns green,
then click on the left mouse button. The new point can then be moved the
usual way.
In some cases, you will not be allowed to add points at the ends of
the spline (for example, if the spline is a closed loop, as in a "Potter"
section). In this case, the green rubber band from the nearest end of the
spline will not appear. But you can add points in the middle.
Creating Multiple Spline Segments
The spline itself can consist of several curve segments. To start a
new curve segment, keep the <Ctrl> key pressed while clicking
on the left mouse button to create a new point. The new point will now
be in a different curve segment. Notice that the junction spline point
is red. You can "split" a curve segment into two by pressing
<Ctrl> while clicking the left mouse on the curve. You can
use multiple curve segments in a spline either to create portions of the
curve composed entirely of straight lines, or to create "cusps"
in the spline.
Deleting Points
To delete a point, move over it until the green box appears. Then press
"d" or "<Backspace>" or "<Delete>"
on the keyboard. If you are not over a vertex, but there is a green highlight
from the end of the spline to the cursor, it will delete that end point.
You can also box-select one or more vertices, then press "d"
or "Backspace" or "Delete".
Most tools that use the spline editor also have a "Delete"
button (such as the "Delete Region" button in Potter).
You can select one or more points using the left mouse, and use this button
to delete those points.
The spline/vertex editor does take a little while to learn, especially
if you want to use its full power. But since it is at the heart of all
modeling tools, it will be well worth the effort.
Potter Edit Operations
The top menu bar in "Potter" has some "Edit"
operations that work hand-in-hand with the spline editor.
Select Piece
If you have one or more points selected using the left mouse, this selects
the whole spline piece. If the section has holes (see "Potter -
Section Holes" below), the spline has multiple pieces. The "Select
piece" option is useful for selecting individual pieces.
Finer Region
This will double the number of spline points in the region that has
been selected using the left mouse.
Delete Region
You can box-select one or more points in the spline, and press "Delete
Region" to delete them. In some cases where the splines have to
be closed loops, as in "Potter" sections, you cannot have
less than 4 points in the spline.
Delete Piece
This will delete the entire spline piece of which one or more points
have been selected.
Delete All
This will clear the entire spline. In some cases, such as a Potter section,
you cannot clear the spline - you will always have to start with an existing
spline curve and modify it.
The Potter interface has these two buttons for convenience. These have
the same functionality as their main counterparts.
Delete Region
Undo
Spline steps
Each spline consists of spline control points (blue markers on the
editing window). The spline is created by generating curve points in
between the spline points. The "spline steps" slider determines
the number of curve points between consecutive spline points. The more
the spline steps used, the finer or smoother will be the curves produced
by the main spline points. And consequently, the finer or smoother will
be the appearance of the object.
You can set spline steps to be 1 to create line segments instead of
curved spline segments. For example, for the default square section, the
spline steps is 1. You can also set spline steps for each piece or hole
in a section spline by selecting one or more vertices in the piece, and
changing the steps. If no points are selected, the spline steps for all
pieces are changed.
Hint: Use a low number of "spline steps", say
3 to 5, for fast modeling of the object, then bump up the smoothness while
rendering by increasing spline steps, to say, 15 (or even 50 for that super-smooth
look!).
Hint: In VR, modifying spline steps is a good way of creating
multiple levels of detail with varying complexity. (You can also use
"Attribute - Complexity" for that)
Join Ends
This option specifies whether the spline being edited is always a closed
loop or not. If it is a closed loop, moving the starting point will also
move the end point so that the spline is always a loop. In the case of
"Potter" sections, "Join Ends" will always
be on.
Auto-Update
By default, the "Potter" object in the Ez3d scene instantly
changes with any change to its profile/section. If the instant feedback
slows things down, turn off "Auto-Update". Now whenever
you move a single spline point or a group of points, the object updates
only when you let go of the mouse.
Parts
The top menu bar of the Potter interface has 3 toggle buttons to turn
various parts of the 3D object (sides, top cap and bottom cap) on or off.
Hint: If you turn only "Top Cap" on, you can
create VR stage props with holes. To add a thickness to the prop, create
a short vertical profile spline, and turn "Sides" on. Alternatively,
you can use "Model - Face Builder" to build flat props.
Potter File Operations
The top menu bar of the Potter interface has some "File" menu
items that affect the object more globally.
Load Spline
This brings up a menu of spline templates or primitives. These can be
loaded as the currently selected spline. The menu includes standard spline
shapes like "Circle", "SemiCircle", "Square",
and so on. By using the right combination of splines for the section, profile
and axis, you can create a number of "Potter" shapes.
You can also load an EZ3D-INVENTOR (see "File - Import")
file that contains the description of a spline curve. This feature is always
used in conjunction with "Potter - Save Spline" to create
a library of re-usable spline curves.
The current spline is replaced by the spline in the file. For example,
you can change the default square section by choosing "Circle".
Observe how the 3D object becomes a cylinder.
Examples of using spline templates:
a. A helical spring made of a straight profile, a circular section and a helical axis
b. A torus made of a circular section, and a circular profile reduced and shifted entirely to the right of the center
c. Another torus made of a circular section, a straight profile, and a circular axis.
d. Same as c., but use a rectangular section and profile, and you get a nice picture frame.
e. A pyramid made of a square section and a sloping profile
f. A twisted gear, made of a toothed section and a closed vertical profile, and a twist factor.
The possibilities are endless. Experiment on your own.
Save Spline
This brings up the "File - Export" interface, and allows
you to save the current spline onto a file. The spline can then be load
back into Potter using "Load Spline".
Section Hole
This unique feature allows you to create complex extruded objects. The
section hole has to be a pre-defined spline. You have 3 choices:
Copy Outer: This will make a scaled down copy of the outermost
section spline piece. This is useful for creating "double-skinned"
objects.
Load Spline: You can load a pre-defined spline such as "Circle"
or "Square", or a spline that you saved using "Save
Spline". In all cases, the hole is created with a nice default
size at the center of the section, and a manipulator around it. You can
use the manipulator to position and resize the hole the way you want. You
can create multiple holes, even holes inside holes (a hole inside a hole
will be capped!).
Delete All: This will remove all the holes in the section.
Note: If you have intersecting or self-intersecting spline pieces in the section, the top and bottom cap will not be created, but the sides
will still be valid.
New Object
This is used when you want to work on a new "Potter" object without having to close the tool and bring it up again.
(Not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
"Spline Surfer" is the next step to "Potter".
For many simple and even reasonably complex objects, "Potter"
is more than adequate. But if you want to "fine tune" the object,
you may need to directly manipulate the spline control points on the surface.
Note that if you invoke "Spline Surfer" on a "Potter"
object, you will lose the section/profile information. The object is now
represented by its surface spline control points.
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the object using the "Object
Name" text field.
Mode
The tool has 3 modes:
Idle
In this mode, you can select/deselect and move this and other objects
in the scene. The other two modes "grab" all the attention, so
you cannot do anything else.
Tweak Spline Pts
In "Tweak Spline Pts" mode, you can tweak individual
spline control points using direct 3D interaction in the viewer windows.
To move a point, move the cursor over it until a green box appears.
Then press down on the left mouse button and move the point. In a 2D viewer
(see section on "Options - New Viewer"), the point can
be moved in the viewing plane. In a 3D viewer, you can actually move it
in any direction. The manipulator chooses which 3D axis direction to move
in, based on your mouse movement. If you keep the <Shift>
key pressed, the movement will be constrained along the nearest axis (which
will be colored a brighter yellow). If you keep the <Ctrl>
key pressed, the movement will be constrained to be perpendicular to the
plane.
You can also move a group of points by dragging a rectangular box around
them using the left mouse button. A 3D manipulator appears around the selected
vertices. You can move the box (and the points within it) by pressing the
left mouse button and moving the mouse. Notice that the box moves in the
plane of the side that you are pressing down on. You can also resize or
rotate the box by pressing on the corner and side "handles" of
the manipulator.
See "Options - Selection Highlight" for details on
the 3D manipulator. If you have the "Transform" tool up
(see "Attribute - Transform"), you can type in precise
values for spline point locations.
Parts
These are the same as the "Potter" parts. You can turn
the "Sides", "Top cap", or "Bottom
Cap" on or off individually.
Join Ends (X, Y)
This allows you to specify whether the object is closed in the left-to-right
direction, and in the top-to-bottom direction. For example, if you are
"spline surfing" a cylinder created in "Potter",
you will notice that "Join Ends X" is set. This means
that the surface of the object always wraps around to touch itself in the
left-to-right direction, and the ends will always move together during
any tweaking operation. If you turn "Join Ends" off, you
can "unwrap" the surface in X or Y.
Spline Steps
As in "Potter", this allows you to increase or decrease
the number of steps between consecutive spline points. You can either move
the slider or type in the number of steps in the text box.
Make Region Finer
Select a few spline points by dragging a box using the left mouse. Then
choose "Make Region Finer". Notice more spline points
in the region selected. You can repeatedly use this to add more detail
to smaller portions of the spline mesh.
Bend Axis
This is very similar to the axis manipulation in "Potter",
only more general (see section on Model - Potter for details on
axis manipulation). The "Spline" object has an "intrinsic
axis" or backbone. You can bend, stretch and twist the object by just
adding more points in the axis spline, and moving them. This gives you
better control than having to move the actual vertices themselves.
When you choose "Bend", a bright red axis shows up
inside the object. This may be the original axis of the object when it
was in "Potter". You can now start bending and stretching
the object by manipulating the axis spline. (See section on Model -
Potter for details on spline editing). You can add more points in the
middle of the spline, and start bending the object about those points.
Move the cursor over an end-point of the spline, until a green box appears.
Press down with the left mouse and drag the point. Notice how the object
stretches according to your movement. Click in the middle of the axis spline.
Notice a new spline point (blue marker). Drag this point with the left
mouse, and notice how the object bends along its axis.
Note: Before picking or adding points in the middle of the axis
spline, first move the cursor over one of the end points until the green
box appears over it. From then on, you will be able to add or pick points
in the middle easily.
Section Size
Use this thumb-wheel to increase or decrease the sectional size of the
object around the axis.
Auto Update
If you turn "Auto Update" on, the object updates immediately
when the axis is bent. If you turn this option off, the object updates
at the end of the interaction.
Hint: Bending can be slow for complex objects, so it is better to have "Auto-Update" turned off.
New
To "spline surf" another object, choose "Idle"
mode, select the object and click on "New".
Close
This option closes the "Spline Surfer" tool.
"Face Builder" is used to create individual polygons,
add polygons to existing objects, and to create connections between different
objects. It provides ultimate low-level control to the user.
If "Face Builder" is invoked on an existing selected
object, and if that object is a Potter or Spline object, the object is
first polygonized into triangles. If you invoke "Face Builder"
on more than one object, you can fuse them into a single mesh of faces,
and then start stitching faces between the two groups of faces to create
smooth shading effects. The newly fused object will take the properties
(color, material, textures) of the first selected object. (If you just
want to fuse the objects and don't need to edit the result, just use "Model
- Merge".)
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the object using the "Object
Name" text field, and pressing "Ok".
Mode
In "Edit" mode, the face builder tool is active and
does not allow any other activity in the scene. In "Idle"
mode, you will be able to select and move objects in the scene.
Creating New Faces
You can create new faces or add new faces connected to existing ones
by keeping <Ctrl> pressed while clicking the left mouse
button. As you click one point after the other, you get a green rubber-band
outline of the face that is being created. When you have entered the required
number of points (say, 3 for a triangle, or 15 for a complicated face),
either double-click or release the <Ctrl> key. That will
immediately create triangles to make the polygonal outline that you just
entered. While defining the vertices of the polygon, you can use the vertex
of another connecting face by moving the cursor over the vertex until a
green box appears, and then click on it. That vertex is now shared by the
old face(s), and the new face that you are creating. While building a face,
you can press <Backspace> or <Delete> to
delete the most recent point entered.
Moving Faces
The "Face Builder" allows you to move the vertices
around once you have created faces. To move a vertex, move the cursor over
it until a green box appears, then press down on the left mouse button.
You get a yellow highlight. Move the vertex while keeping the mouse button
pressed. You can also move a group of vertices by first dragging a rectangular
box around the vertices using the left mouse button. This brings up a 3D
manipulator around the box. You can now move the box by keeping the left
mouse button pressed. You can also scale or rotate the box by pressing
on the corner and side "handles" of the manipulator. (See "Options
- Selection Highlight").
Box-selecting vertices also selects the faces involved. You can select
additional faces by box-selecting with <Shift> pressed.
You can also select a face for manipulation by either directly clicking
the left mouse on it. If you keep <Shift> pressed, you can
select more than one face.
Edges
This turns the display of triangle edges on or off. If you have the
viewer draw style "as is", the edges helps you visualize
the triangle editing.
Sel Box (Selection Box)
When you box-select one or more faces with the left mouse, it brings
up a 3D manipulator. To turn the manipulator off, but still keep the faces
selected, you can turn "Sel Box" off.
You can perform the following operations on the selected faces:
Delete: This will delete the selected faces. You can also press
<d> or <Backspace> or <Delete>
when you are inside the viewer.
Detach: This will detach the selected faces into a separate object.
The "Face Builder" tool will now operate on this new object.
Hint: "Detach" can be used when you want to
apply different textures on different parts of the same geometry.
Hint: Use "Detach" to create explosion effects
where certain faces of the objects fly off.
Flip
This will flip the selected faces inside-out. If the display style of
the object is "Both Sides" (see "Attribute - Display
Style"), then it will not make a visual difference. But if the
object has a display style of "Outside" or "Inside"
only, then the faces will get flipped.
Finer
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
This will cause each selected face to be split into 3 equal triangles.
This is a good way of increasing the detail of portions of the object.
The newly created center vertex can now be moved for finer adjustment.
You can also press <f> while inside the viewer.
Reduce
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
This powerful tool is used to reduce the triangle density on any arbitrary
object. This tool is especially useful in VR applications to create levels
of detail. It is also useful for reducing the complexity and redundancy
in 3D scanned data.
You can use the slider or type in the desired number of triangles. For
example, you may want to reduce from 2000 triangles to 500.
You can reduce one of the following:
Delete Selected: This will delete all the selected faces, and
replace them with minimal "healing" triangles.
Reduce Selected: This will try to iteratively reduce only the
selected portion of the object
Reduce Unselected: This will try to reduce everything but the
selected portion of the object. This is useful when you want to preserve
certain critical features in the shape.
Reduce All: The reduction system tries its hand on the entire
object.
Preserve Creases:
This toggle tells the system to preserve all triangle boundaries that
are shaded sharply. For example the top and bottom circles of a cylinder
are sharp edges, but the sides are smooth. The sharpness of the edges can
be modified using "Attribute - Display Style - Crease Angle".
When you press "Start", the system repeatedly processes
all vertices to see which ones can be eliminated. The system tries to do
just enough so that your desired goal is achieved. This is a process of
trial and error, and may take more than a minute sometimes. If you change
your mind or if it is taking too long, you can press "Stop".
If the final results are not what you expected, use "Undo"
and start again.
Crease Angle:
This brings up the "Attribute - Display Style" interface,
which has a slider to set the crease angle (or smoothness) of the object.
When reducing triangles of the object, you may reach a point where no more
faces can be reduced, because the system may have to preserve creases.
In this case, you can increase the crease angle, thus making the object
smoother, and then reduce further.
New
This is used when you want to work on a new "Face Builder"
object. If you select another object and choose "New",
that object is now loaded into "Face Builder" (if the
other object is already of type "Faces", you don't have
to say "New"). If no object is selected, you can start
with an empty "Faces" object.
Close
This closes the "Face Builder" tool.
"3D Text" is a tool to create "flying logos"
and captions. The 3D Text can not only have thickness, but also a profile
curve that defines the shape of the bevel.
The interface has the following components:
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the main object using the "Object Name" text field, and pressing "Ok".
Input Text
This tool takes its input from the keyboard. Just type in whatever you
wish. To start a new line, press <Enter> and type in the
new line. When you are done, click on "Update".
Automatic
If you turn on "Automatic", you can see the text appear
as you type. This may slow things down, but you get instantaneous feedback.
Update
If "Automatic" is off, click on "Update"
to update the "3D Text" object with the text you typed
in.
Font name
There are two modes of operation for choosing the 3D Text font.
Name: This will give you a list of fonts available. Select a
font by choosing an item in the list. You can change the font any time
while editing the text.
Family: This is a more generic style of setting the font. You can set
the Font family to one of Serif, Sans Serif or Typewriter, and optionally
set "Bold" and/or "Italic".
Hint: For VRML, the "Family" style of specifying
fonts is recommended, as that will ensure correct display on all VR browsers.
Complexity
The complexity value, ranging between 0 and 1, indicates the fineness
of the font outline.
Hint: Using a lesser complexity value significantly reduces the
number of triangles used, which is good for VR. For ray-tracing, you may
want to use a higher complexity value.
Font Size
You can change the size of the font by entering a new value in the "Font
Size" text field.
Line Spacing
You can change the vertical spacing between lines of text by entering
a new value in the "Line Spacing" text field.
Justify
You can set the justification of the text to "Left", "Center"
or "Right", with respect to the location point of the
text.
Parts
The "3D Text" object has 3 parts -- "front",
"sides" and "back". You can turn each of
these parts on or off.
Hint: If you turn only "Front" on, the number
of triangles becomes significantly lesser, and the scene becomes more efficient
for VR.
Hint: Turning on "front" and "back",
and turning off "side" creates a nice "shadow"
effect for the lettering.
Profile Editor
On the right side of the "3D Text Editor", you will
find the "Profile Editor" window. This tool is used to
change the profile contours (beveling) of the "3D Text".
To use this tool start by moving the mouse cursor over the blue point
marker at the left side of the profile spline. When the control point is
selected, a small green box will appear around the blue control point.
Now press the left mouse button and hold it, this will change the display
to a yellow drag manipulator. Still holding the left mouse button down,
drag the mouse up or down. You will see the profile of the 3D text object
change. Move the cursor over the line till it turns green, and click the
left mouse button to create a new intermediate point on the profile. Press
"D" or "Backspace" or "Delete"
to remove the point. When you are moving a point, its numerical location
is displayed in the "Transform" tool (see "Attribute
- Transform"). If you drag a box around a vertex using the left
mouse, then you can type in a precise location in the X and Y boxes.
(See "Model - Potter" for a full description of spline
editing, which is similar to the 3D text profile editor).
New
This is used when you want to work on a new "3D Text"
object. You can use this option to create/ edit a new 3D text object without
having to close the tool.
Close
This closes the 3D Text tool. If the input text is empty, no object
is created.
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
"2D Text" is a tool that provides for the creation
of 2D annotation text on the screen. The text always stays flat on the
screen and does not rotate with the camera. 2D text is useful for annotation
and titling. However, it will not appear in the VRML output or the ray-traced
image.
If an existing 2D text object is selected while invoking this tool,
that object will be edited, otherwise a new object will be created.
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the main object using the "Object
Name" text field, and pressing "Ok".
Input Text
This tool takes its input from the keyboard. Just type in whatever you
wish. To start a new line, press <Enter> and type in the
new line. When you are done, click on "Update".
Automatic
If you turn on "Automatic", you can see the text appear
as you type. This may slow things down, but you get instantaneous feedback.
If "Automatic" is off, click on "Update"
to update the 2D text object with the text you typed in.
Font
The "Font" list field contains a list of fonts available.
Select a font by choosing an item in the list. You can change the font
any time while editing the text.
Font Size
You can change the size of the font by entering a new value in the "Font
Size" text field.
Line Spacing
You can change the vertical spacing between lines of text by entering
a new value in the "Line Spacing" text field.
Justify
You can set the justification of the text to "Left", "Center"
or "Right", with respect to the location point of the
text.
New
This is used when you want to work on a new "2D Text"
object. You can use this option to create or edit a new 2D text object,
without having to close the tool and invoke it again.
Close
This will close the tool. If the input text is empty, no object will
be created.
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
The "Lines" tool can be used to create 3D lines in
the scene. Lines can be used for annotating 3D polygonal objects, as well
as fast representations of true 3D objects.
By default, a vertical line of length 2 is created, with one spline
control point at each end. The line manipulator works the same way as all
other spline editors in Ez3d. See "Potter - Spline Editing"
for a detailed description of spline editing. You can move one or more
points, create new points within and outside the existing spline, delete
one or more points, and so on. If you have the "Transform"
interface up (See "Attribute - Transform"), you can get
the precise location of the cursor. You can also select more than one point
using the left mouse, and type in precise location values in the "Transform"
text boxes.
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the main object using the "Object
Name" text field, and pressing "Ok".
Spline Steps
This can be used to control the fineness of the curve. Set steps to
1, if you want straight line segments.
Width
This specifies the pixel width of the line. By default, lines are 1
pixel wide.
Pattern
Using this option menu, you can set the pattern of the line.
Join Ends
This option can be used to keep the ends of the line together all the
time, forming a closed loop.
Markers
Use this to display or turn off markers for the spline control points
Finer
If you have a region of the spline selected using the left mouse, and
choose "Finer", you can double the number of spline points
in the region. This allows you to add more detail to that area.
Delete
You can delete one or more spline control points by selecting them using
the left mouse, and choosing "Delete".
New
This allows you to start on a new curve without having to close and
start it again.
Close
This closes the "Lines" tool. Since you cannot select
any other object or perform other scene operations while the "Lines"
tool is up, you should close the tool as soon as you are done editing.
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
You can merge two or more polygonal objects into a single mesh of triangles,
by selecting all of them and choosing "Model - Merge".
The individual objects will be converted to "Faces" if
necessary (thus losing "Potter" and other information),
then fused into a single "Faces" mesh. There will be no
visual changes due to "Merge", but the selected objects
are now treated as a single object.
Note: The resulting object will have the same material, textures and
other attributes of the first selected object. The other objects will lose
their attribute information.
Hint: Applications of the "Merge" tool:
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
"Mold" works exactly the same way that a sculptor's
fingers do with modeling clay. You are given a second object as a "mold
tool". By default, it is a sphere, but you can choose from the given
list of tools. To use another object in the scene as a custom tool, select
that object, then choose "_Selected_Object" in the list.
Note that "Mold" will work well only if the selected tool
is "convex and closed" (that is, it does not have holes and depressions).
You can move, resize and rotate the tool using the 3D manipulator (see
"Options - Selection Highlight")
When the tool is "hot", it is colored yellow and it
is ready to mold the object. Move the tool toward the object, and press
it against the surface. The tool turns red whenever it touches a part of
the object and begins to mold it. Notice how the shape of the object changes.
As soon as you let go of the tool, it turns blue (cold!). Move it to the
next desired position. Press "h" or turn the "Hot"
toggle on, and start molding again. If you move the tool (while it is cold)
inside the object, turn it hot, then press it against the surface, you
get the effect of pushing out on the surface.
Note: Since the triangle density of the object does not change,
if the object is coarse compared to the tool, molding may have the effect
of pushing the object surface, rather than creating the impression of the
mold tool on the object. Using the modeling tools, make sure that the object
has enough triangle density.
(Not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
The "Slice" tool allows you to slice an object using
an infinite plane. This tool uses another familiar real-world paradigm
that artists are used to - the carving knife.
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the object being sliced using the
"Object Name" text field, and pressing "Ok".
Slice position
By choosing from the set of toggle buttons, you can set the initial
position of the knife to be to the left, right, top, bottom, front or back
of the original object.
Knife Movement
You can move the knife by moving the cursor to the base of the arrow
until a green box appears. Then move the knife while keeping the left mouse
button pressed. You can rotate the knife by moving the cursor to the head
of the arrow until a green box appears, and moving it with the left mouse
button.
If you have the Transform tool up (see "Attribute - Transform"),
you can set accurate location and rotation values for the knife.
Note: To activate the sensitivity of the manipulator, first move
the cursor to the base of the arrow until a green box appears, then go
the head of the arrow.
Hint: Use a combination of views to make your task easy. Use
a 2D view (see "Options - New Viewer").
Flip Direction
By default the portion of the object along the direction of the arrow
gets sliced off. If you choose "Flip Direction", the direction
of slicing is reversed.
Continuous
If this option is on, the object gets changed with every slice of the
knife. If this option is off, each slicing operation is done on the original
object only. The latter lets you experiment with slice movements before
committing.
Cap Surface
This turns the "healing" surface on or off.
Interactive
If "Interactive" is turned on, the object display changes
instantly with every movement of the knife. If the toggle is turned off,
you can position and rotate the knife anyway you want, and then choose
"Slice" to update the operation.
Close
This closes the "Slice" tool. Since the tool does not
allow you to perform other operations in the scene, you need to close the
tool before you move on.
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
"Mirror" is used to create mirrored objects, like a
right hand from a left hand. The tool brings up a mirror in the viewer
window(s), close to the object, and the mirrored object appears behind
the mirror.
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the mirror object using the "Object
Name" text field, and pressing "Ok"..
Mirror position
By choosing from the set of toggle buttons, you can set the initial mirror position to be to the left, right, top, bottom, front or back
of the original object.
Mirror Movement
You can move the mirror by moving the cursor to the base of the arrow
until a green box appears. Then move the mirror while keeping the left
mouse button pressed. You can rotate the mirror by moving the cursor to
the head of the arrow until a green box appears, and moving it with the
left mouse button.
If you have the Transform tool up (see "Attribute - Transform"),
you can set accurate location and rotation values for the mirror..
Hint: Use a combination of views to make your task easy. Use
a 2D view (either change the viewer type of the main viewer to a 2D view,
or bring up a new 2D view by choosing "Options - New Viewer ".
Interactive
If "Interactive" is turned on, the mirror object changes
instantly with every movement of the mirror. If the toggle is turned off,
you can position and rotate the mirror anyway you want, and then choose
"Mirror" to update the operation.
Close
This closes the "Mirror" tool. Since the tool does
not allow you to perform other operations in the scene, you need to close
the tool before you move on.
(not available in Ez3d Modeler Pro)
The "WWWInline" feature in VRML allows you to reference
other (local or remote) "VRML" worlds in your scene by specifying
the URL for the external worlds. It allows the VR browser to load in a
3D object only when necessary ("lazy" loading). Use WWW Inlines
for objects that are far away form the initial view or take time to load.
Ez3d's "WWWInline" tool works in one of the following
two ways:
1. When you invoke the "WWWInline" tool with an object
selected, Ez3d will "inline" the object by saving it in "VRML"
format in your publish folder. This is the quickest and most elegant way
to create "inline" objects in Ez3d. But do note that some information
may be lost during the process of conversion to a "VRML" file.
2. When you invoke the "WWWInline" tool without an
object select, Ez3d allows you to create a new "inline" object.
The URL for a "WWWInline" object can be of the one
of the following:
Remote
A remote resource file is a resource file on the Internet and is specified
using the remote resource's URL path: For example, "http://www.radiance.com/~radiance/vrml/logo.wrl".
Local
A local resource file is a VRML file on your local system and can be
selected by choosing "Browseà" and using the file selector.
When you select a file, Ez3d will determine the path of the file relative
to your "Publish" folder. For example, if you select file "\users\you\www\NewWorld.wrl"
and if your publish folder is "\users\you\vrml", Ez3d
will set "..\www\NewWorld.wrl" as your URL in the Universal
Resource Locator text field. Using relative paths for local URL fields
make your VRML file portable.
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the object using the "Object
Name" text field, and selecting "Ok".
Show Bounding Box
When this toggle is selected, Ez3d will wrap a bounding box around the
"WWWInline" object so you can distinguish it from all
the other objects in the scene. This option is particularly useful if you
are modeling your VRML world on a system that's not on the Internet, and
if you want a form of representation for remote VRML files that cannot
be fetched.
Show Object
When this toggle is selected, Ez3d will display the object represented
in the VRML file (if it has been fetched).
Apply
Click on this button to apply your settings to the object. If you press
<Enter> after typing in a field (such as the URL path).
Ez3d applies your setting right away to the object and you don't need to
click on "Apply".
Preview
When you click on this button, Ez3d will bring up a VR browser to preview your URL. See section on "Options - Preferences" for information on selecting a VR browser.
Chapter
B4 ATTRIBUTE - Display, Color, Materials and Textures
The "Attribute" menu provides tools to set
an object's attribute. The "Attribute" menu has the following
selections:
Display Style... Ctrl+D
Color... Ctrl+K
Material... Ctrl+M
Texture... Ctrl+T
Transform... Ctrl+F
Complexity... Ctrl+Y
Level of Detail...
WWWAnchor...
In addition to assigning colors, materials and textures and display
style to objects, it provides a transform tool to accurately position the
object in the scene. Finally it provides a set of tools that are useful
for real-time scene composition (especially for VRML). The tools provide
a way to reduce or increase the smoothness of the object (polygon count),
and to link the object to other WWW resources (URLs).
The "Display Style" interface
has the following selections:
Draw Style
This option sets the drawing style of the selected object. This is different
from the "Draw Style" specified in the viewer's pop-up
menu in that it changes the intrinsic style for a particular object, rather
than the overal style for a particular viewer. This draw style is recorded
as part of the scene and is written out to the 3D file.
Shaded
In this mode, the (selected) objects appear filled.
Wireframe
In this mode, the (selected) objects are drawn as non-filled lines.
Objects are drawn at a faster rate than in "Shaded" mode.
Points
In this mode, the (selected) objects are drawn as points representing
the vertices of the objects. In this display mode, objects are drawn at
a faster rate than in "Wireframe" display mode.
Bounding Box
In this mode, the (selected) objects are represented as simple boxes.
This display mode is the fastest of all modes and is useful to have for
objects that you are not currently editing.
Shading
This option is used to set the type of shading to be used while displaying
the objects in "Shaded" draw style mode. This menu is
not active when the "Draw Style" option is set to "Wireframe"
or "Points" or "Bounding Box", or if
the object is not polygonal (of type "Primitive", "3D Text"
and so on).
Smooth
When this option is selected, Ez3d displays the object smoothly shaded.
One normal is used for each vertex of the object.
Faceted
When this option is selected, Ez3d displays the object as facets by
using a different normal for each face of the object, so the overall object
looks faceted.
Hint: For VR, the "Faceted" option will be much
faster, even though the smoothness may be less acceptable.
Show Sides
Outside
Only the outside of the object is lit.
Inside
Only the inside of the object is lit.
Both Sides
Both sides of the object are lit. This option can be twice as slow as
the other two.
Hint: In VR, it is almost a norm to either use "Outside"
or "Inside" - the navigation typically happens on the
inside of an object (such as a room), or outside (such as table). At the
end of your scene composition, it may be a good idea to select all objects
that show off only their outside, and set the "Outside"
option, then do the same for all "Inside" objects.
Line Width
This slider sets line width of objects in "Wireframe"
or "Bounding Box" display mode. The default line width
value is 1.
Create Angle
This slider sets the crease angle to be used for displaying the object.
The crease angle is the minimum angle between two adjacent face normals
required to form a sharp crease at the edge when default.
Hint: Use "Crease Angle" to define the sharp
edges in the object. A larger crease angle means that the object has fewer
sharp edges. This option is also used in conjunction with the "Reduce"
tool in "Face Builder".
Use As Default
When you select this option with display options set (such as "Wireframe"
and "Line Width"), Ez3d will use these display mode settings
for all objects you create thereafter.
Attribute
- Color
Hot Key: Ctrl+K
This is used to set the color of the object. You can also use "Attribute
- Material" to set this (and more elaborate options), but this
tool may be quicker.
Color chips
The color chip on the left shows the currently selected color. The chip
on the right shows the stored color. The arrow buttons can be used to switch
which color is current or stored. For example, pressing the arrow button
on the left copies the left hand color chip to the stored color chip. The
center double arrow reverses the color chips, and pressing the right arrow
copies the stored color chip to the current color chip.
Using the Color Wheel and Value Slider
The simplest way to use the "Color Editor" is as follows:
Using the left mouse, move the color wheel to the desired color. To change
the value (the lightness or darkness of the selected color) move the pointer
on the slider. At value 0.0, the color will be black, at value 1.0, the
color will be at its full brightness.
Color Editor Top Menu Options
Edit
The "Edit" menu contains the following options that
control how the color is edited.
Edit - Continuous/ Manual
Changes made in the "Color Editor" are updated continuously
in "Continuous" mode. In "Manual" mode,
an "Accept" button appears under the color chips. Changes
are updated only when this "Accept" button is pressed.
Edit - WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG stands for "What You See Is What You Get". The effects
of this mode are seen in the color wheel and in the sliders. In this mode,
what appears in the slider is what you will get when you move the slider
to that position. The colors in the sliders appear only in the color chip.
Edit - Copy / Paste
"Copy" copies the current color to the "paste
buffer". "Paste" pastes the color stored in the "paste
buffer". You will notice the color wheel set itself to this color.
And consequently, if an object's color is being edited with the color editor,
the object will be assigned this color.
Sliders
The "Sliders" menu sets the type of sliders displayed
in the color editor.
Sliders - None
No sliders are used. Choose colors from the color wheel.
Sliders - Value
Sets Value slider only. This sets the brightness of the color.
Sliders - RGB
Sets RGB sliders (Red, Green, and Blue). Each slider value ranges from
0.0 (black) to 1.0 (full color) for each.
Sliders - HSV
Sets Hue, Saturation, and Value Sliders. Hue is the color, Saturation
is the level of white added to the color, and Value is the lightness or
darkness of the color. All range from 0.0 to 1.0.
Sliders - RGB V
Sets RGB plus Value sliders. Each slider value ranges from 0.0 to 1.0.
Sliders - RGB HSV
Sets RGB plus HSV sliders. Each slider value ranges from 0.0 to 1.0.
The default color editor is an "RGB V" color editor.
Hint: If you find the color changes taking a long time to update
the selected object in the viewer window(s), you may want to turn off "Edit
- WYSIWYG".
Hot Key: Ctrl+M
The "Material Editor" allows you to edit the color
and material properties of selected object(s) in the scene. The "material"
of an object refers to the properties of the surface of the object. These
properties affect the way the object looks and responds to lights in the
scene. Materials may be assigned in one of the following two ways:
1. By selecting a material from a list of materials
2. By creating a new material inside the editor by setting values for
material properties like ambient color, specular color etc. (described
below).
The material editor comes up as two components: the editor interface,
and the control panel.
Material Editor Interface Options
The editor interface has controls to the right, and the WYSIWYG visual
display to the left. You can set the "ambient", "diffuse",
"specular" and "emissive" colors and their brightnesses
(coefficients). There are two toggle buttons to the left of each item.
You can edit the color of any one specific attribute by choosing the leftmost
toggle. You can edit the colors of two or more attributes together, by
choosing the right toggles. See "Attribute - Color" for
a description of how the color editor works.
Amb (Ambient)
This option sets the reflected color of the selected object in response
to the ambient lighting in the scene.
Diff (Diffuse)
This option sets the base color of the selected object in Ez3d, and
has the same effect as setting "Attribute - Color".
Spec (Specular)
This option sets the reflective quality of the selected object's highlights.
Emis (Emissive)
This option sets the light emitted by the selected object.
Note: The emissivity value of an object is ignored by the photo-real
rendering module.
You can also set the values of the following "colorless" attributes:
Shininess
This option sets the degree of shininess of an object's surfaces, ranging
from 0.0 for a diffuse surface with no shininess to a maximum of 1.0 for
a highly polished surface..
Transp (Transparency)
This is the level of transparency of the object selected in Ez3d. A
value of 0.0 corresponds to an opaque surface and a value of 1.0 to a completely
transparent surface.
Edit Options
The editor also has a pull-down with the following options:
Continuous / Manual
"Continuous" means that any change to the attributes
is reflected immediately on the object(s) being edited. "Manual"
brings up an "Accept" button that you click on whenever
you want to update the object.
Copy / Paste
This offers a buffer you can copy the current material to, and paste
at another time.
Material Editor Control Panel
Binding
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
By default, the entire object exhibits the current material property.
If you want to get more sophisticated control over the object's look, you
can set separate materials "per face" or "per
vertex" by setting the "Binding" (a power feature
in Ez3d), and using the "Face Builder" tool in conjunction.
The following material bindings can be set:
Overall
When this option is set, the object has the same uniform material property
throughout (the default)
Face
When this option is set, you can set a different material for each face
of an object. The object has to be of type "Faces". When you
set this option, Ez3d invokes "Model - Face Builder" tool
on the object (if it is not already up). Select one or more faces in "Face
Builder" and set the material as you would normally do for the
entire object. You can even select groups of faces (see "Model
- Face Builder" for details), and set materials.
Hint: Using "per-face" materials for different
parts of a single object is more efficient than having many objects each
with an "overall" material.
Vertex
When this option is set, you can set a different material for each vertex
of an object. The object has to be of type "Faces". When you
set this option, Ez3d invokes "Model - Face Builder" tool
on the object (if it is not already up). Select one or more vertices in
"Face Builder" and set the material (see "Model
- Face Builder" for details)
Hint: Use per-vertex materials to create a shading effect without
using lights or even textures. This significantly speeds up VR scenes.
Photo-real Properties
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
These settings will not affect objects in the main Ez3d scene, but they
will affect the photo-real look of the object when rendered using the photo-real
"Render" feature (See section on "Scene - Render"
for more information).
Reflectivity
This slider sets the specular reflectivity of the surface of the object
selected in Ez3d. In other words, it sets how reflective the object will
appear when rendered.
Translucency
This slider sets the translucency, diffusely transmitted color, and
Phong exponent for transmitted specular highlights for the selected object.
Extinction Coefficient
This slider sets the extinction coefficient value of the interior of
the object. This coefficient is raised to a power equal to the distance
the transmitted ray travels through the object. The overall intensity of
specularly transmitted rays will be proportional to this factor multiplied
by the surface's body color multiplied by the transparency of the object.
Index of Refraction
This thumb wheel sets the index of refraction for the object. Index
of refraction is a measure of how much a light ray distorts when traveling
through the inside of the object. The default value is equal to the index
of refraction of the atmosphere surrounding the eye. Move the thumb-wheel
clockwise (to the right) if you want to increase the index of refraction.
Move it counter-clockwise (to the left) if you want to decrease the index
of refraction. If you'd like to enter a precise value, you can do so by
entering the value in the refraction value text-field next to the thumb-wheel.
The following are the final material editor control options:
Auto / Update
This toggle turns on the automatic update option for the material editor.
When this option is on, Ez3d updates the selected object in the main scene
everytime a material setting is changed. When the option is turned off,
Ez3d updates just the test sphere. The main scene is updated only when
the "Update" button is selected.
Load / Save
These allow you to load pre-defined materials from a file on the disk,
and to save your current material to a file, for later use.
Hot Key: Ctrl+T
The "Texture Editor" allows you to map texture images
onto your objects. A "texture" is a nothing but a bitmap image
that can be wrapped around a 3D object.
Since texture mapping can be a fairly slow operation, Ez3d provides
a smaller "Mapping Preview Window" that you can use to
"preview" your texture map on the object, interactively translate,
rotate and scale the texture on the object, and so on. And when you are
satisfied with the way your texture looks, select "Update"
to update the texture map of the object.
Texture Image Selector
Use the file selector to choose an image file. The image file can be
in any of the supported formats (GIF, Targa, and so on).
Texture Mapping Controls
The texture editor was designed to make object texture mapping as intuitive
as possible. More importantly, it was designed to give the user immediate
feedback on all control inputs.
Translate X / Y
These slider is used to move the image in the X and Y directions on
the surface of the object. In most cases, you will see left-right and up-down
movements of the image, respectively. For more precise control, enter the
value in the text field next to the slider, and press "Ok".
Rotate
This slider is used to rotate the image relative to its original position
and orientation in the original texture. In most cases, you will see an
angular movement of the image on the object when the "Rotate"
control is used. For more precise control, enter the "Rotate"
value in the text field next to the slider.
Scale X / Y
These sliders control the X and Y scale of the map on the surface of
the object. This tool works in conjunction with the "Wrap Type"
control. The effects of changing the X or Y scale are quite different depending
on the "Wrap" being used (see "Wrap Type below).
Generally, you will see the image map get larger or smaller in a horizontal
direction when the this control is used. For more precise control, enter
the value in the text field next to the slider.
Mirror X / Y
When you have this toggle turned on, the texture gets mirrored in the
X or Y direction.
Mapping
This is a more advanced option. Ez3d offers a choice of techniques to
map textures on to objects. While options like "Translate"
affect the external characteristic of the texture once it has been mapped
on an object, the "Mapping" type determines how the image
is mapped on the object in the first place. Further, you can edit the mapping
function using a 3D manipulator in the texture window, if you have the
"Edit" toggle turned on. The mapping technique affects
the "texture coordinates", not the transform of the texture map,
and hence offers you an additional degree of freedom to get the texture
displayed as you want it.
The following are the texture mapping types available in Ez3d:
Default mapping type:
This applies only to "Primitive" and "3D Text"
objects, not to polygonal objects created using Potter and so on. "Default"
mapping is different for different shapes, and cannot be edited any
further. Here is how the "Default" texture mapping works
for each of the following primitives:
Sphere: The texture covers the entire surface of the sphere,
wrapping counterclockwise from the back of the sphere (from -Z axis)
Cube: The entire texture is applied to each face. On the front,
back, right and left sides, the texture is applied right side up. On the
top and bottom of the cube, the texture is oriented toward the +Z axis.
Cylinder/Cone: The texture wraps counterclockwise around the sides, beginning at the -Z axis. For the top/bottom of the shape, a circle cut from the center of the texture is applied.
3D Text: The texture is mapped flatly on the front (and back).
On the sides, it is mapped back to front.
Parametric mapping type:
This applies to "Potter" and "Spline"
objects only, where the objects are defined in terms of rectangular meshes.
The texture is mapped "skin-tight" on top of the mesh, and stretches
or shrinks with the geometry of the mesh. The end caps are not mapped.
This mapping cannot be edited further.
The texture is mapped in the "parameter space" of the mesh.
To comprehend the mapping, assume that the mesh is stretched out so that
it is a flat rectangular plate. Then project the texture onto this plate,
and finally put the mesh back to its original shape.
Planar, Cylindrical, Spherical mapping types:
These apply to all polygonal objects (such as those created by "Potter" or
"Face Builder".). If you want to use these mappings
on Primitives or 3D Text, invoke "Face Builder" on the
object to first convert them to "Faces" objects.
Planar mapping is like a film projector that casts the texture on the
object along a given direction. This is a very common form of texture mapping.
Cylindrical mapping wraps the texture around an imaginary cylinder that
fits the object. Only the sides are mapped, not the top and bottom caps.
Also, there may be a seam at the point where the texture wraps around.
It is up to you to either hide the seam away from the view point, or make
the object denser in the region, so that the seam is minimized.
Spherical mapping wraps the texture around an imaginary sphere that
fits the object. There will be a seam in this case also.
To edit the direction of mapping, turn on the "Edit"
toggle. This brings up a 3D trackball in the viewer window. Rotate the
3D trackball until you get the direction you want (see "Options
- Selection Highlight" for details on the 3D trackball). If you
have "Attribute - Transform" up, you can also type in
precise values for the rotation.
Environment
This option when selected maps the texture as if the object reflects
the surrounding world. Hence the texture mapping changes as the view changes.
Also, this works best when you use a special type of image - a spherical
reflection map.
Note: Environment mapping is not available in the VRML output format.
Custom (experts only):
Sometimes you may not get the result you wanted, even if you used all
combinations of mapping types and texture scaling. You can set the mapping
type to "Custom", write out the object out to file, then
hand-edit the texture coordinates of the object. When you read it back
in, the object looks like what you want (provided you don't edit the texture
map again!)
Model Type
This control is used to set the texture model to be used. It can be set to one of the following:
Modulate
The "Modulate" option multiplies the shaded color with
the texture color to obtain the final color for the object.
Decal
The "Decal" option replaces the shaded color of the
object with the texture color. Hence the basic color of the object is lost.
Wrap Type
The following "Wrap types" can be set:
Repeat
In "Repeat" mode, the image is mapped to the object
as many times as it takes to cover the object with an equal number of duplicate
maps. You can use the translate/ scale tools to fit the clamped texture
map exactly the way you want.
Clamp
In "Clamp" mode, the texture image is only mapped once
to the object no matter what alterations are made using the editor.
Quality
Use this slider to set the quality of the texture map. Values for this
setting range from 0.0 to 1.0. Higher values for texture quality result
in more realistic texture maps, but the trade-off is that they will be
slower to display and render, particularly on systems that do not support
hardware accelerated texture mapping.
Component
This control is used to set the component of the texture map. Component
of a texture may be set to any of the following types:
Intensity
This specifies that the texture image be used to modify the shaded color
of the object.
Transparency
This specifies that the texture image be used to modify the transparency
of the object. Only texture images that have a single component, such as
monochrome (black and white) images, can be mapped using this option.
Reflectivity
This specifies that the texture image be used to modify the reflectivity
property of the object. This option affects only the final rendered image.
Only texture images that have 1 component (channel) can be mapped using
this option.
ShininessThis specifies that the texture image be used to modify
the shininess property of the object. This option affects only the final
rendered image. Only texture images that have 1 component (channel) can
be mapped using this option.BumpThis specifies that the texture
image be used to modify the gradient (normal) of the object. This option
affects only the final rendered image. Only texture images that have 1
component (channel) can be mapped using this option. Beautiful effects
of surface depressions and protrusions can be produced using this component
in the final photo-real rendered image. For example, you can create an
image of a rough floor by mapping a bump map representing the floor's roughness
onto a flat plate.
Size
This thumb-wheel is used to set the size of the bump (see "Bump")
when a single-component image is mapped to the object. If the texture component
is set to bump, this value controls the size or amount of bumpiness on
the object. Negative bump sizes causes depression effects on the object,
while positive bump sizes causes protrusions. Use the text field on the
right to enter precise values or move the thumb-wheel to the desired value.The
effects of this control will only show in the final rendered image.LayerThis
control is used to apply a "layer" of textures on the object.
The effects of this control are visible only in the final rendered image.
Only the outer-most (0 th) layer of texture of an object is visible in
the main Ez3d scene. You can then apply layers of textures one after another
below. These additional layers (called "inner layers") up to
a maximum of 20 layers and the outer-most (0 th) layer are all overlapped
one below the other in the final photo-real rendered image to produce beautiful
effects of texture layers. But each layer's texture can be previewed inside
the preview window of the texture editor to see exactly how it is mapped
on to the object before being overlapped in the final rendered image. You
will be able to go from one layer to another and have the preview window
"peel off" one layer after another and show effects of the currently
set layer.Note: Layered textures are more useful when wrap type
is set to "clamp". It then presents a way of "stamping"
many images at desired locations on the object.Hint: Here's an example
of how you would use the layered texture feature. If you wanted to produce
a photo-real image of a dinosaur, you would want to map a three-component
RGB image representing the texture of the surface of the dinosaur onto
layer 0 of the dinosaur object. And on layer 1, you could map a single-component
bump map representing the dinosaur's scales. When you render this object
using the photo-realistic rendering module, you will obtain a beautiful
textured, bumpy dinosaur surface.
Other Texture Options
Inline
This option brings up the "Inline Texture" interface.
If you enter the URL path of a remote texture image (Example: "http://www.radiance.com/~radiance/logo.gif"),
Ez3d will attempt to fetch the remote image if your system is on the Internet
and map it to the object. This could be particularly handy if you're creating
3-D content (VRML) for the Internet.
Texture Storage
This brings up the "Texture Storage Options" interface.
You can use this interface to set the following options:
Copy to current folder
When this option is selected, Ez3d copies the texture file to the current
folder.
Set path relative to current folder (recommended)
When this option is set, Ez3d will set relative path names for textures.
For example, if your texture file selected is in "\users\you\pictures\monalisa.gif"
and if your current project folder is "\users\you\vrml",
the texture path encoded in the scene file is "..\pictures\monalisa.gif".
This option is particularly useful if you're authoring 3-D (VRML) content
for the Internet.
Encode in object/scene file
When this option is set, Ez3d will encode the texture information in
the object or scene file at the time of saving. The original texture image
is not required to texture map the object later in Ez3d or any other 3-D
application. While this makes your 3-D objects and scenes more portable,
do remember that this will increase the size of your model and scene files.
Auto / UpdateThe texture editor works in one of two ways. In
manual mode, you must click on the "Update" button to
see the texture map selection get updated in the main scene. If you have
the "Auto" option turned on, you don't need to click on
the "Update" button every time you want to update the
main scene. Every single texture editor action updates the preview window
and the main scene if the "Auto" option is on. Having
this option on can make things slow.RemoveThis button when selected
removes the texture map.CloseThis button when selected closes the
"Texture Editor".
Hot Key: Ctrl+T
The "Transform" tool allows you to specify precise values for the position, size and rotation of individual objects, vertices for spline manipulation, lights and so on.If you have an object selected, and choose "Attribute - Transform", that object's transform information is displayed in the tool. If you select another, the tool updates to show the latter object's transform.
Mode At any given time, you can edit a single aspect of the object's transform
Translate: The object's position in its world space. If the object is part of a group, the position is in the space of the grouped parent.
Scale: This is the factor in X, Y and Z, by which the original size of the object is scaled. For example, a "Primitive" cube has a default size of 2. Therefore to make the cube's width be 10, set the X scale to 5.
Global Size: If you are only concerned with the actual size of the object, rather than the scale, you can set the "Global size". For the example above, you can set "Global Size" X value to 10 directly.
Rotate: This specifies the rotation of the object with respect to the X, Y and Z axes. The rotation is specified in degrees by which the object is rotated (360 degrees is a complete rotation). (Specifying the orientation of the object in terms of X, Y and Z rotations is known to the techie types (!) as "Euler Angles")The tool has 3 thumb-wheels and text boxes for showing X, Y and Z values (the 3 orthogonal directions in 3D space). These get automatically updated depending on object or tool selection, and the Mode selected. The fields also get updated when you move the objects or vertices using 3D manipulators. You can move the thumb wheels left or right, or type in precise values in the text box, and press "Ok".
Move Option:
This option applies when more than object is selected, and any one object is moved using the 3D manipulator.
Together: By default, all selected objects move, scale or rotate "Together" according to the manipulation of one of the objects.
Separate: Only the object being manipulated changes.
Snap To Object: This object is used to accurately position objects relative to each other. The object being moved snaps to the nearest selected object in the direction of movement. In other words, when you let go of the manipulator, the object tries to continue moving along the same path and stops when it hits another selected object. You can use this in conjunction with constrained motion in the 3D manipulator to accurately position objects with respect to each other.
Snap To Object Rotate: This is the same as "Snap To Object", but it also rotates the moving object so that the surfaces of the two objects in the moving direction lie against each other.
Snap To Grid: This will snap the bounding box of the object to nearest snap grid location along the direction of movement.
Edit Functions
You can also do the following to the current transform being edited:Copy: Copy it to a buffer for pasting onto another object.
Paste: Paste the transform buffer to current object. This is useful when you want to apply the same rotation or scale to many objects.
Reset: This will set the object to its default position, scale and rotation.
The "Complexity" tool is a handy general-purpose tool to change the fineness of the object geometry. This is very important for creation of multiple levels of detail. The "Complexity" tool allows you to make the object less or more dense without having to go specific modeling tools.If no object is selected, the text information window displays the number of objects, textures and most importantly, total number of triangles in the scene. If one or more objects are selected, the information will pertain to those objects only.Desired # Triangles
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
You can use the thumb wheel or type in a desired number of triangles,
and press "Ok" button. The system will take each selected
object, and try to proportionally reduce or increase the geometric complexity.
For example, in the case of "Primitive" objects, Ez3d
changes the internal complexity, and for "Potter" objects,
Ez3d tries to change the spline steps. For arbitrary "Faces"
object, it invokes the powerful polygon reduction system (see "Model
- Face Builder"), which may take some time. The system tries to
make the resultant number of triangles as close to your goal as possible.
Edit: If you want to fine-tune the complexity even more, or do
some modeling on the object, the "Edit..." button brings
up the appropriate modeling tool for the selected object.
Update: This updates the text information, which may be out of
date, if some modeling tools are being used at the same time.
Hint: VR users, use the "Complexity" tool in
conjunction with the "Level of Detail" tool. Also, it
is useful to have this tool up to check the polygon count frequently.
(not available in Ez3d Modeler Pro)
In virtual reality, it is important to ensure that the application will
run fast in real-time. Hence as few polygons as possible need to be displayed
at any time. At the same time, the objects should have sufficient detail
to be interesting. The "Level of Detail" tool offers a
mechanism to do both. It offers the ability to create several versions
of the same object, and specify that the object should switch from one
version to another depending on how far the eye is from the object. This
way, when the object is far away, it uses a very coarse representation
(perhaps even nothing!), and as the eye comes closer, it gets more and
more detailed.
Object Name
This allows you to change the name of the object for which multiple
levels of detail are created.
Mode
In "Edit" mode, you are always dealing with a single
level, irrespective of the eye point. "Idle" mode shows
how the object will be displayed in the final output - including transitions
from one level to the next.
Level
By default, one level is created. This is called the "highest"
level of detail. If you move the slider from "1" to "2",
by default, it makes a copy of the previous level. You can then use the
"Complexity" tool, or use any modeling tool to reduce
the complexity of the second level of detail. After specifying the required
levels of detail, you can also specify that the last level of detail be
"empty" (that is, nothing is displayed, when the object
is far away).
Eye Range
The next step is to set the distances at which the object transitions
from one level to the next. By default, the system takes the current
view, and doubles the distance for each subsequent level of detail. You
can fine-tune the range for each level, by moving the Level slider to choose
the particular level, zooming in the main viewer to where you want the
transition to happen, and press "Set to View". Experts
in 3D geometry can even type in values in text field!
Insert
This is used to insert a new level before the current level. By default,
the current level is copied, and the eye range is set to half that of the
current level.
Set Selected
This is used to replace the geometry of the current level by another
object in the scene that has been selected (perhaps after loading from
another file). This is useful when you don't want to derive each level
of detail from the same geometry, but load separate pre-defined objects
instead.
Remove
This removes the current level of detail.
Close
This closes the "Level of Detail" tool.
If you now bring up "Scene - Object List", you will
notice that a hierarchy (similar to "Edit - Group") has
been created, with the several levels of detail appearing as "children"
of the parent object. When you zoom in and out, you will see different
children appearing at different times. When you select the object in the
viewer, the child that is displayed at that moment is selected. But when
you then transform the child using the 3D manipulator, the entire object
(including all other levels of detail) move as a group.
Hint: As a rule, always "WWW Inline" the first
one or two levels of detail. This saves the VR browser from having to load
the most detailed geometries if the eye never gets near the object. Select
the specific level, and use "Model - WWW Inline".
(not available in Ez3d Modeler Pro)
This brings up the "WWWAnchor" interface that lets
you "anchor" the selected 3-D object to a (local or remote) Internet
resource (URL). You can "anchor" your objects to anything on
the Web -- an HTML document, a GIF image, an MPEG video, an audio resource
file or even another 3-D (VRML) world. When you "publish" your
3-D world and view the world using a 3-D Internet browser, the "WWWAnchor"
attribute comes into the picture. Clicking on the 3-D object in the browser
will link you to the URL specified.
An Internet resource (URL) file can be of the one of the following types:
Remote
A remote resource file is a resource file on the Internet and is specified
using the remote resource's URL path. For example, "http://www.radiance.com/~radiance"
or "ftp://www.sgi.com".
Local
A local resource file is a resource file on your local system and can
be selected by choosing "Browseà" and using the file selector.
When you select a file, Ez3d will determine the path of the file relative
to your "publish" folder. For example, if you select the file
"\users\you\www\sound\MOZART.aif" and if your publish
folder is "\users\you\www", Ez3d will set "sound\MOZART.aif"
as your URL in the Universal Resource Locator text field. Using relative
paths for local URL fields make your VRML file portable.
Description
The (optional) "Description" field for the WWWAnchor
attribute allows for a more friendly prompt to be displayed by Internet
browsers as an alternative to displaying the URL field. Most 3-D Internet
browsers will allow the user to choose the description, the URL or both
to be displayed for a candidate WWWAnchor.
Apply
Click on this button to apply your settings to the object.
Preview
When you click on this button, Ez3d will bring up a VR browser to preview
your URL. See section on "Options - Preferences" for information
on selecting a VR browser.
Remove
The "Remove" button when selected removes the "WWWAnchor"
attribute for the currently selected object.
Close
The "Close" button closes the "WWWAnchor"
interface.
The "Scene" menu has the following options:
Object List... Ctrl+Shift+O
Lights...
Environment...
Camera Viewpoints...
Background Image...
Render Options Ctrl+R
Render Process Sheet
Test Render
Render
VR Browser...
"Scene" is a group of tools used to set up, render
and preview scenes created in the Ez3d environment. It may be used to set
up rendering options on a full scene. Rendering may be done in the background
while other Ez3d operations are in progress.
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
Hot Key: Ctrl+Shift+O
"Object List" is used to list and find objects by name.
This tool can be used to "grab" objects for selection. This can
be very handy in densely packed scenes where it would be difficult to "reach
through" to a particular object or group of objects. You may also
use it to select and rename objects as you build a complex scene.
Object Names
Select an object by clicking on its name in this object list. Deselect
by clicking on it again. You can deselect an object by clicking on its
highlighted name. Once an object is selected using "Object List"
it will be treated as if it had been selected in the active window.
Objects are listed in hierarchical order. For example, if you've grouped
objects "Cube001" and "Sphere001"
into a group called "Group001", the objects will be
listed as follows:
o Object001
v Group001
o Cube001
o Sphere001
The "v" in front of the group object "Group001"
signifies that you want the children of the group listed as well. Double-clicking
on "Group001" will turn off display of the children
and the tag in front of the "Group001" object will indicate
a ">" as shown below:
o Object001
> Group001
Ez3d uses the following types of symbols in front of object names:
o A child object
> A grouped object whose children have not been listed
v A grouped object whose children have been listed below
h A hidden object
List Menu
Arrange
Chronological
Objects in the list are arranged in a chronological order -- objects
created earlier are listed above objects that were created later.
Alphabetical
Ez3d will list objects in an alphabetical order.
Display
All Children
Ez3d will list the children of all grouped objects in the scene.
No Children
Ez3d will not list the children of any grouped objects in the scene.
Hidden Objects
If this option is on, Ez3d will list objects that have been hidden using
the "Edit - Hide" selection. Hidden objects have an "h"
symbol in front in the object list to signify that they have been hidden.
Search
Case sensitive
If you turn on "case sensitive" search, Ez3d will perform
upper and lower case sensitive search when you use the "Search
for" option to search an object by name.
Match Pattern
If this is turned on, and you type in a search name, and click on "Ok",
then Ez3d will select all objects that match the given name. If this option
is turned off, then Ez3d will select all objects that don't match
the pattern.
Select Parent
When you select this option with a child object selected, Ez3d will
traverse up the object hierarchy and select the parent of the object selected.
Object Menu
Remove
When you have an object selected, you can remove it by clicking on the
"Remove" button. This is equivalent to choosing "Edit
- Delete".
Rename...
When you have an object selected, you can rename it by clicking on the
"Rename..." button. This will bring up the "Object
Rename" interface. Enter a new name for the object in the "New
Name" list field and click on "Ok". Click on
"Cancel" if you don't want to change the object's name.
Hint: Use "Rename..." to give meaningful names
to your objects (which usually have default names like "Potter001").
As your project becomes more complex, it might help to give meaningful
names to objects. Each modeling tool (Like "Potter", "3D
Text", etc.) also provide an interface for setting/ changing object
names. It is recommended that you give names to objects as soon as they
are created.
Search for
Use this option to search for objects by name. Ez3d will try to match
all object names that contain the search string entered. For example, if
you have objects "Cube001", "Cube002"
and "Sphere001", entering "Cube"
and clicking on "Ok" will select objects "Cube001"
and "Cube002".
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
Hot Key: Ctrl+L
The "Light Editor" provides utilities to create and
modify the attributes of a light source. 3 different types of lights may
be created -- "Directional" light, "Spot"
light and "Point" light in addition to 2 other lights
already present in the scene. ("Headlight" and "Ambient"
light). Their attributes like color, on/off switch, position, direction,
etc. may be set using the "Light Editor".
The "Light Editor" tool brings up the "Transform"
tool also, so that you can use the latter to move any lights that you create
(or have created).
Light Editor Controls
Light Name
This text field used to set the name of the light source for future
reference. The names of headlight and ambient light cannot be changed.
For all other lights, you can type in a new name by clicking the cursor
in the text field, deleting the default name and choosing "Ok"
after entering a new name.
Light list
This is a listing of all lights in the current Ez3d scene. By default,
Ez3d creates an Ambient light source and a Headlight attached to the camera
in the main view. The simplest way to select a light source is to "pick"
the light icon in the main window. Lights may also be selected using this
light list menu if the light icon is not displayed in the main window or
if it is in such a position that it is inaccessible or inconvenient to
select using the mouse in the main window.
Light type
A Ez3d light may be one of the following types:
Headlight
The headlight is a directional light that is always attached to the
current camera position in the main view and moves with the camera. So
this light affects all objects no mater what their positions might be.
The headlight is often used for better viewing while modeling and usually
turned off before rendering. A headlight cannot be created -- they can
only be turned on or off.
Ambient
This light is like the sun. It has no location and affects all objects
in the scene. It produces a constant illumination on all surfaces, regardless
of their orientation. Unfortunately, ambient light by itself produces very
unrealistic images since few real environments are illuminated solely by
ambient light. There can be only one ambient light in the Ez3d scene. You
cannot turn off the ambient light, but you can set its color (perhaps setting
the color value to 0.0 if you want to "turn off" all ambient
lighting).
Directional
This light illuminates uniformly along a particular direction. Since
it is infinitely far away, it has no location in 3-D space. The icon for
a directional light is for manipulating the direction only. An angular
change of the light icon arrow produces an increase or decrease of light
falling on the object. The angular shift in shadows is the same as would
be expected in nature. This means that as you change the direction of the
directional light, you will see a corresponding change in shadows.
Spot
This light works like the traditional spot light producing a tight and
adjustable light source. It may be placed anywhere in the Ez3d environment
and pointed in any direction. The cone of the light is adjustable in size.
Point
This light is like a star radiating light in all directions evenly.
It is much like a solar source with the exception that it may be positioned
anywhere in the Ez3d scene. It will produce proper sun rise shadow effects.
There is no limit on the number of spot lights, directional lights or
point lights that can be created in Ez3d.
Edit Color
The light color editor is used to set the color of the light being edited.
Please see section on "Attribute - Color" for more information
on using the color editor. The light icon takes on the intrinsic color
of the light.
Light Position Controls
Usding the "Light list", select the light that you
want to manipulate. The "Transform" tool (see "Attribute
- Transform" for details on its working) is the most accurate
way to specify a light's position and direction (rotation). For directional
and spot lights, you can also modify the light's direction by picking on
the light icon's arrow and dragging it in the direction you want. For spotlights,
you can change the cone angle by directly picking the cone of the icon
and expanding or narrowing it. You can also specify the cone angle accurately
by choosing "Attributes - Spotlight Options" in the top
menu bar of the "Light Editor".
Point At Object
When you click on this button for a spot light or a directional light
with an object in the scene selected, the light is oriented to point towards
the center of the object. If you have more than one object selected, the
light source points to the center of the object selected first.
Hint: The "Point At Object" option presents
a convenient way to set a light's direction, after moving it to the desired
location.
Light Editor Top Menu
The top menu in the "Light Editor" contains additional
options:
Display - on/off
This toggle is used to turn on or off a light created in the "Light
Editor". It simulates the effect of a real life light switch.
By default, a light is turned "on" when created. You may then
turn the light "off" any time you want and the light will not
affect the scene. You can, of course, turn it "on" again anytime
you wish. Ambient light is always "on".
Display - show icon
This toggle is used to turn on/off display of the light icon in the
Ez3d environment. You may want to have the "show icon" option
on if you want to manipulate the light's parameters using the light's icon
in the main Ez3d view. Light icons visible in the Ez3d environment are
not rendered in a test or final rendered image, or written to VRML.
Attributes - Cast Shadows
Turns on or off shadow casting ability of a light. This menu item is
colored blue indicating that the effects of this selection are only visible
in the final ray-traced image (See "Scene - Render Options")
Attributes - Spot Light Options
This option only works when the currently selected light is a spot light.
When selected, it brings up the "Spot light Options" menu
containing more options for a spot light:
Cone Angle
This slider sets the cone angle of a spot light. The spot light effects
are felt only along a cone whose extent can be set with this slider.
Drop-off Rate
This slider sets the rate at which the light intensity of a spot light
drops off from their primary direction.
Finally, you can use the following to create and delete lights in the
scene:
Create
This button creates a light of the selected light type and other light
parameters and adds it to the scene.
Delete
This button removes the currently selected light source from the Ez3d
scene.
Close
This button closes the "Light Editor".
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
The "Environment Editor" is used to edit the global
attributes of the environment in Ez3d. This environment will affect all
other lighting elements. Stunning effects of fog, haze, pollution, and
smoke may be simulated using the following options in the interface.
Environment Type
Five different environment types are possible - "fog",
"haze", "smoke", "mist" or "none".
Fog
This simulates an effect of fog. Opacity of the environment increases
exponentially with distance from the eye when this option is used.
Haze
This simulates an effect of haze. Opacity of the environment increases
linearly with distance from the eye when this option is used. It will be
obvious from the display that "haze" is less drastic than
"fog".
Smoke
This sets the environment type to smoke and simulates an effect of smoke.
Opacity of the environment increases exponential squared with distance
from the eye when this option is used.
Mist
This option only applies to the ray-traced image, and will not cause
any change in the Ez3d scene. A global low-altitude mist effect of the
specified color is produced in the rendered image with this option. The
"Visibility" value affects the transmitivity value of
the mist.
None
This option sets the default environment with no fog, haze, smoke or
mist effects.
Visibility
This slider sets the visibility of the fog. In other words, how quickly
the opacity of the fog increases with distance from the camera. A lower
visibility value results in a thicker fog or haze.
Refraction Index
This slider is colored blue meaning that its effects will only show
in the final rendered image. This sets the index of refraction of the specified
medium -- fog, mist and so on. Index of refraction is a measure if how
much a light ray deviates when passing through the medium. You may also
use the text field to the right of the slider to enter a more precise value
for index of refraction.
Environment Color
This color editor sets the color of the environment when the environment
type is set to "Fog", "Haze", "Smoke"
or "Mist". You can use either the color wheel or the
RGB-value color sliders to set the value of the background color. See section
on "Attribute - Color" for more information on using the
color editor.
Use Defaults
This button resets the environment settings to default values.
Close
This closes the "Environment Editor".
The "Camera Viewpoints" editor allows you to create
and edit camera locations or viewpoints in the main scene. You can use
it to record interesting locations in your 3-D world. The viewpoint information
in the VRML output can be used by Web browsers to tell the user about the
interesting camera locations that they can go to.
Camera List
This list field contains all the camera viewpoints that have been recorded
for the current project. Selecting a viewpoint from the list will make
the main viewer's camera jump to that viewpoint.
Create
Clicking on "Create" will bring up the "Camera
Viewpoint Name" interface. Enter a name for the camera viewpoint
and click on "Ok" to record the current camera position.
Set to View
This button is active only when you have a camera viewpoint selected.
It sets the selected camera viewpoint to the current main viewer camera
position.
Rename
This brings up the "Camera Viewpoint Name" interface
and entering a new name for the camera viewpoint will rename the camera
viewpoint.
Remove
This removes the currently selected camera viewpoint.
Close
The "Close" button closes the "Camera Viewpoints"
interface.
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
Hot Key: Ctrl+R
The "Render Options" interface contains options to
create a photo-realistic image of the scene, using the objects, materials,
textures, lights, and environment information present in the scene. Ez3d
uses a high-quality ray-tracer called "Rayshade" to create
the photo-realistic image. A ray-tracer is a process that creates a realistic
image of a 3D scene by determining the visibility of surfaces by tracing
imaginary rays of light from the viewer's eye to the objects in the scene.
It is, however, a fairly slow process and can take hours or days, particularly
for large scenes.
Interactive rendering (what you see in the main window and all other
viewer window(s)) is done by a much faster (sometimes hardware accelerated)
process called "OpenGL" rendering. This is the native
rendering system on most hardware. This image generated, in near real time,
in your viewer window(s) may by itself be fairly realistic, especially
for scenes that have textures and materials mapped to objects.
Ez3d's intuitive "Render Process Sheet" allows you
to monitor the progress of your "Rayshade" rendering. For most
scenes, it is recommended that you try a "Test Render"
first, and when you are satisfied with the way the rendered image looks,
you can start the actual rendering.
Render Options Top Menu
The top menu in "Render Options" offers the following
selections:
Render
The render pull-down menu has the following options:
Render - Process Sheet
This option brings up the "Render Process Sheet" interface.
This interface contains a list of all rendering processes that are currently
underway. Please see section on "Render Process Sheet"
for more documentation. This selection is also available under the "Scene"
drop down menu in the main Ez3d title bar.
Render - Select Program
This brings up the "Render Program Selection" interface.
This interface lists the "render programs" available. In order
to select your current "render program", select a program name
("Rayshade" or "OpenGL") from this list
and click on "Ok. The next time you start a rendering, Ez3d
will use this program to create the rendered image. If you click on "Info"
with a program selected, Ez3d brings up an information interface with a
short description on the "render program".
OpenGL
"OpenGL" rendering with the "Render to File"
option turned on renders to an off-screen bitmap to create an image that
will not be too different from your main viewer screen.
Note: "OpenGL" rendering only outputs files
in the ".bmp" format.
If you select "OpenGL" as your "render program",
you will notice a few selections (like "Filter", "Cutoff",
"Test Render") grayed out, since they are not relevant.
Rayshade
Rayshade is a program for creating ray-traced images. It reads a description
of the scene to be rendered and produces a photo-realistic true color image
corresponding to the description. Rayshade was designed to make it easy
to create nice rendered pictures. It was also meant to be flexible and
relatively fast.
Features in Rayshade include Adaptive jittered sampling/ anti-aliasing,
reflectivity, refractivity, translucency, fog, mist and other atmospheric
effects, layered texture mapping, bump mapping, reflectivity/ shininess/
transparency mapping and a host of other features.
Sub-window
This pull-down has following options that enable rendering a "sub-window"
of your Ez3d scene. A "sub-window" is a portion of your Ez3d
window that you can selectively ray-trace. If you want to render just a
part of the scene (with just a few objects), the "Render sub-window"
option presents an elegant way of doing that. Since the rendering region
will be smaller than the entire window, rendering will be quicker.
Hint: You may want to render parts of your scene using "Rayshade"
(which takes a much longer time) and other parts using "OpenGL".
You can then overlap these rendered images using a "Paint" program
to create the final rendered scene.
Sub-window - Render sub-window
When this toggle is selected, Ez3d renders only objects in a "sub-window".
Use the "Set sub-window" push button to set the "sub-window"
to render.
Render - Set sub-window
When you click on push button, Ez3d brings up the "Render sub-window
size" interface. Set the "Min X", "Max X",
"Min Y" and "Max Y" text fields to render
out part of the scene in the main viewer.
Width / Height
The "Width" and "Height" sliders sets
the width and height respectively, of the rendered image. The maximum slider
values correspond to the width and height respectively, of the main Ez3d
window. If you want your rendered image to have a larger dimension than
the main Ez3d window, you can use the text fields to enter the desired
values, and press "Ok".
Image file
This text field is used to set the name of the rendered image. When
rendering is complete, you will find an image file of this name in the
render image folder. The image will be in a format set using the "Render
Image Format" list field.
Set Image Folder
This option when selected brings up the "Render Image Folder"
file selector which can be used to set the folder in which you want the
rendered image to be created.
Render Image format
This list field is used to select the format of the rendered images.
The following image formats are currently supported in Ez3d:
"gif" CompuServe GIF
"jpg" JPEG
"rgb" SGI rgb
"ras" Sun raster
"ps" Adobe PostScript
"ppm" PPM
"targa" Type 2 Targa
Ray-tracing - A Technical Overview
Note: The following discussion is technical in nature. You may
wish to skip directly to the "Ray-tracing Options" section.
Before we describe the options that control the look of the final ray-traced
image, we provide a short description of the ray-tracing process itself.
This will enable you to understand the ray-tracing options better.
A ray-tracer is a process that creates a realistic image of a 3D scene
by determining the visibility of surfaces by tracing imaginary rays of
light from the viewer's eye to the objects in the scene.
The Ray tree in a ray tracer
When ray tracing a scene, reflected or transmitted rays may strike other
reflective or transparent objects. Further reflected or transmitted rays
will be spawned, and so on. Taken together, such a family of rays is termed
the ray tree. Care must be taken to control the depth of this tree. If
it is allowed to grow too deeply, one may spend a great deal of time computing
rays that contribute little to the final rendered picture; if it is not
allowed to grow far enough, this premature tree pruning may be evident
in the final rendered image.
Anti-aliasing in Ray tracers
Given a screen of a fixed size, creating an image in the rendering module
is accomplished by sampling each pixel one or more times in order to determine
what can be seen "through" that pixel by the camera. If a pixel
is not sampled at the proper rate, aliasing will result. Aliasing usually
appears as "jaggies" or "stair steps" in the image.
In order to reduce these and other artifacts, most ray-tracers provide
an adaptive jittered anti-aliasing scheme that attempts to detect where
increased sampling rates are needed. In jittered sampling, the location
at which a sample is taken is perturbed by a random amount. This perturbation
reduces aliasing but may add noise to the image. The adaptive sampling
scheme begins by sampling each pixel on the current scan-line once. For
each pixel on the scan-line, the contrast between it and its four immediate
neighbors is computed. If this contrast is greater than the user-specified
maximum in any color channel, the pixel and its neighbors are all super-sampled
by firing an additional (<number of samples> x <number of
samples> - 1) rays through those pixels that have not already been
super-sampled. This process is repeated for the current scan-line until
a pass is made without any pixel being super-sampled.
Ray-tracing Options
Samples
This slider sets the number of samples to be used in rendering. More
the number of samples, the longer will be the rendering time but smoother
(more anti-aliased) the image.
(Technical) If the sample value is set to n, the photo-realistic
rendering module uses nxn samples while performing jittered sampling for
anti-aliasing. The default number of samples in Ez3d is 3 and the maximum
value that can be set is 5.
Maximum Ray depth
This controls the depth of the ray in the ray tracing operation. Larger
ray depths produce more accurate renderings, but can also take up a longer
time. This option informs the ray-tracer to not spawn rays deeper than
those at the given level.
Hint: Setting ray depth to a value higher than 4 can slow down
rendering quite a bit, particularly for large scenes.
Cutoff
Sets the rendering cutoff (threshold) in the rendering process. A lower
cut-off setting speeds up rendering, while a higher cut-off produces a
more realistic image.
(Technical) This option informs the ray-tracer to not spawn rays
whose contribution to the final color of the eye ray is less than the set
threshold/cutoff value for each color channel.
Filter
This is used to select the file type in the anti-aliasing process. Two
different filter options -- Box and Gaussian filters are available. The
latter provides higher quality, but takes more time.
(Technical) Anti-aliasing involves setting a pixel's value to
a weighted average of an area of neighboring pixels. In a "Box"
filer, the weighting is uniform. In a "Gaussian" filter,
the weighting tapers off as you go away from the pixel.
Render Shadows
With this option on, shadows created by light sources are rendered.
When this option is turned off, rendering is faster, but no shadows are
produced.
Optimize
This option toggles between speed and memory optimization. When the
"Speed" toggle is on, Rayshade will optimize for speed
and this will make rendering faster, but you will require more memory/swap.
On the other hand, when the "Memory" toggle is on, your
system will require less memory/swap to complete the rendering, but it
will take a longer time.
Hash table (Grid) size
The "Hash table" size slider is active when the
"Optimize" option is set to "Speed". Higher
hash table values result in even faster rendering, but will require more
memory and swap space.
(Technical) Rayshade divides the region of space it occupies
into a number of discrete box-shaped voxels. Each of these voxels contains
a list of the objects that intersect the voxel. This discretization makes
it possible to restrict the objects tested for intersection to those that
are likely to hit the ray, and to test the objects in nearly "closest-first"
order.
Process priority
Rendering in Ez3d happens in the background without interfering with
your Ez3d session. But for large scenes or scenes with a lot of textures,
rendering can take up a lot of your CPU cycles especially on slower hardware.
If you are unable to continue working on Ez3d when you're rendering, you
may want to set your renderer's "Process priority" to
a lower value. While rendering will take a longer time to complete, you'll
be able to work with more efficiency with Ez3d.
Render
This starts the actual rendering process based on the settings you have
chosen. After Ez3d sets up the data, and start rendering in the background,
you may continue working on Ez3d and may wish to monitor rendering from
time to time using the "Process - Process Sheet" option
if you are rendering to a file.
Test Render
This button when selected starts a quick preview of the entire rendering
operation to a much smaller size window. This is typically done before
the actual rendering to make sure the scene appears the way you want it
to. "Test Render" takes a much less time than the actual
rendering operation and should take just a few minutes for even large scenes.
Close
This button when selected closes the "Render Options"
menu.
The "Render Process Sheet" menu contains a list of
all rendering processes (or jobs) that are currently underway. Each process
in the list is listed by its system process ID ("PID"),
the name of the user who started the process ("User"),
the process name ("Process"), and the time when the process
was started ("Start Time").
Show Status
This option can be used to get an idea of the amount of rendering complete
when you are rendering to a file.
If you have the "Image" option on for showing rendering
status, Ez3d will attempt to bring up the image created that far. This
gives a good indication of how much of the rendering is complete. You will
notice that ray-tracers (like "Rayshade") take a longer
time in areas that have objects and textures than in areas that have no
objects.
Note: It is safe to close the "Show Status"
image after you've viewed it. This will not affect rendering in any way.
If you have the "Report" option on for showing rendering
status, Ez3d will attempt to bring up a render report on the rendering
created that far.
Show Status Options
Image
When this toggle is on, Ez3d brings up only the rendered image, when
you click on "Show Status".
Report
When this toggle is on, Ez3d brings up only the render report, when
you click on "Show Status".
Both
When this toggle is on, Ez3d brings up both the rendered image and the
render report when you click on "Show Status" for a process
rendering to a file.
Terminate
This will terminate the selected rendering process before it is completed.
This option can be useful if you don't find the image shaping up the way
you wanted. You may then want to terminate the process and go into Ez3d
and change parameters of objects and the scene and re-render the scene.
Update List
This will update the process list. Processes that have since completed
will no longer be listed in the process sheet.
Close
This closes the "Render Process Sheet" menu.
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
"Test Render" shows you a quick preview of what your
rendered image will look like. It takes a lot less time than the actual
rendering process, so it is advisable to try it out to make sure that rendering
effects such as shadows, reflections, transparencies, anti-aliasing etc.
appear the way you expected.
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
When you click on "Render", Ez3d will invoke the rendering
process based on the settings you've selected in the "Render Options"
menu. After Ez3d has finished setting up data and rendering has begun in
the background, you may continue working on Ez3d and monitor rendering
from time to time using the "Process - Process Sheet"
option if you are rendering to a file.
(not available in Ez3d Modeler Pro)
When you select this option, Ez3d will invoke a VR browser and lets
you preview your real time scene. Use the VR Browser field in "Options
- Preferences" to choose a VR browser. The default setting for
this field is "Netscape". If you have "Netscape"
installed on your system and if it is configured to run a 3-D Internet
browser such as "Live3D" or "WebSpace",
Ez3d will invoke "Netscape" to preview your VR scene.
Please see section on "Options - Preferences" for more
information.
The "Options" menu contains items that are not related
to the project or scene. These are user preferences that can be customized
to suit a user's tastes and needs. The "Options" menu
has the following items:
Viewer > Grid
Background
Transparency
Anti-Aliasing
New Viewer > Front
Right
Top
Back
Left
Bottom
Examiner
Walk
Fly
Selection Highlight > 3D Manipulator
3D Trackball
Box
None
Snap to grid
Grid options...
Image utilities
Toolbar
Status Bar
Preferences...
Viewers allow you to change the camera position, and also allow to
interact with the scene (select and move objects, vertices, and so on).
Since most of your interaction is through viewers, please read this section
very carefully to maximize your productivity.
A "3-D Viewer" (the default viewer that comes up at
start time) gives a perspective view of the scene. A "2-D Viewer"
gives an "orthographic" or plane (top, front, etc.) view of the
scene. The "3-D Viewer" is typically used for general
scene operations and viewing. The "2-D Viewer" is used
for specific modeling operations. You can bring up any number of these
"2-D/3-D viewers". You can also change each viewer to be
either a "2-D" or "3-D viewer". You can
interact with the objects in any of the viewers, and all viewers will be
updated automatically to reflect the change.
Hint: Since viewers are memory-intensive (especially on low-end
graphics machines), it is recommended that you don't open too many viewers.
One "3-D viewer" (usually the main window), and one or
two "2-D viewers" (say, the "Front" and "Top"
views) should suffice even for intense modeling operations.
The Viewer consists of a viewing area and a "decoration"
around it. Pressing the right mouse inside the viewer brings up a pop up
menu that has all the operations that can be performed. Some of these operations
can also be accessed through the "decoration" buttons
and the mouse.
Viewer Functions
Although each viewer performs a different function, all have some characteristics
in common, which will be documented in the following pages. All will use
pop-up menus with many similar functions. All can have "border decoration"
on or off. The border decoration is the area surrounding the render area
which may contain buttons, sliders, and thumb-wheels. Standard buttons
and thumb-wheels, when applicable, will be located in the same position
on each viewer. All decoration functionality is duplicated with menus,
mouse, and keyboard operations. Some viewers may add new buttons and thumb-wheels
to the common set. A zoom slider may be used also when applicable to the
viewer. All will have cursors indicating at least whether you are in viewing
or picking mode. Other cursors and feedback will be specific to each viewer.
The most common operations are performed by using the left mouse button.
The right mouse button is always reserved for pop-up menus. The left mouse
button can also be used with the modifier keys <Shift> and
<Ctrl>. The <Shift> key is used for constraint,
the <Ctrl> key is for alternative use.
Viewer Modes
Each viewer has two modes - "Viewing" and "Editing".
In the "Viewing" mode, the cursor has the shape of a "hand".
If you have the decoration on, the "Hand" icon will be
set. In this mode, you can only change the view (camera position), but
you cannot select or manipulate the objects in the scene. You can change
to "Editing" mode by either clicking on the "Arrow"
icon in the right decoration, or by turning off the "Viewing"
toggle in the viewer pop up menu, or pressing the <ESC>
key. In "Editing" mode, the cursor changes to an arrow.
You cannot change the camera position using the mouse, but you can select
/ deselect and interact with the objects.
Moving the Camera
In the "Viewing" mode, when the cursor is inside the viewer, you can use the left and left mouse to change the view. In a "3-D Viewer", moving the cursor with the left mouse button pressed, rotates the camera in a "virtual trackball" fashion around the center of the scene. <Shift>+<Left
Mouse> pans (translates) in the plane of the camera. Using
<Shift>+<Ctrl>+<Left Mouse>, you can dolly in
and out (move forward and backward). In a "2-D Viewer",
the left mouse is used to pan (translate) in the plane of the camera, and
<Shift>+Left Mouse> is used to zoom in and out. In both
viewers, using <Ctrl>+<Left Mouse>, you can
"roll" the camera in the viewing plane. Notice the anchor cursor
as you do this. You can also use the thumb wheels and sliders in the decoration
to do some of these operations. These are particularly useful in "Editing"
mode, where you cannot use the mouse to change the view.
Viewer Pop up Menu Functions
Pop-up menus are always accessed by pressing the right mouse button.
The functions available via the pop-up menus are common across the viewers.
Functions Menu
Functions - Home
Resets camera to "home" position.
Functions - Set Home
Allows user to set new home position.
Functions - View All
Reposition camera so all objects are visible.
Functions - Seek
Choose Seek, then click on object in scene. The camera then animates
to center the object on the screen.
Draw Style Menu
The first 7 items in the menu control for how the image is displayed
when the camera is not moving. Draw styles are listed from best to fastest.
Draw Style - as is
Leaves the scene unchanged.
Draw Style - hidden line
Displays the objects as wireframe, but only show the object front faces.
(this is a 2 pass rendering - first the objects are rendered solid with
the background color, then rendered as wireframe).
Draw Style - no texture
Displays the objects without any textures.
Draw Style - low resolution
Displays the objects without textures and with low complexity.
Draw Style - wireframe
Displays the objects as base color wireframe (and no texture).
Draw Style - points
Displays the objects as points (and no texture).
Draw Style - bounding box
Displays the objects as bounding boxes (fastest).
The next 7 items in the "Draw Style" menu control draw
styles that apply when doing interactive work.
Draw Style - move same as still
Draw Style - move hidden line
Draw Style - move no texture
Draw Style - move low res
Draw Style - move wireframe
Draw Style - move points
Draw Style - move bounding box
The last 3 items in the "Draw Style" menu control frame
buffer modes. Interactive mode uses single buffer, but switches automatically
to double buffer only while doing interactive work.
Draw Style - single buffer
Draw Style - double buffer
Draw Style - interactive buffer
Note: On a 24-bit graphics display, you should ignore "buffer
style" altogether. It will not make any difference in display quality.
Viewing
This allows you to switch between the "Viewing" and
"Editing" modes for the viewer. You can also use the "Arrow"
and "Hand" icons in the right decoration, or the <ESC>
key to do this.
Decoration
This allows you to turn on or off, the interface around the viewing
area.
Headlight
By default, a directional light (see "Scene - Lights")
is attached to the camera. This light moves with the camera, and always
points in the direction the camera is looking at. This allows you to keep
the scene well-lit at all times. You can change the color of the headlight
by going into "Scene - Lights".
Hint: Headlight is very useful while you are modeling. But for
rendering out a scene, you may want to set up spotlights and point lights
in the scene.
Preferences
Seek to Point
If this toggle is on, when you choose "Function - Seek"
or click on the "Seek" icon, the camera will move so that
the specific point appears at the center of the viewer. If the toggle is
off, then the camera will seek the center of the object that you clicked
on.
Auto Clip Planes
Auto clipping does a best dynamic fit for the object on the screen.
Spin Animation (Examiner Viewer only)
When this toggle is on, you can set the camera in rotation motion by
dragging the left mouse and "throwing" it into motion.
Rotation Axes (Examiner Viewer only)
These give you color-coded axes to tell you the X, Y and Z orientations
of the camera.
General Keyboard Use
<Home>: Home function (Reset)
<Esc>: Toggles between viewing/picking
<s>: Toggles Seek function On/Off
<Up>,<Down>,<Right>,<Left>: Panning
The following is description of specific features of each viewer.
2-D Viewer (Plane Viewer)
This viewer lets you translate the camera in the viewing plane, as well
as roll (rotate along camera forward direction) and dolly (move forward/backward).
Camera can be aligned to X,Y or Z axes. A possible use could be the incorporation
of the three plane views with a fourth Examiner viewer to simultaneously
see all orientations. This could be used for modeling, in drafting, and
architectural work.
Ez3d supports 6 different types of 2-D (orthographic) viewers:
Front
Right
Top
Back
Left
Bottom
Mouse Use
<Left Mouse>: Translate up, down, left, right
<Shift>+<Left Mouse>: Zoom in and out
<Ctrl>+<Left Mouse>: Roll action
<s>,<Left Mouse>: Alternative to Seek button.
Press (do not hold down) <s> key,
then click on target object.
<Right Mouse>: Pop-Up menus
Examiner Viewer
This viewer uses a virtual trackball to rotate the view. The point of
rotation is by default the center of the scene bounding box, but can be
placed anywhere in the scene. This viewer also allows you to translate
in the screen plane, as well as dolly in and out (forward/backward movement).
Mouse Use
<Left Mouse>: Rotate virtual trackball
<Shift>+<Left Mouse>: Translate up, down, left, right
<Shift>+<Ctrl>+<Left Mouse>: Dolly in / out
<Ctrl>+<Left Mouse>: Used for "Roll" action
<s>,<Left Mouse>: Alternative to "Seek" button.
Press (do not hold down) <s> key, then click on target object
<Right Mouse>: Pop-Up menus
Walk Viewer
The paradigm for this viewer is a walk-through of an architectural model. Its primary behavior is forward, backward, and left/right turning motion while maintaining a constant "eye level". It is also possible to stop and
look around at the scene. The eye level plane can be disabled, allowing
the viewer to proceed in the "look at" direction, as if on an
escalator. The eye level plane can also be translated - similar to an elevator.
Mouse Use
<Left Mouse>: Move up and down for forwards and backwards
motion. Right and left for turning. Speed increases exponentially with
distance from mouse-down.
<Shift>+<Left mouse>: Rotate viewpoint - Look around
while stopped.
<Ctrl>+<Left Mouse>: Allows motion in "look
at" direction, not necessarily in "eye level" plane ("Escalator")
<s>,<Left Mouse>: Alternative to "Seek"
button. Press (do not hold down) <s> key, then click on target object.
<u>,<Left Mouse>: Press (do not hold down) <u>
key, then click on target object to set "up" direction to surface
normal.
<Right Mouse>: Pop-Up menus
Fly Viewer
This viewer is intended to simulate constrained flight through space,
with a constant world up direction. The viewer only constrains the camera
to disallow the user to fly upside down. No mouse buttons need to be pressed
in order to fly-mouse position is only used for steering. Mouse clicks
are used to increase or decrease speed.
Mouse Use
<Left Mouse>: Increase speed
<Shift>+<Left Mouse>: Decrease speed
<Ctrl>+<Shift>+<Left Mouse>: Stop
<s>+<Left Mouse>: Alternative to "Seek" button.
Click <s> key, then click on target object.
<u>+<Left Mouse>: Click <u> key then on target
object to set "up" direction to surface normal.
<Right Mouse>: Pop-Up menus
These are additional options for each 2D / 3D
viewer. Some of them are for advanced users. For the main viewer, choose
"Options - Viewer" form the title bar menu. For additional
viewers that you bring up, pull down the "Viewer" menu
to choose the described options.
Grids are "pseudo-objects" that allow
you to orient yourself in a 3-D/2-D world. They also allow you to position
objects precisely. But they are not really part of the scene, and will
not be ray-traced. The following are the settings for each separate viewer.
You can also set the global properties of grids (such as number of grid
divisions, and "Snap to Grid" using "Options -
Grid Options").
Grid - Visible
The default starting 3-D viewer has a magenta grid on the ground plane
(XZ plane). You can choose the "Visible" toggle to turn
the grid on or off.
Grid - Subdivisions
The grid consists of coarse division lines. You can turn on the finer
subdivision lines by choosing the "Subdivisions" toggle.
By default, the subdivision lines are turned off for the main viewers,
and turned on in the special "Potter" (see Model -
Potter) and "3-D Text" (see Model - 3-D Text)
viewers.
Grid - Axes
If you turn on "Axes" you get little green X, Y and
Z markers to indicate the 3 axes.
Grid - Ruler
If you turn on "Rulers", you get numbers along each
grid division. Each coarse grid division is 1 unit. (Ez3d does not use
any specific unit measure like inches or meters).
Grid - Ground/Side/Front
In a "3-D viewer", you can turn on one or more of the 3 grid
planes to orient yourself in the 3-D world.
This allows you to set a "Background"
image and/or color for a viewer.
Background Color
This brings up a color editor that you can use to set the viewer's background
color. See section on "Attribute - Color" for more information
on using the color editor.
Background image
If you select an image file in one of several image formats supported
(GIF, JPEG, etc.), using the file selector, Ez3d will load the image file
into the viewer's background. This image will not interfere with your camera
or object movements, and on most hardware, it should not drastically affect
performance/speed.
Hint: The "Background Image" feature is meant
purely for modeling and does not get rendered while ray-tracing. It can
be particularly handy in modeling tools such as "Face Builder"
or "Potter". In "Face Builder", you can
use the image to extrude a 3-D shape using the outline of the background
image by clicking on the mouse along the contours of the image. In "Potter",
you may want to use this to create a profile or a section curve using the
outline of an image as a reference.
Fit to window
When you select this option, Ez3d will re-scale the image (if needed)
to fit exactly to your viewer window. If you have the "Maintain
aspect ratio" option turned on, the image will be fitted only
to the window's width or height whichever is smaller.
Custom Size
With this option selected, you can resize and position the image using
the "Image Position" and "Image Size"
controls.
Original Size
When you select this option, Ez3d reverts to using the original size
of the image.
Maintain aspect ratio
When this toggle is turned on, Ez3d will maintain the original aspect
ratio of the image when the image is scaled using the "Image Size"
controls.
Interactive update
When this toggle is turned off, Ez3d will update the image in the main
scene only when you let go of the "Image Position" and
"Image Size" sliders so it's more interactive. With the
toggle turned on, Ez3d will update the image interactively as you move
the sliders.
Image Position
Use the X and Y sliders to move the image across the viewer to the position
you want.
Image Size
Use the X and Y sliders or the text fields to scale the image in the
X and Y direction respectively.
Remove
The "Remove" button removes the viewer's background
image.
Close
The "Close" button closes the "Background Image"
interface.
(not available in Ez3d Junior, Ez3d VR Builder)
This brings up the "Transparency type" selection menu
for the viewer that has the following controls:
Screen-door
This option uses a fill pattern to simulate transparency effects (fastest,
least photo-realistic). The fill pattern may be as simple as turning every
alternate pixel off.
Alpha blending
Alpha blending option produces more realistic transparency effects (slow,
more realistic). Alpha blending types are as follows, in order of increasing
realism, and decreasing speed of display (depending on the type of graphics
hardware on your machine):
Additive
Additive blending option adds the transparent object to the colors already
in the frame buffer.
Delayed additive
Renders opaque objects first and transparent objects last.
Sorted delayed additive
Draws opaque objects first followed by transparent objects, then sorts
the transparent objects by their distance from the camera and draws them
from back to front.
Multiplicative
Combines source and destination colors and alpha factor to produce transparency
effects.
Delayed multiplicative
Renders opaque objects first and transparent objects last.
Sorted delayed multiplicative
Draws opaque objects first, then transparent. Transparent objects are
sorted by their distance from the camera and drawn from back to front.
This brings up the "Anti-aliasing effects" interface
that lets you set anti-aliasing options for the viewer. Anti-aliasing is
a technique to reduce jagged lines and make objects appear smoother.
Smoothing
This is a relatively fast anti-aliasing technique and applies to lines
and points only.
Multi-pass
Uses the accumulation buffer technique that requires more processing
time than smoothing but applies to the whole image and results in superior
anti-aliasing.
Number of passes
Sets the number of passes the "multi-pass" rendering algorithm
has to go through to produce anti-aliasing effects. Higher values result
in better anti-aliasing effects, but also take a processing time.
This option is used to indicate how selected objects are highlighted.
An object can be selected by clicking on it, or selecting its name in "Scene
- Object List". Additional objects can be selected if the <Shift>
key is pressed.
There are 4 options available for selection highlight:
3D Manipulator
A green manipulator surrounds the selected object. This is the slowest
than selecting using the above two methods, but once the manipulator is
displayed, you can transform the object in a variety of ways. The 3D manipulator
is a very powerful tool that is used everywhere in Ez3d, so it is worth
learning all its features.
The manipulator is shaped like a box. It has small cubes at the corners
and small balls sticking out of the middle of each face. Click and drag
any face of the box for 2D translation in the plane of that face. Drag
any corner-cube to scale the box uniformly. Pick any of the mid-face balls
to rotate the whole manipulator about its center. The part you are about
to select before pressing the mouse button is highlighted in gold.
Click-drag any face to translate the manipulator within the plane of that
face. The face you selected will highlight in yellow. While you drag,
yellow feedback arrows display the two directions of motion. Press the
<Shift> key and the arrows turn orange; you may now pick
between these two directions to constrain the motion. The direction you
move the cursor in will determine which direction is chosen. Press the
<Control> key and the manipulator will translate perpendicular
to that plane.
Click a corner to scale the manipulator. The corner you selected will
turn yellow and radial lines will indicate that you may move toward and
away from the center of the box. Drag radially and you will perform uniform
scale. Press the <Control> key to scale about the opposite
corner instead of the center of the box.
To stretch the manipulator non-uniformly, press <Shift>
when you drag the corner cube. Now you will see three orange arrows indicating
that your gesture will determine which direction to choose. Move the cursor
and the selected arrow will turn yellow while the others disappear. Now
the manipulator will stretch only in the direction you selected. Pressing
<Control> at the same time as <Shift> allows
you to stretch the manipulator while keeping the opposite side pinned in
place.
Click one of the spherical knobs to rotate the manipulator. When you
first click, you'll see two orange lines and two purple circles. The purple
circles indicate the two ways you can rotate. The orange lines are, once
again, the two choices for your mouse gesture. Each line begins you moving
around one of the two circles. Once you move the cursor far enough, the
selected line turns yellow and you begin rotating the manipulator about
the selected circle. The other circle and line will disappear. To perform
unconstrained ("free") rotation, just press <Shift>
while you drag the spherical knob. There will be no choices; instead all
three purple circles will be displayed, forming a ball that you can roll
around.
Pressing the <Control> key will change the center of
rotation in both the constrained and unconstrained (<Shift>)
case. By default, rotation occurs about the center of the bounding box.
With <Control> depressed, rotation occurs about the middle
of the opposite side of the bounding box. The purple feedback will change
to illustrate this; the feedback circles increase in size and purple cross-hairs
sprout at the new rotational center.
3D Trackball
The 3D trackball is a ball wrapped in three circular stripes. The stripes
are oriented like wheels that spin around the x, y, and z axes. Drag the
stripes to rotate the trackball around those axes. You do not have to hit
the lines; pick anywhere within the stripe's outline. To rotate the trackball
freely in 3 dimensions, click the area between the stripes and then drag.
An invisible but pickable sphere initiates this dragging. If the mouse
is still moving when you release it, the trackball will continue to spin.
Press the <Control> key to scale the trackball uniformly
instead of rotating.
Press the <Shift> key and the user axis appears; this
is a draggable axis with an extra stripe around it. Moving the mouse along
the surface of the sphere drags the 'pole' of the axis. Release the <Shift>
key and the user axis remains; drag the new stripe for constrained rotation
around the user axis. To make the user axis disappear, press <Shift>
and drag the pole to where two of other stripes intersect. This aligns
the user axis with a primary axis, at which point the user axis disappears.
Box
A bright green box surrounds the object. But you cannot manipulate the
object using the green box. If you usually use the "Transform"
tool to position objects and do not need 3D manipulation for scene composition,
you can use this option to speed up display.
None
The object does not get highlighted, but its name is selected in the
"Object List". You can set the position, size and so on,
using "Attribute - Transform". This is the fastest, but
does not give good visual helps.
Toggles on/off the "Snap to Grid" option in Ez3d.
The "Grid Options" interface allows you to set the
global properties of all grids in Ez3d. In Ez3d, there is one universal
world, which has no intrinsic dimension. Each coarse grid is 1 unit. Everything
else is relative to this unit. You may choose to set the Ez3d unit to be
a certain number of feet, inches or meters or even light years (depending
on your application). When you select an object its position (in terms
of Ez3d units) appears in the X-Y-Z text boxes in the bottom right corner
of the main window.
# Grid Divisions
You can set the number of grids divisions in the scene. You may want
to reduce clutter by having less number of grid divisions. On the other
hand, if you have a large scene with lots of objects, you may want to have
a large number of grid divisions.
# Subdivisions / Division
This sets the resolution of the grid subdivisions. Irrespective of the
number of subdivisions, each coarse grid division is always 1 Ez3d unit.
Axis Size (in subdivisions)
This sets the spacing of the X-Y-Z annotations for the 3 axes.
# Snap Divisions / Division
When you are moving vertices in "Potter" (see Model
- Potter) or "Mold" (see Model - Mold), you
sometimes want to position them precisely. If you have "Snap to
Grid" on, the vertex that you are moving will automatically snap
to the nearest subdivision crossing. You can set the fineness of the snap
grid to be finer that the displayed subdivisions. For example, if you set
the "# Snap divisions / subdivision" to be 2, and turn
on "Snap to Grid", you will notice that when you are moving
spline points in "Potter", the points will snap to an
visible grid twice as fine as the subdivisions that are visible.
Hint: If you are really concerned about precise positioning,
you should "box-select" the vertex using the left mouse, and
type in the position values in the X-Y-Z text boxes. (See Model - Potter
and Model - Mold for details).
Snap to Grid
Toggles on/off the "Snap to Grid" option in Ez3d.
The option when selected brings up the "Image Utilities"
interface which contains some useful 2-D image utilities. These include
converters from one format to another and an option to invoke a viewing
program from within Ez3d.
File Selector
First select an image file using the file selector. Then choose "Convertà".
You can now do one of the following:
View
This will display the selected image in a separate window. If this does
not work, try setting the correct "Image Viewer" choice
in "Options - Preferences".
Convert
Ez3d supports all the different image formats listed in the "Output
Image Format" list. To convert the image to another format (say "tga"),
simply select the format from the list and click on "Convert".
Turns on or off display the bar of icons under the title bar at the
top. You can customize the icons in the toolbar by choosing "Options
- Customize".
Turns on or off display of the information bar at the bottom of the
viewer. The status bar shows the following (from left to right):
Information about the currently selected icon or pull-down menu item
Status of current operation
Current mode in main viewer (VIEW, EDIT, Modeling operations)
"Options - Customize" is used to customize the toolbar
at the top of the main viewer. It provides a standard interface found in
most other desktop programs. You can add (from a pre-defined set of icons),
delete, and re-order the icons to suit your needs.
This brings up the "Preferences" interface using which
you can set specific preferences, location of external programs, and so
on.
Auto Save
You can set up Ez3d to automatically save your current work, so that
you can recover as much as possible in case of an abnormal exit (for example,
if the program crashes, or if the machine goes down, or there is a power
outage). You can set it up to do one of the following:
At Regular Intervals
Performs "auto save" at regular intervals. You can set the
interval in minutes, using the slider, or typing in the text field to the
right of it.
Note: "Auto save at regular intervals" can be
bothersome sometimes, especially if you have a large scene. When the auto
save happens, it may interrupt your current interaction for a brief while.
Every Tool Close
Performs "auto save" after every tool (such as "Potter")
is Closed.
Off
Turns off auto save altogether. (default)
Auto Save Interval
If you choose "At Regular Intervals", use this slider/
text field to set the auto save interval in minutes.
Note: Ez3d will save the auto saved current scene onto a separate
backup file. If you want to make your changes permanent, you should still
use "File - Save".
Levels of Undo
Ez3d supports multiple levels of undo and maintains a history of operations
that can be undone. Use the "Levels of Undo" slider to
set the number of levels of undo (history size) you want. Bear in mind
that higher undo level settings require more memory.
External Program Settings
These settings invoke external programs to do text editing, WWW browsing
and so on. In case the default setting do not work, you may want to use
the "Browseà" option to set the correct program for any
of the following:
Text editor
Enter your favorite text editor (Example "notepad"
or "emacs") in this field.
Image Viewer
This specifies which program to invoke for viewing an image, such as
a texture or a rendered image.
Internet Browser
(not available in Ez3d Modeler Pro)
Ez3d invokes a WWW browser to preview your real time scene, and to preview
WWW Anchor links. The default VR Browser is set to "netscape".
You may need to configure your Netcape to be able to browse 3D
files, or you may want to directly use a stand-alone 3D browser such as
WorldView. (See sections on "Model - WWWInline",
"Attribute - WWWAnchor" and "Scene - VR Broswer".
Folder Settings
Publish Folder
(not available in Ez3d Modeler Pro)
When you are starting on a new VRML project, We recommend that you immediately
set the location where all the VRML files are going to be created (these
will perhaps be along with other Web-related files such as HTML and image
files, and hence separate from your Ez3d project files). Relative paths
for auto-inlining (See "Model - WWW Inline") will be computed
with this location as a base.
Scratch Folder
Ez3d uses this folder to store temporary files that are deleted as soon
as the relevant operations (such as rendering or file translation) are
completed. The temporary files created are for Ez3d internal use only,
and should not be copied or deleted while Ez3d is running. Make sure you
have enough disk space for this.
Factory Settings
This option loads the default "settings" that are shipped
with the Ez3d system.
Ok
When you are satisfied with your current changes in the "Preferences"
interface, click on the "Ok" button.
Cancel
Click on "Cancel" if you want to discard the current
changes that you made in the "Preferences" interface.
Ez3d's on-line help system is an exact replica of the "Ez3d
Manual". Only easier to navigate!
The "Help" menu has the following selections:
On Contextà F1
On Topic...
On Help...
Help mode
On-line Tutorial...
On-line Manual...
On Radiance Software...
Radiance Home Pageà
License Productà
About Ez3dà
Hot Key: F1
This option when selected provides context-sensitive help on the tool
you're currently using. If you keep the help window up, the help
information is constantly updated to give you help on whatever you are
doing currently. As a beginner, you will find the context-sensitive help
invaluable. More experienced users may want to use this as a reference.
This option when selected brings up the "Help on Topic"
list. Selecting a topic from this list will bring up help on that topic.
When this toggle is turned on, the cursor changes to a "Help
Mode" cursor. Subsequent actions by the user do not perform the
actual operation, but bring up on-line help on that feature instead. This
is an excellent way to get answers for "What does that do? And this
one?". When you've learnt about the features you want in the product,
you can turn this toggle off and you will notice the cursor change to a
regular cursor.
This option when brings up an on-line tutorial. It is strongly recommended
that you go through the tutorial before starting to use the program seriously.
This option when selected brings up the HTML version of this manual.
By default, the "VR Browser" field set in "Options
- Preferences" is used as the HTML browser to view the user manual.
This option when selected brings up information
about Radiance Software.
This option uses your "VR Browser" to take you to Radiance
Software's home page if you are running on a system that has web access.
If you are running the product in demo mode, and would like to obtain
a fully functional license, this option will give you the information and
mechanisms to do so.
This brings up the product "business card".
This appendix gives you some things to keep in mind, and some smart
things to do (and not to do) so that you can get the most out of Ez3d.
Because of underlying system software, and because it is a new product,
Ez3d can appear to be slow sometimes, especially for complex projects.
But you can overcome many of these problems by being smart.
Ez3d's native file format is an extended form
of Silicon Graphics Inventor format. Please refer to the following books
for more information on this format:
"The Inventor Mentor", Josie Wernecke, Addison Wesley
Publishing Company
The following import and export translators come bundled with the base
Ez3d system:
Ez3d can read in (import) files in the following
formats:
Open Inventor
VRML
Autodesk DXF
Wavefront obj
3D Studio
IGES
Ez3d comes bundled with export translators to
the following formats:
OpenInventor
VRML
Autodesk DXF
Wavefront .obj
3D Studio .3ds
Note: In some versions of Ez3d, one or more of the above import
/ export translators may not be available
Most files in the listed import formats should work well when read into
Ez3d. If you are an advanced user, you may want to use the "Format
Info" option in "File - Import" with the format
selected to learn more about these translators. Many of them take in additional
options that may help your translators work better.
You can modify the default options set in the configuration script in
the "subsystems\translatorsIn" folder in the directory
where Ez3d is installed.