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Contents

Welcome to Visual Animator.

• Introduction

• Getting Started

• View Parameters

• Saving, Printing and Copying Pictures

• Creating Animations

• Running Animation Scripts


Introduction

Visual Animator displays a view of a map previously created using Visual Terrain.

Visual Animator can draw the landscape using a wide variety of different drawing techniques, including abstract, terrain simulation and graphic overlays. The map may be viewed from any direction, and include simple 3D objects 'actors'.

Many other parameters may be altered by the user to tailor the image to specific requirements.  Examples include the light source position, magnification, perspective, sky and ground backgrounds, and terrain colours.   You will probably wish to try varying some or all of these features to obtain the best results for your purposes.

Fly-by and panorama sequences can be defined using the integral 'Path Maker' utility, and following generation can be used to produce animation in MPG, AVI or other formats.

Visual Animator works best in 16 bit (high colour) mode or better (24 or 32 bit true colour).  Some of the advanced features, such as actors and overlay shading, are not available in 256 colour mode and other features such as using graphics images sky and ground backgrounds may give unpredictable results.  Good results can be obtained in 256 colour mode, but some understanding of windows palettes is advisable to make the best use of the program under these constraints.

Multiple copies of the Visual Animator may be opened, subject to system memory and resource constraints.


Getting Started

Start Visual Animator.  When you run the software for the first time a preliminary dialog will appear.  You can prevent this from appearing again by checking the box marked  Do not display again.  Press on the continue button, and when the main menu appears proceed as follows:

1.	From the File menu select Open the item or press Ctrl+O.  A dialog box appears prompting for a *.lem file to open.  Select a file such as lomond.lem.  A dialog box appears showing progress as the map is loaded.

1.	The View Parameters dialog box appears.  This is where the parameters `which determine how the view will be drawn are set.  The dialog consists of several pages with controls grouped by function.  For now note the preview image displayed in the centre of the dialog and the 2D representation to the right used to set camera and target position.  All control functions are discussed in detail in the next section of this manual, so for now just  press OK.  A dialog box appears showing progress as the map is drawn and periodically the screen image is updated with the image being constructed.

1.	Select the Parameters... item from the View menu, or press Ctrl-F1.  The View Parameters dialog appears again allowing you to change any of the parameters used to draw the image.  You may like to experiment with these, or read the following sections which describes the parameters available in more detail.


The View Parameters Dialog

Overview

The view parameters dialog is used to determine how the landscape will be drawn.  It uses a notebook format, with controls grouped onto four pages by function area.  If your .lem files are on your hard drive the parameters set will be saved with the file.  No data is saved when if the files are on cdrom or other read-only media.

• Projection Page

• Drawing Page

• Terrains Page

• Actors Page


The Projection page

Projection

Controls on this page are used to determine how the landscape model will be transformed from a 3D model into a 2D drawing, and a simplified preview is shown.  Visual Explorer uses a camera and target model to describe how views are modelled.  Both camera and target may be set anywhere inside or outside the model, at any height above (or below) the surface.  Other related parameters that may be set on this page  include the light source position, perspective, vertical scaling, and magnification.

Projection Preview

This shows a simplified preview image of the map.  The preview images uses a limited number of polygons, and draws these with simple grey scale shading only.  Size, perspective and vertical scaling parameters are also modelled.

Camera and Target position

This control shows a 2D representation of the map.  On 256 colour displays heights are shown using distinct colour banding.  On high colour or better displays a continuous shading scheme is used.

The target position is set by clicking on the map using the left mouse button (displayed as a white cross) whilst the camera position is set using the right mouse button (displayed as a black cross).  The heights of camera and target are set independently using the controls to the left of the preview image.

Visual Animator does not check that the target or camera position is above the landscape surface.  Whilst in most circumstances the camera would want to be positioned above the surface, some interesting effects may be generated by looking at the map from below.

Light Source Position

This describes the position of the light source in terms of altitude and azimuth, centred on the map.  Azimuth positions range from 0 degrees (i.e. with the light source positioned due north of the map) through 180 degrees (due south) to 359 degrees.  The altitude range is from 0 degrees (on the horizon) to 90 degrees (vertically overhead).

Environment

Two check boxes which toggle hint display in this dialog and whether a progress dialog is displayed when drawing the landscape model.

Perspective

A slider setting the perspective level.  The default gives a normal looking perspective, increasing this gives an effect similar to looking through a wide angle lens, whilst decreasing it makes the drawing appear similar to an architects orthographic projection.

Vertical Scaling

Changes the scaling factor used for heights.  The default is 1.0 with a range from 10.0 to 0.1.

Reset

Sets all values to the defaults.


The Drawing page

Drawing

This page groups controls used to determine how the surface of the landscape and backgrounds are drawn.  Probably the most important aspect to this is the 'colour scheme'.  These broadly fall into three categories: abstract (e.g. wireframe, contour), terrain simulation (summer, winter) and graphic overlays.  Graphic overlays can either use an external source - such as a satellite image, or generate a suitable image internally by fractalization of one of the other colour schemes. Other parameters that can be controlled from this page include background and sky images, and the use of object overlays.

Colour Scheme

This parameter determine the colours and algorithms used to drawn the landscape model.  These broadly fall into three categories:

•	Abstract, such as wire-frame or altitude shading.

•	Terrain simulation, such as summer or winter colours.  These schemes generate a realistic representation of the landscape using the height and terrain information supplied.

•	Graphics file overlay.  This scheme textures maps a graphics file onto the landscape surface and is usually used with scanned map or satellite images.

Controls specific to particular colour schemes are  displayed on the Drawing Parameters notebook.


Abstract schemes

Contour (gradual)

Draws the projection coloured according to altitude using a graduated colour scheme which ranges from blue (for low areas) though green to red.

Contour (stepped)

Draws the projection coloured in steps according to altitude.  The scheme used is the same as that in the Visual Terrain program.

Framework

Draws the projection with grid squares coloured according to terrain.  Shading is only available in 16 bit ('true colour') mode or higher.  Will be of particular interest to professional users who wish to show the distribution of geological features, soil types, etc.  Colours are drawn using the standard windows palette, so this scheme functions best in true colour mode.

Nautical Horizon

This is a specialised scheme designed to create coastal view of a landscape, similar to that sometimes printed on nautical charts.  Both camera and target should be set to approximately zero height.  The terrain is drawn in mono using the mist control to set depth shading.  Quadrangles at zero height (i.e. seal level) are not drawn.

Mono

Draws the projection in greyscale.  This is particularly suitable for producing images for printing on mono printers.

Wireframe

Draws the grid squares as simple open quadrangles.  Light source and terrain are ignored.


Terrain simulation

Desert

Draws the projection to give an impression of a hot desert landscape.  Includes light source and terrain information.

Gradients

This scheme can generate both realistic and abstract effects.  The behaviour of the colouration is controlled by the set of controls on the gradients page of the drawing  parameters notebook.  The red, green and blue components may be varied independently, the effect of each varying according to a simple mathematical curve.

Polar

Draws the projection to give an impression of a polar landscape.  Includes light source and terrain information.

Summer

Draws the projection to give an impression of a temperate climate landscape in summer.  Includes light source and terrain information.

Summer 256

Similar to the summer scheme, but uses a simplified 256 colour palette.  Will give better results than summer when running windows in 256 colour mode.

Vista

This scheme divides the landscape into three levels separated by the tree-line and snow-line.  The positions of these can be moved as a percentage of the total height range.  Within each range four colours are used, and the program graduates smoothly between these.

Winter

Draws the projection to give an impression of a temperate climate landscape in winter with snow covering the higher ground.  The degree of snow cover may be set by selecting the 'schema details' button, which is activated when this scheme is selected.  Includes light source and terrain information.

Winter 256

Similar to the winter scheme, but uses a simplified 256 colour palette.  Will give better results than winter when running windows in true colour.


Graphics overlay

Only one scheme - Graphics Overlay - is directly available, although using fractalization will internally generate an overlay.  Overlays, or drapes, an image from a graphics file onto the landscape surface.  This scheme can be used to great effect with either a map image, or photographic images such as satellite photographs.  The image will be stretched to exactly cover the map, and because of the necessity to perform several calculation for each pixel using graphics overlays is slower than most other drawing schemes.

Bitmap overlays can be combined with object overlays.

The various colour schemes available are described in more detail in the section XyZ below.


Drawing Parameters

Parameters relating to colour schemes are displayed in notebook format, grouped by scheme type.  The pages are:

General

This group of parameters are available for all colour schemes.

An grid may drawn over the landscape surface by checking the Draw grid box.  The Set grid colour button is used to choose the colour of this.

The Overlay Objects check box switches drawing of overlay objects (lines, circles etc.) on or off.  Overlay objects are useful for adding simple shapes to landscapes, but an annotated graphic overlay is best used for complex structures.

Antialiasing can be applied to the drawing by checking the Antialias check box.

The Snow cover control sets the snow level for the winter colour schemes.

Background

This set of parameters control how the background is drawn.  The Background type radio showing the background types available.  When running in 256 colours the choice is limited to solid colour only, and the colour required should be set using Set colour control - this colour will also be used for mist.  In high colour three more types are added: graduated sky, textured sky and textured sky & ground.  If either of the textured backgrounds are used the bitmaps used to generated the textured sky and ground should be entered in the corresponding edit box and the position of the horizon adjusted with the Horizon position control.

Internal Overlay

Visual Explorer 2 can generate it's own overlay files using any selected colour scheme as a starting point, and the remaining parameters control this.  Overlay generation can be switched on or off using the Generate Overlay check box.  Normally a new overlay is only generated if a parameter, such as colour scheme or light source position is changed, however checking the Force Regenerate check box generated a new overlay for each drawing.  The degree of fractilization applied to the overlay is controlled by the Fractal Level list control.

The overlay bitmap to be generated should be entered in the Generated Bitmap edit box.  This is just a bmp file, which may be modified by a paint package and used as a standard bitmap overlay.  For example excellent results may be obtained by applying a smooth or blend function to a internally generated overlay.

Overlay Drawing

This set of parameters relate to the BMP Overlay scheme.

The Shading sliders are used to control the shading generated for overlay bitmaps.  Any combination of density and contrast may be chosen - a setting of 20% density and 0% contrast gives good results on UK Ordnance Survey maps.

New shading information is only calculated by the program as required, for example when the shading density or light source position changes. Nevertheless, applying shading increases the rendering time significantly, so it may be switched off by setting the density level to 0%.

Shading is only available in  high colour mode.

The Mist slider sets the depth at which the landscapes features will fade into mist - it may be thought of as the visibility.

Mist is only available in high colour mode.

In high colour Low level fractalization may be applied to the overlay as it is drawn.  To apply fractalization set the roughness parameter to be any value greater than zero.  The two groups of seed parameters control the internal functioning of the fractalization routines.

Gradients

The gradients scheme allows the user to visually define a function that describes how colour will vary with height.  The scheme is available in all colour modes, but no palette management is applied so results are unpredictable in 256 colour mode.

The landscape colouration consist of red, green and blue components, and each may be controlled independently, the results of the current combination being shown in the sample box.  It is not necessary to understand the mathematics behind this scheme as the best results are obtained by experimentation, but it is described briefly here for those with an interest.

The gradient type applied to each colour is selected from the drop down list box.  The simplest is Flat, which applies a flat even colour across the full height range, the depth of this being set by the intensity slider.  The other  functions use the trigonometric functions sin and cos.  For these the breadth slider controls sharpness of the curve (by raising the trignometric function to a power) and the positioning slider changes the position of the maximum over the height range.

The value (in a range of 0 to 100) for the currently selected slider is shown in the edit box, and the initial default values may be inserted with the reset button.

Vista

This scheme divides the landscape into three bands separated by the tree-line and snow-line.  The positions of these can be moved as a percentage of the total height range using the edit boxes.  Within each range four colours levels are used, and the program graduates smoothly between these.  To edit a colour select the corresponding button the set colour to bring up the colour dialog box.

You can spread a range of colours over a set of levels.  Select the starting colour, and check the spread colours check box.  When the next level is selected all intermediate levels will be set to intermediate values.


The Terrains page

Terrains

Used to control detailed information about terrain colours and names.  Visual Explorer supports eight pre-defined terrain types and up to 16 user-defined terrains.  This page is used to alter the ground colour associated with each terrain, and (less commonly) to change terrain names.  Terrain information is associated with each map, but may also be saved and loaded from separate configuration files.

Standard Terrains

This panel shows the eight standard terrains used by Visual Explorer.  The colours of all of most of these may be altered, but the names are fixed.  Visual Animator has special rules for processing some of these terrains as described below.  Even if no special rules are used, it is advisable not to use a terrain for a purpose other than that described to avoid conflicts in future versions of Visual Explorer:

Standard

This is the default terrain.  It's colour, shading etc. will be determined solely by the colour scheme selected.  Under 256 colours Visual Animator will normally set up it's palette to prioritise the colour variations expected from this, the water and the forest terrains.

Water

Visual Animator expects this terrain type to be used to depict water.

Forest

Visual Animator expects and actor associated with this terrain to depict a tree or similar vegetation, and will place any associated actor at a random point within the terrain square (all other terrains place the actor at the centre of the terrain square).

Buildings

No special processing.

Road

No special processing.  This terrain type was used mainly by Visual Explorer 1 and predecessor programs, and is retained mainly for backwards compatibility.

Rock

No special processing.

Sand

No special processing.

Snow/Ice

No special processing.

User Defined Terrains

Up to 16 user-defined terrains may be defined.  Both the colour and name can be edited.  This would usually be done in the Visual Terrain program when first defining the map, but changes can be made here too.

Colour

This panel contains a set of three sliders used to change terrain colours.

Load

Loads a set of terrain colours and names from a configuration (.cfg) file.

Save

Saves the displayed set of terrain colours and names to a configuration (.cfg) file.

Defaults

Resets all terrain names and colours to the default values.


The Actors page

Actors

Actors are simple 2D or 3D objects that can be included in landscape drawings.  They are associated with terrain types, and are drawn as single object in each grid square of the associated terrain - rather like pieces on a chess board.  Typical actors would be trees, pylons, wind generators, flags etc.

There are two types of actor.  2D Actors are drawn as two vertical planes (in the form of a cross) onto which an image is texture mapped.  This is a fast operation, and is particularly suitable for drawing trees where no hardware  graphics accelerator is present.

3D Actors are described in an adapted version of the POV format used by the POV ray tracing program (see appendix C for details) and are described in terms of simple shapes (primitives) such as cones, triangles etc.  They are drawn using the OpenGL graphics library, and as such can use a hardware accelerator if one is present and the appropriate drivers installed.  On systems without such hardware Actors are best limited to 10 or so primitives, with hardware accelerators present much more complex constructs are possible.

Actors are only available in 16 bit colour mode ('high colour') or better, and cannot be displayed with maps drawn using the MicroMetric scale.

Actors

This group contains a single check box control - Draw All Actors.  If this is unchecked no actors will be draw.  When actors will be drawn for those terrain types with an associated actor where the Draw Actor box is checked.

Terrains

This group of controls determine how actors will be drawn for each terrain type.  The Terrains list box showing all available terrain types, and the other controls in this group show the parameters for the terrain selected.

Use the Actor File edit box to enter the name of the actor file to be drawn on this terrain.  A 2D or 3D actor will be drawn depending on whether a .bmp or .pov file is selected.   Use the Actor Height control to set the height of the actor in the current map units (Metres for metric maps, feet for imperial).  Set the Draw Actor for this Terrain check box to control drawing of actors for individual terrain types.  If Random Placement is checked then the actor will be placed at a  random point within each terrain square, leave this unchecked to place at the centre of the square.  With actors you'll often not want to use the colour defined for a particular terrain, and checking the Use Standard Terrain box will override the usual colour processing. Finally the Actor Density spin control sets the percentage of terrain squares in which an actor will be drawn.  Usually you'll leave this at 100%, but occasionally you may want to reduce this for forests or similar.


Saving, Printing and Copying Pictures

Once you have produced an image you may wish to take a copy of this for use elsewhere.  Visual Animator offers several ways of doing this.

Saving Pictures

You can save the image in bmp format by selecting the Save or Save As… items from the File Menu.

Copying Pictures

Select the Copy Picture item from the Edit Menu to save a copy of the picture to the clipboard.

Printing Pictures

Visual Animator cannot print pictures directly.  Instead a high resolution bmp file should be created, which can then be imported into a paint, word processing or desktop publishing package for printing.  To create the bmp file select the Create Print Bitmap item from the View menu.  A dialog box is shown.  Enter the name of the bmp file and select a size from the drop down list - values in the range 800 x 600 to 5120 x 3840 are supported.

Visual Animator always displays a  progress dialog when creating print bitmaps.


Creating Animations

Visual Animator does not create a animation file directly.  Instead it creates and saves a series of graphics images as bitmap files that may subsequently be assembled by a suitable program into an animation file. The third-party vfd shareware utility included on the cdrom can create avi or flc files, but mpg or mov files may also be created using appropriate programs.

To generate a suitable series of images a file containing a description of a flight path must be defined using the integral Path Maker utility.  This file is then loaded and Visual Animator instructed to generate a series of frames for the movie.

Quicktime VR is a new technology produced by Apple which simulates the placement of a viewer inside a Panorama.  Path Maker can also produce a script to produce Panorama bitmaps for conversion to Quicktime VR cylinders by the Apple generator program.

Visual Terrain can export maps in VRML format for viewing by a browser such as Netscape.  See the Visual Terrain section for details.


Path Maker

The Path Maker utility is accessed from the Path Maker… item on the Animation menu.  The dialog consist of a 2D representation of the current map - the Flight Path control, and a group of controls used to determine how the flight path will be generated and saved.

The Flight Path control displays the current map in the same colours as used for the camera/target positioning control on the Projection Parameters dialog.  The flight path is defined by a series of control points.  To create a control point click on the map.  This defines the control point, and a small square is drawn around it.  The control point may be moved by clicking within this square and dragging.

Path Maker can operate in either  Panorama or Flight modes.  A pair of radio buttons is used to swap between the two modes.  In Panorama mode only one control point may be defined, whilst in Flight mode at least four are required to define a path.

In Flight mode by default the camera looks along the flight path, however this can be changed to create a separate 'view path'.  To define this right click and drag on a control point.  This draws a line representing the direction that the camera will be looking at that control point, the end of the line being the 'view point'.

You can also control the height of the control points the surface.  The Height edit control gives the default height at which the control point will be placed.  You can subsequently adjust  this with height using the slide control at the bottom of the dialog.

Once a sufficient number of control point (you may have up to 32 in Flight mode) have been defined the Generate button is enabled.  Before pressing this to generate the flight path check that the necessary  ancillary values have been correctly defined.  Minimum Height, and Speed are required only in Flight mode - the absolute height will not fall below the value shown by the Minimum Height control whilst the Speed control specifies the number of frames that will be generated between each control point.

The generated path is shown on the map.  A white line is displayed for the camera path, and a yellow line for the view path.  You can move control and view points to adjust the path and regenerate, or click the Reset button to remove all points and start over.  View points move with control points unless Once a suitable path has been produced it can be saved as a script with the Save Script button.  Previously created scripts may be loaded with the Load Script button.


Running Animation Scripts

Select the Load Script… item from the Animation menu to load a script. Before executing the animation script, the Run Script… item displays a dialog box.  This differs between fly-throughs and panorama scripts.

Flight Path Scripts

In the File name prefix edit control enter a prefix for the name of the animation frames.  Files will be named prefix000.bmp, prefix001.bmp etc. so to maintain compatibility with older programs it is recommended that the prefix is restricted to five characters or less.

Select an Animation size.  It is best to use the smallest useful size to prevent the final movie being too large.  The Viewing angle control sets the angle at which the camera looks down from the horizontal.

When running in 16 bit colour mode or better Visual Animator can anti-alias frames - check the Perform Antialiasing box to turn this feature on.  Usually the camera speed needs to be set to one of the slower speeds for this to be worthwhile.

Panorama Scripts

The only parameter required is the file name of the panorama  to be generated.  The size of this image is always set to 440 by 1920 pixels.