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Real 3D Version 1.4 Docs ------------------------ By: SNUSKBUSKE (DIRTYBUSH) / DUAL CREW CONTENTS ======== PRESENTATION ............................................ 1 PREFACE ................................................. 2 HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL ................................... 3 FEATURES ................................................. 4 Ray Tracing .......................................... 4 Speed ................................................ 4 Program Modules ...................................... 4 Hierarchical Object Oriented Construction ......................... 4 True solid Modeling .................................. 4 Smoothly Curved Surfaces ............................. 4 Boolean Operations ................................... 5 Free form modeling ................................... 5 Point editing ........................................ 5 Properties of surfaces ............................... 5 Properties of materials .............................. 5 Fog effects .......................................... 5 Texture mapping ...................................... 5 Animated textures .................................... 6 Bump mapping ......................................... 6 Clip mapping ......................................... 6 Special mapping ...................................... 6 Light Sources ........................................ 6 Animation support .................................... 6 Rendering techniques ................................. 6 Display modes ........................................ 7 Anti-aliasing ........................................ 7 Dithering ............................................ 7 Fast rendering ....................................... 7 Macro function ....................................... 7 1 GETTING STARTED ........................................ 8 Introduction ......................................... 8 Hardware requirements ................................ 8 Installation of the software ......................... 8 Starting the program ................................. 9 The Windows ......................................... 10 2 USING THE PROGRAM ..................................... 13 The mouse ........................................... 13 Creating and modifying objects ...................... 15 Modify .............................................. 20 Primitives .......................................... 24 Modifying objects by their properies ................ 24 Saving and loading objects .......................... 27 Macro ............................................... 28 Special Tools ....................................... 30 Lathe ............................................... 30 Tube tools .......................................... 31 Fence tool .......................................... 32 Polygon tool ........................................ 32 Polyhedron tool ..................................... 32 Conical tube tool ................................... 33 Lathe 2 ............................................. 33 Pixel tools ......................................... 34 Light sources ....................................... 35 The brightness of light sources ..................... 36 Colors .............................................. 37 The screen .......................................... 37 Interlace ........................................... 37 NTSC ................................................ 38 Screen depth ........................................ 38 Aspect ratio ........................................ 38 Window size ......................................... 38 3 WIREFRAME MODEL ....................................... 41 Aimpoint ............................................ 41 Position ............................................ 41 Position gadget ..................................... 41 Distance ............................................ 42 Screen .............................................. 42 AR .................................................. 42 << .................................................. 42 >> .................................................. 42 Record .............................................. 42 Save ................................................ 43 Rbox ................................................ 43 Clear ............................................... 43 Play ................................................ 43 Frame ............................................... 43 Editor .............................................. 43 Solid ............................................... 43 4 SOLID MODEL ........................................... 45 Frame ............................................... 46 Name ................................................ 46 Box off ............................................. 46 Baselight ........................................... 46 Background .......................................... 46 Brightness .......................................... 46 Overlight ........................................... 47 Anti-aliasing ....................................... 47 Resolution .......................................... 47 Width and Height .................................... 47 Recursion depth ..................................... 47 Fast mode ........................................... 48 Normal mode ......................................... 48 Shadowless mode ..................................... 48 Lampless mode ....................................... 48 Outline mode ........................................ 49 Single option ....................................... 49 Autolight option .................................... 49 Interlace option .................................... 49 Overscan option ..................................... 49 Greyscale option .................................... 49 Dither option ....................................... 49 Savemem option ...................................... 50 HI-shade option ..................................... 50 Targa option ........................................ 50 Iff-24 option ....................................... 51 Frame command ....................................... 51 Aspect ratio ........................................ 51 Render .............................................. 51 Editor .............................................. 51 Wire ................................................ 51 Frame buffer support ................................ 51 5 MATERIALS ............................................. 54 Reflection .......................................... 54 Name ................................................ 55 Brilliancy .......................................... 55 Transparency ........................................ 56 Speed of Light ...................................... 56 Turbidity ........................................... 56 Specularity ......................................... 56 Specular brightness ................................. 56 Bump height ......................................... 56 Picture ............................................. 57 Select .............................................. 57 Show ................................................ 57 Texture index ....................................... 57 Mapping ............................................. 57 No 0-col ............................................ 58 Clip ................................................ 58 Bump ................................................ 59 Special ............................................. 59 Color ............................................... 59 Gradient ............................................ 59 Tile ................................................ 59 Flip ................................................ 59 Angle ............................................... 60 Unshaded............................................. 60 Smooth .............................................. 60 Ok .................................................. 60 Cancel .............................................. 60 Mapping Textures .................................... 62 Other Material Functions ............................ 62 6 LOGICAL OPERATIONS .................................... 65 And (ab) ............................................ 65 And not (ab) ........................................ 65 Eor (ab+ab) ......................................... 66 Divide (ab+ab) ...................................... 66 Obscure-function .................................... 70 7 FREE FORM MODELING AND POINT EDITING ............................................. 75 Creating Curves ..................................... 75 Selecting Points .................................... 76 Building Free Form Objects .......................... 77 Coplanar sweep ...................................... 78 Orhagonal sweep ..................................... 78 Swinging ............................................ 79 Join function ....................................... 80 Modifying Curves and Meshes ......................... 82 Bending functions ................................... 85 Bend & move ......................................... 86 Bend & size ......................................... 86 Bending examples .................................... 87 8 ANIMATION ............................................. 88 Introduction ........................................ 88 << (X) >> ........................................... 88 Rewind .............................................. 88 Expose .............................................. 88 Wind ................................................ 88 The first animation ................................. 89 Animating objects with the orbit function ........... 90 The Rotate function ................................. 91 The Direction function .............................. 92 Exposing and De-exposing ............................ 92 Other Animation functions ........................... 94 Animating with macros ............................... 96 Animating the Observer .............................. 97 Animating the Aim Point ............................. 97 Creating Big Animations ............................. 97 9 PRACTICAL INTEGRATED FUNCTIONS......................... 99 The Display ......................................... 99 Display Redrawing Modes ............................ 100 The Visible Range of the Object .................... 100 Measuring Methods .................................. 101 The Grid ........................................... 101 Info ............................................... 102 Standard Limits .................................... 104 Attributes ......................................... 107 Calculating Object's Prices ........................ 107 Memory Management Functions ........................ 108 The Undo Function .................................. 109 10 ADDITIONAL INTEGRATED SOFTWARE ...................... 110 Display ............................................ 110 Deltaconvert ....................................... 110 Deltaplay .......................................... 111 Command Explanation ................................ 112 Deltaplay Control File ............................. 112 CLI script ......................................... 113 Delta To IFF ....................................... 114 Realplay ........................................... 114 Blon and Bloff ..................................... 116 Sculpt to Real ..................................... 116 11 MENU DESCRIPTION .................................... 117 PROJECT .......................................... 117 / 119 OBJECTS ................................................ 117 Create ............................................. 117 Create root ........................................ 117 Load ............................................... 117 Save ............................................... 117 ANIMATION ........................................ 117 / 118 Size ............................................... 117 Delete ............................................. 117 Insert ............................................. 117 Remove ............................................. 118 De-expose .......................................... 118 Load ............................................... 118 Save ............................................... 118 Orbit .............................................. 118 Rotation ........................................... 118 Direction .......................................... 118 Goto frame ......................................... 118 Play ............................................... 118 MATERIALS ........................................ 118 / 119 Create ............................................. 118 Modify ............................................. 118 Load ............................................... 118 Delete ............................................. 118 Load ............................................... 119 Save ............................................... 119 MACRO .................................................. 119 Define ............................................. 119 End ................................................ 119 Execute ............................................ 119 SCREEN ................................................. 119 EXIT ................................................... 119 CREATION ......................................... 119 / 120 PRIMITIVES ............................................. 119 TOOLS ............................................ 119 / 120 Circular tube ...................................... 119 Conical Tube ....................................... 120 Fence .............................................. 120 Lathe .............................................. 120 Lathe 2 ............................................ 120 Pixeltool .......................................... 120 Pixeltool 2 ........................................ 120 Polygon ............................................ 120 Polyhedron ......................................... 120 Rectangular tube ................................... 120 LAMP ................................................... 120 OBSERVER ............................................... 120 AIM POINT .............................................. 120 FREE FORM ........................................ 121 / 123 CREATE CURVE ........................................... 121 Circular curve ..................................... 121 Spiral ............................................. 121 Parallel ........................................... 121 MODIFY ................................................. 121 Show spline ........................................ 121 Remap .............................................. 121 Smoothen ........................................... 121 Close .............................................. 121 Break .............................................. 121 Concatenate ........................................ 121 Remove points ...................................... 121 Subdivide .......................................... 121 BUILD .................................................. 122 Coplanar sweep ..................................... 122 Join ............................................... 122 Orthogonal sweep ................................... 122 Rotation ........................................... 122 Swing .............................................. 122 BENDING MODES .......................................... 122 Bend & Move ........................................ 122 Bend & Size ........................................ 122 Radial ............................................. 122 2D ................................................. 122 3D ................................................. 122 BEND ................................................... 123 Local .............................................. 123 Global ............................................. 123 End point .......................................... 123 Linear ............................................. 123 POINT EDITING .......................................... 123 SELECT ................................................. 123 SELECT NEW ............................................. 123 DESELECT ............................................... 123 DESELECT ALL ........................................... 123 SHOW POINTS ............................................ 123 MODIFY ........................................... 123 / 126 HIERARCHY ........................................ 123 / 124 Move ............................................... 123 Move to ............................................ 123 Stretch ............................................ 123 Size ............................................... 124 Rotate ............................................. 124 Mirror ............................................. 124 Extend ............................................. 124 Explode ............................................ 124 Copy ............................................... 124 Rename ............................................. 124 Locate ............................................. 124 Delete ............................................. 124 Color .............................................. 124 Material ........................................... 124 Painting ........................................... 124 WILDCARD ............................................... 125 Replace ............................................ 125 Color .............................................. 125 Delete ............................................. 125 Macro .............................................. 125 OPERATIONS ....................................... 125 / 126 AND ................................................ 125 EOR ................................................ 125 AND NOT ............................................ 126 AND with paint ..................................... 126 AND NOT with paint ................................. 126 DIVIDE ................................................. 126 COLOR .................................................. 126 SETTINGS ......................................... 126 / 128 DISPLAY ................................................ 126 Scale in ........................................... 126 Scale out .......................................... 126 Pan ................................................ 126 Autofocus .......................................... 127 Reset .............................................. 127 DRAWMODE ............................................... 127 Normal ............................................. 127 None ............................................... 127 DRAWLEVEL .............................................. 127 All ................................................ 127 Parent ............................................. 127 Current ............................................ 127 COORDINATES ............................................ 127 Absolute ........................................... 127 Relative ........................................... 128 Abs & Rel .......................................... 128 None ............................................... 128 ATTRIBUTES ............................................. 128 ALIGNMENT .............................................. 128 GRID ................................................... 128 EXTRAS ................................................. 129 REDRAW ................................................. 129 INFO ................................................... 129 COSTS .................................................. 129 Set price .......................................... 129 Look price ......................................... 129 AVAIL MEM .............................................. 129 GET MEMORY ............................................. 129 REPRESENTATION ................................... 129 / 130 Add wire ........................................... 129 Delete wire ........................................ 129 Obscure ............................................ 130 Draw wire .......................................... 130 Rethink ............................................ 130 Offset ............................................. 130 CLOSE WBENCH ........................................... 130 OPEN WBENCH ............................................ 130 NO ICONS ............................................... 130 UNDO ON ................................................ 130 UNDO ................................................... 130 MODES .................................................. 125 WIREFRAME .............................................. 125 SOLID .................................................. 125 CONTROL MENU OF THE RENDERING SCREEN ................... 131 CANCEL ................................................. 131 EXIT ................................................... 131 SCREEN TO BACK ......................................... 131 SAVE ................................................... 131 PRINT .................................................. 131 SET BOX ................................................ 131 BOX OFF ................................................ 131 FILL BOX ............................................... 131 KEYBOARD SUPPORT ....................................... 132 GLOSSARY ......................................... 134 - 137 Alignment .......................................... 134 Animation .......................................... 134 Brilliancy ......................................... 134 Bump mapping ....................................... 134 Delta animation .................................... 134 Dithering .......................................... 134 Expose ............................................. 134 Frame .............................................. 134 HL shade ........................................... 134 Macro .............................................. 134 Mapping ............................................ 134 Material ........................................... 135 Model .............................................. 135 Object ............................................. 135 Object Hierarchy ................................... 135 Offset point ....................................... 135 Operations (Boolean, Logical) ...................... 135 Overscan ........................................... 135 Picture ............................................ 135 Pixel graphics ..................................... 135 Point editing ...................................... 136 Polygon representation ............................. 136 Primitive .......................................... 136 Projection ......................................... 136 Ray tracing ........................................ 136 Rendering .......................................... 136 Solid model ........................................ 136 Spline ............................................. 136 Texture ............................................ 136 Transparency ....................................... 136 Turbidity .......................................... 136 Vector ............................................. 136 Vector graphics .................................... 137 Wireframe model .................................... 137 INDEX .................................................. 132 PRESENTATION ------------ Real 3D is the brainchild of two Finnish brothers, Juha and Vesa Meskanen, which brings together their interests in engineering, theoretical mathematics and programming the AMIGA. Here is some background in their own words: Juha; About the time I started my studies at the Technical Institute in Lahti, Finland, my brother and I bought an AMIGA 1000. We wanted to get familiar with computers and programming to complement our studies. My particular interests resulted in me starting to build the editor part of Real 3D. This became my degree project - the result of 4 years of intensive studies. My programming work was very dependent on the help I got from my brother Vesa. After taking my degree our programming work continued and intensified. It's great to see that our work has resulted in a finished product. Juha Meskanen Vesa: After college I decided to study mathematics, which I did for a few years at the University in Helsinki, Finland, and continued with research into theoretical mathematics. My brother and I divided the programming work. I did the calculations for the solid modeling part and my brother was responsible for the editor part. Together we were able to make the program into an effective and fast tool for making three dimensional graphics. For my own part I have found programming so interesting that I have suspended my work at the University so I can concentrate on developing our creation - Real 3D Vesa Meskanen - PAGE 1 - PREFACE ------- The development of Real 3D started in spring 1986, when the advanced Amiga 1000 computer was released in Finland. The Amiga was the first reasonably low cost micro powerful enough and with the graphic capabilities required for development of three dimensional, solid modeling CAD software. After a three year development project, we were able to present the first commercial version of Real 3D. Software development has been quite expensive after the first version and we have been able to release new updates of the software regularly. This manual describes the current version 1.4 of Real 3D. The name, Real 3D, was chosen to illustrate the basic principle of the program, which is the simulation of the real world. Pictures produced by the solid modeler of the program are extremely realistic. This principle also means that Real 3D is easier to use: most of us are not experienced 3D modelers, but everybody has experience of the real world! During our development work on this program we have had very valuable help from Heikki Luhtala, one of the foremost figures in computer graphics, and a well known artist in Finland. Heikki Luhtala's help was particularly valuable in providing us with new ideas, testing the program and exchanging views. Warm thankx to Heikki. We'd also like to thank Esko and Kerstin Hamalainen for their help with making Real 3D a marketable product. Also many thanks to the guys at Activa International, whose headfast belief in our software has encouraged us tremendously during the development work. Juha and Vesa Meskanen Realsoft Ky - PAGE 2 - HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL ---------------------- The contents of this manual are divided into the following chapters to give you the best possible overview of Real 3D that will allow you to get going quickly, creating attractive pictures and animating them. At the beginning you will find: Introduction, Features and Getting Started which provide brief information about the background of Real 3D, its most important features and how to install and start the program. Chapters 2 - 8 which are the actual tutorial chapters about the main parts of the program: solid modelling, rendering, animation etc. You thought to study these chapters carefully as they contain many important elements of a successful animation. Chapters 9 - 10 contain additional functions which you will find very practial and useful. These functions will help you to get a good final result. Chapter 11 is a list of all the functions of the program, which you can use for reference. There is a concise explenation of the use of the menus. The Appendix contains the necessary explanations of the keyboard functions and terms which are used in the program. The Index at the end shows you where in the manual you will find the most important features. NOTE: The user is kindly requested to check the README FILE on the program disk for possible instructions not described in the manual, if needed. - PAGE 3 - FEATURES -------- Real 3D is a design and animation progra, for producing high quality, realistic pictures of three dimensioanl objects. It provides an impressive set of advanced features including: RAY TRACING The ray tracing of Real 3D is strongly based on the physical reality of the real world. Real 3D produce pictures by simulating the laws of physics, and consiquently it can represent reality with astonishing accuracy. SPEED Innovative methods and new ray tracing algorithms make Real 3D really fast. When using the fastest ray tracing mode, rendering time is typically from 1 to 15 minutes. PROGRAM MODULES Real 3D consists of three main sections. The first one is the tri-view editor. The second is the wireframe mode in which the user can move around the object in real time, change the distance to it, scale the size of the image or preview an animation. The third section is the solid model renderer, in which the actual colored images are produced. HIERARCHICAL OBJECT ORIENTED CONSTRUCTION OF OBJECTS With Real 3D you can create hierarchical objects. This means that objects you create can be made of subobjects, and these subobjects may have their own substructure and so on. This kind of tree structure is well known in the context of disk operating systems, in which you can create directories inside directories. Real 3D imitiates this and 'directories' we used to collect objects into logical groups. This kind of approach makes object modifications extremely easy, because it is possible to perform operations to logical entities. If you want to copy a DOS directory, you don't have to take care of the files and directories inside it. In the same manner, you can stretch a complex object in Real 3D as easily as stretching any one part of it. TRUE SOLID MODELING Real 3D includes a true solid modeler. Solid modeling is the most sophisticated way to present three dimensional objects. This modeling technique requires a lot of computing power and therefore it has earlier been used only in environments, which are many times faster than Amiga. Now it is possible for Amiga owbers to have all the advantages of solid modeling. This is thanks to extensive optimization carried out in the development of Real. SMOOTHLY CURVED SURFACES In addition to plane surfaces. Real 3D includes several curved surfaces, such as ball, cylinder, cone and hyperboloid. This means that no matter how much you enlarge a ball created by Real 3D, you don't find any edges or corners on the surface. Furthermore, this - PAGE 4 - makes the program much faster. And what is most important, the pictures it produces look really good. BOOLEAN OPERATIONS Solid modeling allows Boolean operations to be used between objects. It is possible, for example, to split an object into two pieces and move the pieces aport so that the inner structure of the object is revealed. Operations can also be done so that the properties of the material of the target object are changed. By using a brilliant cylinder one can drill a brilliant hole into a matt object. These operations are a powerful way to create and modify objects. Especially when modeling technical objects, Boolean operations are indispensable. FREE FORM MODELING AND POINT EDITING Real 3D contains a large collection of free form tools. With these tools it is easy to produce irregular objects. Furthermore, these objects can be freely edited using the point editing support functions of Real 3D. And finally, there are as many as 24 different ways available to bend and twist free form objects. PROPERTIES OF SURFACES Users of Real 3D are not restricted to using basic surface properties such as matt or shiny. Instead, the light reflection properties of a surface can be freely adjusted from absolutely matt or totally mirrored - precisely to the desired level. PROPERTIES OF MATERIALS Due to Real 3D's solid modeling, it is possible to create objects from different materials having suitable physical properties. Just as with the surface's brilliancy, the transparency of a material can be adjusted without any restrictions. Even light refraction properties are freely adjustable so that it is possible to create optical devices from glass lenses. These devices act as their equivalents in the real world: a magnifying glass in Real 3D's world realy magnifies! FOG EFFECTS The precise material control of Real 3D enables succesful simulation of atmospheric phenomena. For example, it is possible to create fog of any desired color and density. TEXTURE MAPPING The texture mapping properties of Real 3D are not restricted to the typical chequered pattern - any IFF picture can be used to paint objects. You can create pictures with your favourite painting program as wall as with a video digitizer or a scanner. For example, by digitizing a wood grain pattern, it is easy to create wooden objects that look very realistic. - PAGE 5 - pictures can be located precisely in the desired place, with the desired size and direction. Real 3D offers many texture mapping methods, including projections such as parallel, cylinder, ball and spiral. There are also many other handy options available, such as tiling, mapping and color gradients - which are especially useful when rendering 24 bit images. ANIMATED TEXTURES It is possible to use a series of changing textures in an animation. The program automatically loads relevant textures for each frame during the rendering. BUMP MAPPING The different texture mapping methods can be used to modify the shape of a surface. Using the texture animation feature in combination with the bump mapping, it is quite easy to animate a wavy water surface. CLIP MAPPING With this technique you can remove desired parts of a surface. The shape of the result can be defined using any IFF format image. SPECIAL MAPPING This mapping technique maps the surface brilliancy and transparancy properties from an IFF image. For example, you can write transparent text on a matt surface. LIGHT SOURCES A unlimited number of light sources of desired color and brightness are available. ANIMATION SUPPORT As well as single frame pictures, you can create a series of pictures to produce animations. Real 3D includes software for playing these animations interactively. Animations can be controlled by a script language from ASCII files or even direct from the keyboard. Instead of looping animations you can define an infinite number of ways to present your pictures. This allows you to create animations from a small number of frames by displaying them in various combinations. RENDERING TECHNIQUES Real 3D includes six different rendering techniques: a real time wireframe mode, a hidden line wireframe mode, a high speed ray traced mode using one automatically positioned light source, a lampless ray traced mode, a shadowless ray traced mode and a complete raytraced mode. - PAGE 6 - DISPLAY MODES You can select either a HAM display mode with 4096 colors, a gray scale display mode offering higher resolution or a 24 bit mode offering over 16 million different colors. Both IFF ILBM and Targa formats are supported. The image size is freely adjustable. ANTI-ALIASING Real 3D includes adjustable anti-aliasing. There are 9 different degrees of anti-aliasing, from which the user can select a suitable level. The most accurate level uses 256*256 adaptive supersampling, which is undoubtedly enough for any application! DITHERING Real 3D contains three different rendering methods with precise dithering scale adjustment. FAST RENDERING It is possible to render with lower resolutions to produce images faster. Another very useful facility is the so called box function, which allows the user to define a rectangular area on the rendering screen. This area can then be rendered at the desired resolution, anti-aliasing level etc. MACRO FUNCTION It is possible to combine several Real 3D functions to form macros. With macros the user can easily create complex, symmetrical form or animation effects. - PAGE 7 - GETTING STARTED --------------- INTRODUCTION The purpose of this chapter is to give an introduction to the basic features of Real 3D. For clarity, all the examples presented are quite detailed and simple. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the basic concepts of the Amiga's graphical user interface such as menus and windows. If you are not familiar with these basic features of the Amiga, please consult your Amiga User's Guide. HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS Real 3D can be used on any Amiga computer having at least 1024 kilobytes of main memory. No additional disk drives are required. With this minimum configuration you can create a model including anything up to 100 basic objects, such as cones and spheres. For professional users we recommend a configuration including at least 3 megabytes of main memory and at least 10 megabytes of hard disk space reserved for the Real 3D environment. Three megabytes main memory is enough for about 1000 - 2000 basic objects. If your Amiga has only 512K of chip memory (as on the A1000), some display mode combinations of the program may not be accessable. For example, the interlaced 16 color PAL display with overlapping windows will require too much chip memory. When rendering, Real 3D tries to speed up the calculations by using any available memory. This may mean that it will take several times longer to render a picture on a one megabyte Amiga than on a three megabyte Amiga. The Real 3D Pro/Turbo software package contains two versions of the program. The standard version 'Real' does not take any advantage of a math co-processor. Instead, a fast floating point format and integers are used to obtain high rendering speed on a standard Amiga. The turbo version 'Turboreal' is optimized for faster machines, and it requires a Motorola 68020/30/40 processor with a math co-processor. INSTALLATION OF THE SOFTWARE Before you use your Real 3D disks, create working copies of them by using either the workbench duplicate operation or a copying program. This guarantees that if your disks are corrputed accidentally you will have a back up. If you want to install the software on a hard disk, just double click the InstallHD icon on the first program disk and follow the instructions. For succesfull installation, there must be about three megabytes of space available on your hard disk. After installation, the unnecessary one of the two program versions 'Real' or 'Turboreal' may be deleted from the hard disk. Remember to add the "assign Real: Partition:Real" command to your startup-sequence file, where Partition refers to the hard disk partition you have chosen to install Real 3D on. - PAGE 8 - If you are going to use the software from a floppy disk, you should do the following: - Format a disk to which you want to install the Real 3D software. - Copy the 'Real' (or 'Turboreal') program to that disk. - Copy 'Display', 'Deltaplay', 'DeltaToIff' and 'DeltaConvert' programs to the disk. - Copy the files 'realpref' and 'attributes' to the disk. - Copy the drawers 'Textures', 'Materials' and 'Bumpmaps' to the disk. After these steps, the disk should be quite full. You will need some empty work disks when using the software. For example, you could use a disk for each Real 3D project to store the animation data and the images you create. For your convenience, Real 3D maintains information on the DOS directories that contain the files created by the program - namely animation, material and object files. The default directories are the directories found on the 'Real' disk. You can change them by selecting a desired directory when loading/saving data, and then choosing the Atrributes -> Save function. The directory paths are then written to the attributes file, and when you next run the program and try to load some data the relevant directory is immediately displayed (if it still exists). The details of the required actions are described in the chapters on saving and loading objects and attributes. STARTING THE PROGRAM Real 3D can be activated from the Workbench interface by double clicking the icon of the program 'Real' (or 'Turboreal') or from the command line interpreter (CLI/SHELL) using the command 'REAL'. To start the program from a floppy disk: - Insert your working Real 3D disk into a floppy disk drive. - Open the icon for the disk. - Open the icon for the 'Real' program. - PAGE 9 - (Picture "PIC10") If you are going to modify an object that you have created previously, then you can start the program by opening the icon for that object as described in the Amiga manuals. The same method is valid for all data files created by the program. NOTE: If you start the program from the CLI, make sure that the stack size is large enough. We recommend the stack size to be at least 20,000 bytes. You can use the CLI 'stack' command to set the proper stack size. THE WINDOWS When the program is started, it goes straight into the editor mode, in which all object creation and modification functions are used. The editor display consists of a number of different windows, which all have their purposes. The three largest windows are called the main projection windows. These windows show the object under construction from different directions. The top left window shows the object in the XY plane, the top right window in the ZY plane, and the bottom left window in the XZ plane. In other words, if the top left window shows the object from the front, the top left window shows it from the side, and the bottom window shows it from above. The construction of objects can be done in any one of these three windows using the mouse. If the windows are overlapping, you can make the desired one visible by moving the mouse pointer on it and clicking the left button. You can see a '+' symbol in each of the main projection windows. This symbol is the - PAGE 10 - cursor, which, for example, defines the point to which objects are located when they are loaded from disk. It also defines the third coordinate value for the pints which the user defines with the mouse; a mousebutton click defines only two coordinates at a time. You can move the cursor to a new location by clicking in the desired place. (Picture "PIC11") The bar at the top of the screen is called the instruction window, which shows, amongst other things, the mouse coordinates. The main purpose of this window is to give information nd instructions to the user. For example, if you click in one of the projection windows, the instruction window displays the message'<0> (X) object', where <0> is the index of the current animation frame and object is the name of the active object. The active object defines which part of your scene will be affected when a modification function is executed. The window in the bottom right corner of the screen is called the selection window. This window displays the names of the objects you have constructed, and you can activate an object by clicking on its name. The name you clicked on will then be displayed in the instruction window to indicate its selection. In this manual we will sometime use the statement 'Select an object' as a synonym for 'Activate an object'. - PAGE 11 - Some Real 3D functions, such as the logical operations, require more than one object to be selected. In these situations the program will display two new gadgets at the bottom of the selection window - namely the OK and CANCEL gadgets. You can freely click the different object names in the selection window, as the final selection will only be made when you click on one of the main projection windows or the OK gadget. - PAGE 12 - 2 USING THE PROGRAM ------------------- THE MOUSE When using Real 3D, the mouse is the most important input device. The actions the user can achieved with it can be divided into two categories in the following way: - The right button is used for menu selection. In addition to this, in the editor the object creation procedures can be cancelled by clicking the right mouse button. - All the other actions use the left mouse button including drawing and window selection. Most of the actions in Real 3D can be performed by menu selection, in a way that is defined by the Workbench user interface: To select a menu item, press the right mouse button, point to the menu bar, then point to the desired menu item and release the right button when the item is highlighted. You can experiment with this by selecting a new color from the 'Color' menu. The program replies by showing a message informing you of the new color in the instruction window. Multiple menu selection is also supported: To select several menu items at the same time, keep the right mouse button held down and select the required menu items with the left mouse button. (Picture "PIC13") In this manual menus are represented in the following way: - Menu -> Item. - Menu -> Item -> Subitem. - PAGE 13 - For example: Creation -> Primitives -> Sphere. (Picture "PIC14,29") Instead of using menus, most functions can also be activated using keyboard equivalents or selection window icons. When using the left mouse button, use sharp clicks instead of keeping the button down and moving the mouse. Left mouse button dragging is reserved for certain point selection functions. For example, when shaping a rectangle, click on the top left corner, and then release the button. Then you may freely move the mouse, select some other menus or even have a cup of coffee. When you are certain of the position of the bottom right corner of the rectangle, click a second time in the desired place. When modeling objects with exact coordinates, it may be difficult to obtain high enough accuracy using the moise. In such a situation you can replace left mouse button clicks using direct coordinate request: if you press the colon key ':', the program creates a requester into which you can type the desired coordinates. On the other hand, if you need to define a single value such as a the radius of a sphere, a sizing factor, or a rotation angle, use the semicolon key ';'. This awakes a requester into which you can enter a suitable floating point number. Moving the mouse while keeping the left button pressed (dragging), has some special functions in Real 3D. If you try this, you will see that a box is shaped according to the mouse pointer movements. With this box you can activate points for point editing as described in the Chapter 6. If no point selection function is selected before dragging, the program calculates an average point. By default, the average is calculated only from two coordinates which are active on the window used (for example X and Y on the top left window). If you want to obtain a true 3D average, hit the '/' key before dragging. And if you want to consider only the points of the active object instead of the whole scene hit the '=' key. Although the averaging operation is simple, it is very useful. Using this feature, you can easily lock the mouse coordinates to any existing point, when modifying or creating an object; just drag the box around one single point. The following examples demonstrate, how the dragging feature can be used. If you are not yet familiar with the software, skip these examples until you know the basics of Real 3D. - PAGE 14 - To lengthen a cylinder: - Activate the cylinder and select the Extend function. - Drag a box around the points of one end of the cylinder. - Drag a box around the other end. - Extend the object. To create a circle precisely in the middle of another circle: - Select the circle creation function. - Drag a box around the points of the circle this defines the middle point of the new circle. - Define the radius. To move a triangle so that its top will be in the middle of an edge of a rectangle: - Activate the triangle and select the Move function. - To ensure that the opertion is done correctly in all three dimensions, hit '/' key. - Drag a box around the top point of a triangle. - Hit '/' key again. - Drag a box around the two end points of the desired edge of the rectangle. CREATING AND MODIFYING OBJECTS All the objects created by Real 3D consist of so called primitives. These are the basic components and tools from which you can construct more complex objects. To create a 'rectangle' primitive: - Choose the menu Creation -> Primitives -> Rectangle. - Move the mouse pointer to the desired location for one corner and click the left button. - Now you can shape the rectangle by moving the pointer. - Click the left button and Real 3D creates a 'rectangle' primitive. Now the instruction window displays 'Rectangle' as the active object. You can look at the rectangle in the two other projection windows by clicking in the desired window. The rectangle is a plane, and therefore it appears as a line when you look at it from the side. You can also see a peak perpendicular to the rectangle. The purpose of this peak is explained in the section on Logical Operations. You can see the logical structure of your object in the selection window. Your scene 'root' consists of one single primitive called 'Rectangle'. If you now move the pointer over the name 'root' and click the left button, you can now see the name 'root' being displayed in the instruction window as an indication of its selection. You are now at the top of the object structure hierarchy, and if you click 'root' again nothing will happen. If 'root' had been a part of a larger object, then you would have moved - PAGE 15 - one step upwards in the hierarchy, and Real 3D would have revealed all the objects in the same hierarchy level as 'root'. If you select the rectangle as the active object again, the only sign of the selection is the name of the object in the instruction window. In other words, the object 'rectangle' represents the lowest level of the hierarchy, and there is no substructure to be displayed in the selection window. (Picture "PIC16,25,27,44") The names 'root' and 'rectangle' are printed in different colors in the selection window: this indicates that they are different types of object. A well known example of this kind of hierarchical data management is disk operating systems: the object 'root' corresponds to a directory in DOS, and the equivalent of the rectangle object is an actual DOS file. Real 3D uses this analogy of directories to collect the parts of an object into reasonable groups. It is possible to select and modify very complex objects, without having to deal with their substructures. For example, if you have grouped all the parts of a robot arm under one single object 'robot arm', then you can rotate the whole arm, and there is no need to pay any attention to each finger etc. to obtain the desired result. Next, let's experiment with modifying an object. - To move the primitive you have created to another position: - Choose the menu Modify -> Hierarchy -> Move. - Move the mouse pointer, for example, to the middle of the rectangle and click the left button. - Move the rectangle to a new location and click. - PAGE 16 - NOTE: The right mouse button can be used to cancel the modification. This is how easy it is to create and modify objects. You can experiment with other modification functions, such as stretch and size, which are used in a similar manner. Next, we will create a table which consists of a tabletop and a base. The base consists of two and a brace. We will create the table using cubes. You can create a tube in the same way that you earlier created a rectangle. The following picture illustrates the structure of the table: (Picture "PIC17") To delete the old object 'root' and to create a new one: - Make 'root' the active object by clicking on its name in the selection window. - Choose Modify -> Hierarchy -> Delete. - Real 3D asks for the name of the new object. Type 'tablescene' and click OK or hit the return key. NOTE: When you delete the whole scene (the root object), Real 3D asks for the name of the new root. You can cancel this function by choosing CANCEL. If you try to delete an object in a lower hierarchy level, the color of the object is first changed to indicate the target of the deletion. At this point, you can cancel the deletion by clicking the right mouse button. (Picture "PIC17") Now you have an object (or scene), which so far does not consist of any parts at all. - PAGE 17 - We start making the table by creating the hierarchy level, which contains all the parts of the table: - Choose Projects -> Objects -> Create. - Choose the menu Modify -> Hierarchy -> Rename. - Write the name 'table' and hit RETURN. To create the cover of the table: - Choose a nice color for the cover from the Colors menu. - Choose Creation -> Primitives -> Cube, and shape a cube to represent the cover as it is seen from the side. - 'Cube' is not a good name for the cover of the table, so we will change it: Choose the menu Mode -> Hierarchy -> Rename. - Write the name 'cover' and hir RETURN. Now you have created a table that consists of a cover. To create an object 'base': - Choose Projects -> Objects -> Create. - Choose the menu Modify -> Hierarchy -> Rename. - Write the name 'base' and hit RETURN. Your table now consists of the cover and the base. If you look at the instruction window, you will notice that the base is the active object. As long as this holds, every new object or primitive you create will become a part of the base. +-------+ | Table | +-------+ +-------+ | Cover | +-------+ (The base is a hierarchy level, which so far includes no objects or parts.) To create a stand for the table: - Verify that 'base' is the active object, so that the stand will be a part of the base. - Choose Creation -> Primitives -> Cube. - Shape a cube to represent a stand. - Rename the new cube as 'stand1' by choosing Modify -> Hierarchy -> Rename. The stands of the table are identical, therefore you can create the second stand by using the copy function: - PAGE 18 - - Choose the menu Modify -> Hierarchy -> Copy when the stand is the active object. - Move the copy to the right place by choosing Modify -> Hierarchy -> Move. As you have seen, Real 3D automatically gives names to primitives according to their types. This is handy when you are making a relatively small object, when it is easy to identify the different parts of the object. However, it is usually wise to give a name to each part of the object which describes its purpose. If you don't want Real 3D to automatically give standard names to primitives: - Choose Settings -> Attributes. - Turn the CUSTOM NAME gadget on by clicking on it. - Choose OK or SAVE if you want to keep this setting permanently. If you choose OK, this function will not be active when you start the program next time. +-------+ | Table | +-------+ +-------+ +------+ | Cover | | Base | +-------+ +------+ (The object attributes) Now create the cube which will represent the brace of the table. When Real 3D asks for the name of this primitive, type 'brace'. Now the table is ready. +-------+ | Table | +-------+ +-------+ +------+ | Cover | | Base | +-------+ +------+ +-------+ +-------+ | Stand | | Stand | +-------+ +-------+ (The final hierarchical structure of the table.) You should now know how to create objects and modify them. Take a quick look at the selection window; the last object you created was the brace, and therefore the selection window displays the structure of the object, part of which is the brace. When you select the object base, it will first becomes the active object. If you select it again, the hierarchy level above it is displayed. In this way, you can move up and down - PAGE 19 - the object hierarchy. In the previous example, we named the objects so that the name of an object described the purpose of it, to make the identification easier. If your work includes several objects of the same name, you can identify them according to the order you created them; the last object you created is the topmost in the selection window. If you don't remember which one you created first, there is one further way to select an object: Position the cursor near a primitive in the object, then press the space bar and click near one of the points of the desired object. Now the program activates the primitive nearest that point. If the desired object is not a primitive, move upwards in the hierarchy by pressing the 'p' key until you reach the right level. You can check which object is the active one by hitting the tab key. Then the wireframe of the active object is displayed highlighted for a while. In the next section we will modify the table in different ways so that you can get some idea of Real 3D's powerful hierarchical, object-oriented construction facilities. MODIFY You already know how to use some of the modification functions. You also know that modifications are done on the active object. You can make any part of the table the active object, hence you can modify any part of it regardless of how complex the object is. To move the brace of the table: - Make 'brace' the active object. - Choose the menu Modify -> Hierarchy -> Move and move the brace. To move the whole base: - Make 'base' the active object. - Hit the key 'r' (repeat) which executes the last executed function and move the base. To move the whole table: - Hit the key 'p' (parent), which makes the parent hierarchy of the 'base' the active object. - Select Modify -> Hierarchy -> Move and move the whole table. If the table seems to be too high: - Select the menu Modify -> Hierarchy -> Stretch while the 'table' is the active object and stretch it. In the same way you can stretch the whole table or only one single part of it. You can also rotate it with the Rotate function, or change the color to the current one with the Color function. The mirror function inverts the object with respect to an axis that is defined by you. - PAGE 20 - If the result of a modification was unexpected: - Select Extras -> Undo or hit the 'U' key. The Undo function restores the situation before the last action. You can also relocate the table by choosing Modify -> Hierarchy -> Move to. This function moves the target to a given point using the so called offset point of the object. Every primitive you create has some default value for this offset point. For example, the offset of a ball is its middle point. You can redefine the offset point by using the function Extras -> Offset. To move a stand of the table to the bottom left corner of the window: - Select a stand. - Choose Modify -> Hierarchy -> Move to. - Move the pointer to the desired place and click the left button. Offsets are also used when objects are replaced or loaded from disk; these functions are explained later. Move, Rotate and Stretch are functions that affect only the physical structure of the table. Next we turn to functions, which change the hierarchical structure. In fact, you already know one such function, namely Delete. The hierarchical structure of the table created in the previous section seems to be quite a logical one. The stands are a part of the base, but the cover is not. If you don't agree, you can move the parts of the table in the hierarchy tree just as you can move files and directories in DOS. If you want to make the cover a part of the base: - Select the cover. - Choose Modify -> Hierarchy -> Locate. - Real 3D prompts you to select a hierarchy level into which you want to move the cover. Select the base, and then click OK or one of the three main projection windows to confirm the selection. You will then find that the cover has become part of the base. - PAGE 21 - You have modified the structure of your table as follows: +-------+ | Table | +-------+ +-------+ +------+ | Cover | | Base | +-------+ +------+ +-------+ +-------+ +-------+ | Stand | | Brace | | Stand | +-------+ +-------+ +-------+ (The hierarchical structure of the table after the modification) If you don't want any part of the table to belong to the base: - Select the cover. - Choose Modify -> Hierarchy -> Locate. - Choose the table as the destination of the cover. - Repeat the steps above with all the objects in the base, so you have taken all the parts out of the base. If you want to move the base now, you won't move any of the parts in the table. Since the base is empty now, and the structure of the table is quite peculiar, we'll mix it up a little bit more by moving the whole table to be a part of the base: - Select the table. - Choose Modify -> Hierarchy -> Locate. - Select the base and click OK. Real 3D informs you that you can not do such an operation. That's because you would have created a table with a hierarchical structure as difficult to understand as the three dimensional shadows of a hypercube's fourth dimension. In other words, the base of your table would be a part of the table, while the table as a whole would still be a part of the base. The following relocation operations would lead to an impossible result. Thus Real 3D will not permit them: - An object cannot be relocated directly downwars in the hierarchy. For example the table cannot be moved to a part of the base. For this reason, the root object cannot be moved because all objects are parts of the root object. - An object cannot be moved into a primitive, because a primitive cannot have any substructure. For example, the cover cannot be moved into either of the stands. - PAGE 22 - The restrictions illustrated above will only apply when relocating objects that consists of substructures, Since primitives do not possess any substructure they can be moved in the hierarchy tree without any restrictions. Finally, you may delete the table which wasn't a very good table anyway. To delete the table: - Select the table. - Choose Modify -> Hierarchy -> Delete. - Click in one of the main projection windows to confirm the deletion. Real 3D has another quite useful modifying operation which can be used to produce exploded diagrams. To explode an object that consists of more than one primitive: - Select an object. - Choose Modify -> Hierarchy -> Explode. - Point to the explosion center and click the left mouse button. - Define the direction and magnitude of the explosion by defining two points. With the first point you grab the object and the second point shows where the part which you grabbed will be moved by the force of the explosion. All other parts of the object will be moved the same ratio from the explosion center. The primitives themselves cannot be exploded into smaller pieces: they can only be pulled into the distance. - PAGE 23 - PRIMITIVES The following list shows the basic construction parts, the so called primitives, of Real 3D. Two dimensional primitives: - Triangle - Rectangle - Circle Three dimensional primitives: - Prism - Pyramid - Cube - Sphere - Cylinder - Cone - Cut cone - Hyperboloid (Hyperbol) - Cut hyperboloid (CutHyperbol) In addition to the above mentioned primitives you can create many new primitives from the basic ones by stretching. So, you could create parallelograms, elleptical hyperboloids, elliptical cones, etc. Most primitives are so easy to create, that you cannot possibly fail. Only objects created with the cone tools are affected by actions taken by the user during the creation process. Using the cone tool you can create either a cut cone or a whole cone. Which one is created depends on wheter or not the creation is terminated with the mouse button after defining the first radius. Only two dimensions can be defined in one projection window when the user creates objects. For this reason, the third dimension is given a default value. For example, in a kitchen furniture factory the default depth can be set to 15mm, the thickness of chipboard. Changing the default depth is discussed in the chapter titled 'Attributes'. MODIFYING OBJECTS BY THEIR PROPERTIES You have already learned how objects can be modified after they have been selected from their position in the hierarchy. You can also select objects on the grounds of their properties like color, material and name. The following operations can be executed based on object properties: - Changing color (Color) - PAGE 24 - - Replacing an object with another object (Replace) - Deleting an object (Delete) If you want to modify objects with some other function, you can do it by defining a suitable macro which includes all the required modifications and then using Modify -> Wildcard -> Macro function. Details of the macro function can be found in the 'Macro' section. The objects to be modified are selected by specifying a desired value for a certain property. All objects whose property has this value are selected. (Picture "PIC16,25,27,44") It is possible to use three different properties for object selection: name, material and color. Foe each property, the selection device contains two fields: the condition field and the corresponding value field. To use a property for object selection, activate the condition field for it and then enter the desired value in the value field. If the 'name' condition field is activated, then only objects whose name is equal to the character string contained in the name value field are modified. The value string can also contain unix-style pattern matching: the '?' - character matches any character, the string 'a?*' matches any string starting with the character 'a' etc. If the material condition field is activated, then only objects whose material is the same as the material value field indicates are modified. The value string can again contain unix-style pattern matching characters. If the color condition field is activated, then only objects whose color is the same as displayed in the color value field are modified. NOTE: If you don't set any of the condition fields, all objects will be modified. Note also, that only primitives can have color and material properties. The only property with which you can refer to objects in higher hierarchy leverls is the name. - PAGE 25 - To change the color of all objects whose name is 'stand': - Select the root object. - Choose a new color for the table from the Colors menu. - Choose Modify -> Wildcard -> Color. - When Real 3D prompts for the object to be modified, set the name condition field and type 'stand' to the corresponding value field. - Choose OK. The color of all the objects with the name 'stand' will be changed. To delete all the stands in the base of the table whose color is blue: - Define the blue color with the Colors -> Palette function, if it is not yet defined. - Select base. - Choose -> Modify -> Wildcard -> Delete. - Define the objects to be deleted by setting the color field. - Click the colored rectangle until it displays the blue color. In the information window you can see the number of the selected color (for example 3 refers to the third color in the palette). - Set the name field as well; type 'stand'. - Choose OK. Real 3D will delete from the base all the stands that are colored blue. If the stands had been any other color they would not have been deleted. The replace function can be used to replace objects with another object. The replacing object will be positioned using its offset point. To replace all stands of the table with new stands: - Create an object called 'newstand'. - Select table. - Choose -> Modify -> Wildcard -> Replace. - Define the modifications to be executed based on the name 'stand*?'. - When Real 3D prompts for the object to replace the stand with, select newstand. - Choose OK. All the stands in the table will be replaced with the new stands that you created. NOTE: If the object newstand is created under the hierarchy of the table in the previous example, then the program will not accept the replacement action. Certain replacements are prohibited, to prevent the user creating infinite loops which could lead to a system crash. The rule is that the target object cannot be a subobject of the replament object and vice versa. - PAGE 26 - NOTE: When using the Wildcard functions Real 3D searches for the objects to be modified only in the active object. In this way you can limit the range of modifications to a certain part of the hierarchy tree. If you executed a modification operation while a primitive is selected, the properties of any other objects will not be tested because a primitive does not have a substructure. SAVING AND LOADING OBJECTS. An object you have created, or any part of it, can be saved on disk to later be recalled and used again. For example to save the table you just created to the directory 'template' on drive df0: - Select 'table' - Choose Projects -> Objects -> Save. A device will then appear on the screen. With this file requester you define all the names that Real 3D needs to load and save data. In the requester you can see a listing of a DOS directory. Using the mouse you can select any of the names by moving through the directory tree until you reached the directory you want. Then you can type the name to save the object with to the field in the lower part of the requester. Naturally, you can also select an existing file. In this case the old contents of the file will be overwritten. Similarly you can type in the name field any name with its directory path regardless of which directory is shown in the device. (Picture "PIC16,25,27,44") Continue saving with the following actions: - Define the name 'df0:template/table' as described above. - Choose OK. - PAGE 27 - In the same manner, when you want to load the table in directory 'template' of drive df0: - Select a scene into which you want to load the table (for example a garden furniture set). - Select a point in space wher you want to load the table. When loaded the object will be positioned so that its offset will be located at this point. - Choose Projects -> Objects -> Load. - Select ' df0:template/table' from the file requester and choose OK. If the selected object was found, it will become part of the garden furniture set. The table is now the active object, so you can immediately modify it in various ways, for example, move it to an appropriate location. NOTE: If you save on object to an existing file name Real 3D does not verify your operation but destroys the previous version of the file. When you create objects it is advisable to compose objects of reasonable subobjects, which can be saved to appropriate subdirectories. Although this means more work in the beginning, it does allow you to create libraries of reusable objects. You can use these ready made objects as construction blocks for new objects and don't have to begin your work from the beginning. MACRO The macro facility, an important deature of Real 3D, is very useful when you must execute the same modifying operations to a large number of objects. A macro is a series of modification operations that the user can define to best suit his/her needs. Macros are kept in memory and they can later be executed on any object. Defining a macro is started using the Define operation. Any macro in memory at this point are deleted. After this, all operations that are chosen that modify the structure of the object are stored in memory. These operations include: Move, Move to, Stretch, Size, Rotate, Mirror, Extend, Explode, Info, wildcard modifications excluding wildcard macro, etc. On the other hand, operations that affect animation structure, are not stored. For example Animation -> Delete and Animation -> Size are such operations that would not be stored. When the macro has been fully defined the recording is stopped by the End operation. An example of macro definition: - Create an object. - Choose Projects -> Macro -> Define. - Platten the object with Strectch function. - Rotate the object with Rotate function. - Move the object with Move function. - Choose Projects -> Macro -> End. - PAGE 28 - Now you have defined a macro that consists of three modifying operations. To execute the macro: - Select the object to modify. - Choose Projects -> Macro -> Execute. - Real 3D activates a requester displaying three default values: Frames = 1, Startcound = 1, Increment = 1. These values will do, so select OK. Another, quick way to execute the macro is to hit the 'e' (execute), which executes the macro once. (Picture "PIC14,29") If you want to execute the macro 20 times, set startcount = 20 before clicking OK. This is a very powerful method for creating symmetrical objects. As an example, let us create a set of ball bearings: - Create a sphere with a suitable size and place it near the top of one of the projection windows. - Select menu Projects -> Macro -> Define. - Copy the sphere. - Rotate the sphere around the center point of the window. - Select menu Projects -> Macro -> End. - Select menu Projects -> Macro -> Execute. - Estimate the number of spheres needed to form the entire ball bearing and set startcount to this value. - Click OK. - PAGE 29 - (Picture "PIC30,31,32") The parameters 'Frames' and 'Increment' have use when creating animations. More detailed description is given in the chapter on Animations. SPECIAL TOOLS Real 3D includes a set of special tools to ease creation of certain types of objects, like objects turned in a lathe. Objects that consists of several primities can be created fast an easily with these special tools. LATHE To use the late tool: - Choose Creation -> Tools -> Lathe. - Define the direction of the axis of the lathe by selecting two points with the mouse. - Turn the object by defining its longitudinal section. When the required shape has been defined, turning can be terminated by pressing the menu or right button. - PAGE 30 - (Picture "PIC30,31,32") TUBE TOOLS With the tube tools you can create a continuous tube which has slightly rounded turns. For example, these tools could be used for writing. To use the circular tube tool: - Choose Creation -> Tools -> Circular tube. - Define the diameter of the tube. - Draw the tube in space as long as you want it and then finish it with the menu button. The tube tools use various primitives like cylinders, polyhedrons, and spheres to create the tube you defined. (Picture "PIC30,31,32") - PAGE 31 - FENCE TOOL The fence tool can be used to create a surface consisting of a chain of rectangles. To use the fence tool: - Choose Creation -> Tools -> Fence. - Draw the fence in space and then complete it with the menu button. (Picture "PIC30,31,32") POLYGON TOOL With the polygon tool you can create plane polygons. Use the left mouse button to add new edge points when drawing a polygon. The right mouse button ends the process. Note that the last two points of the polygon are closed automatically. POLYHEDRON TOOL With the polyhedron tool you can create an object whose surface consists of polygons. Use it in the following way: - Select the menu Creation -> Tools -> Polyhedron. - First define the intersection shape of the object, in other words the shape of the bottom plane of the object. You can do this in the same way as with the polygon tool. Use the right mouse button to end the shape definition. If you only want to extrude this shape into the third dimension, click the right button again. Otherwise, click the left mouse button in the position that you want to place one - PAGE 32 - end of the polyhedron. - Now you can change the size of the top end by moving the mouse. When the size is suitable, click the left button. If you hit the right mouse button instead, you get a pyramid-like shape with a sharp top. CONICAL TUBE TOOL With this tool it is possible to create spheres connected with cones. The result is a tube with a changing radius and rounded joints. For example, this tool could be used for creating a robot finger: - Select Creation -> Tools -> Conical tube. - Shape as many circles as needed. These circles define the joints of a finger. End the joint definition by clicking the right mouse button. - When the program asks for a subdivision factor type '1' and click OK. If you define a higher subdivision factor, you get more joints and a smoother result. Try the previous example with the subdivision factor 5 just to see the difference. LATHE 2 This tool works in a similar was as the original lathe tool, but the tools uses hypeboloids and ellipsoids so that it is possible to create objects whose diameter changes smoothly in the direction of the axis. Use the tool in the following way: - First define the axis direction of the lathe. - Then click on the starting point and define the direction of the surface at that point by drawing a line segment. Click when the direction is good. - Now you can shape a curve. When the shape is suitable, click the left mouse button and shape the next curve. - If you want to make a straight edge, then use the right mouse button to cancel the current curve shaping and then define the new direction. - Sometimes the smooth profile curve breaks because of precision problems in Real 3D's calculations. This can be avoided by defining the shape in shorter seqments. - It is possible to force the surface direction to the lathe axis direction by hitting either the 'x' key or the 'y' key: in the former case the length of the object is taken from the mouse pointer coordinates and in the latter case the pointer defines the radius of the object. - PAGE 33 - PIXEL TOOLS The pixel tools are a very powerful link between two and three dimensional computer graphics. The idea is to easily and quickly obtain complex 3D solid objects by replacing the two dimensional pixels of an IFF picture with some three dimensional objcets, such as spheres. When using the pixel tool, the user can define which object replaces the pixels. Only the pixels which have some color other than the background color (color 0) are replaced. The colors of the objects created are the same as the corresponding colors of the pixels in the IFF picture. For example, you can create 3D text using standard 2D fonts. There are a wide variety of fonts available, and furthermore, there are an infinite number of ways to define the object with which the pixels are replaced. For the creative user, pixeltool offers an excellent method of producing 3D pictures and animations. To create text with the pixel tool: - Start a paint program, choose a suitable font, then write the word 'Real'. Define a brush containing the word and then save the brush, to the RAM disk. - Now create a small sphere in Real 3D. - Choose Creation -> Tools -> Pixeltool. Now the file requeste is displayed, and you can select the brush you saved to the RAM disk. - Next, you can define the size and location of the object that will be created by defining a line segment in one of the main windows. This line corresponds to the top edge of the object being created. - Now you can select the object which is to be used to replace the pixels. Select sphere and click OK. Now wait until the program has created the 3D model of the word 'Real'. You propably don't need the original sphere any longer, so delete it. (Picture "PIC34,37") - PAGE 34 - When using the second variation of the tool, pixeltool2, the bitmap is taken as a height map when creating a free form net surface. The brighter the color a pixel has, the higher the peak will be in the corresponding point on the surface. For example, you can create a free form ground surface for a landscape: - Start a paint program and draw a small height map (or edit a digitized map image). Save this map to the RAM disk as a brush. - Choose Creation -> Tools -> Pixeltool. The file requester will be displayed, and you can select the bush you saved to the RAM disk. - Next, you must define the size and location of the object that will be created by defining some segments in one of the projection windows. Again, this line corresponds to the top edge of the brush. - Wait until the object is created. Note: Both the pixel tools tend to create 'heavy' objects. For example, in a paint program a brush of 30 times 30 pixels looks very small, but it includes 900 pixels. A brush that is just a little bigger, say 50 times 50 pixels, includes 2500 pixels. This huge number may lead to a stack overflow or your memory might simply run out. If you are going to handle a model of several hundred objects, we recommend that you first read the sections that describes how to use the faster display redraw modes. LIGHT SOURCES A light source is a primitive that radiates light of its own color. If the primitive is black it does not radiate light at all, while a white object radiates all the main components (R,G,B) of light in the same amounts. A light source is a point without dimension. According to the laws of physics, the intensity of radiated light should be inversely proportional to the distance squared. However, this would create contrasts which were too high due to the limited number of colors possible on the Amiga. Therefore, in Real 3D the effect of distance on the intensity of light is somewhat reduced. In real life it is usually very difficult to observe objects in lighting which has only one wavelength. There is also no material which would reflect only one wavelength. In Real 3D all this is possible, so you should be carefull when selecting the colors of light sources. For example, a totally red object is not visible at all under blue lighting, because a red object does not reflect any blue light. A violet object looks red under yellow lighting. Usually it is advisable to create white light sources, so that all objects will be rendered in their 'true' colors.Although the number of light sources is not limited, they should not be used lightly. The time taken for rendering is greatly dependent on the number of light sources. - PAGE 35 - To create a light source: - Select the color of the light source from the Colors menu. - Choose Creation -> Lamp - Move the mouse pointer to the place you want to place the light source and press the left mouse button. NOTE: A light source differs greatly from other primitives in that it does not have any valume. Thus you can not do Boolean operations with it and it cannot have a texture. However, it is a part of the object you are creating, just like a lamp is a part of a chandelier. You can modify objects that include a light source without restrictions. The light sources behaves just like any other primitive. Naturally, there is no sense in stretching a single light source. THE BRIGHTNESS OF LIGHT SOURCES When you create light sources in the editor, you don't have to worry about their brightness; the program will scale their intensities to a suitable level and fine tuning can be done by settings of the solid model. You can set the relative brightness of various light sources by giving them suitable colors a lamp having lower values for RGB components has a lower light intensity than a lamp that has higher RGB values. These differences will be preserved in automatic scaling. The automatic scaling of light intensities can be thought as being analogous to the automatic exposure function if a camera, where the exposure level is based on the overall brightness of the picture. It's worth noticing that if you position a light source near an object there will be great differences in light level (in other words the contrast is high). If you illuminate the object from a distance, the light falling on the object will be much more evenly distributed. A good example of this phenomenom is the comparison of sunlight and lamp light. If you place a lamp near an object to act as a spot light and another further away to give ambient light, the latter should have much higher density, and therefore a higher visible effect. Since light sources are points without any volume, they don't show in the picture created with the solid model. So, if you want there to bee reflections of the light sources on reflecting surfaces, you must put, for example, a cover made of matt glass around the light source. This is just like in the real world! It could be emphasized in this context that the highlights and the reflections are not special effects or spots created with some special programming trickery. They are the results of calculating the laws of physics - this is one of the main principles of Real 3D. You may find it useful to save some suitable light sources as objects to disk so that they can be used as and when the need arises. Nevertheless, if you want to produce a ray traced picture of an object, you don't always have to create light sources. The rendering section of Real 3D includes some fast ray tracing modes, in which one light source is created automatically. For more information, see the chapter on the Solid Model mode. - PAGE 36 - COLORS In the solid model, Real 3D's rendering unit, all the Amiga's 4096 possible colors are used. Each color consists of three primary components: red, green and blue. When each of these components can have one of 16 intensity levels, a total of 4096 colors can be used. The sixteen default colors that are shown in the color menu are called register colors. They can be changed by controlling their primary components (R, G and B). In the objects you create, the color information is stored as RGB values. Thus you can modify any of the sixteen colors to be the desired color. If you later change the register color, the object will not change color. The editor only shows the objects with the register color with which their color was defined. To change register colors: - Choose Colors -> Palette. - Choose a register color by clicking one of the colored squares. - Define the R, G and B values of the selected register color. - Choose either OK or SAVE depending on whether you want the change to be permanent or not. (Picture "PIC34,37") THE SCREEN Real 3D includes several different display modes for the editor display. If you select the menu Projects -> Screen, a requester is displayed. This controls both the editor and the wireframe model displays. The device offers the following display alternatives: INTERLACE This gadget turns interlace on or off. With it on the vertical resolution is doubled. - PAGE 37 - NTSC When the NTSC gadget is on it selects a display height of 200 lines (400 lines when interlaced). The default value for PAL machines is 256 lines. SCREEN DEPTH With this field, you can select the number of colors availabale. The minimum value 2 allows four colors, and the maximum value 4, which is the default, allows 16 colors. The higher the depth is, the more chip memory the display requires. in old Amigas with 512Kb of chip memory, the depth cannot be set to 4 when interlace is on, the update of the display gets slower as the screen depth increases. ASPECT RATIO In this field you can define the pixel aspect ratio. WINDOW SIZE This gadget defines, whether the editor windows overlap or not. Overlapping windows offers more space, but the scene cannot be seen from all three directions at the same time. (Picture "PIC38,58,61") These settings are brought into use if you choose OK. When you exit the program, the last display mode selection is automatically saved to the file realpref, and the next time you run Real 3D, you get precisely the same display. The screen requester contains the aspect ratio field, where you can enter the desired aspect ratio. The ratio defines the pixel height to pixel width ratio in the HIRES-INTERLACE screen mode. On PAL machines a good estimate is 1.0, but 1.25 is more suitable when using NTSC. - PAGE 38 - The pixel aspect ratio defined in the editor is used in the wireframe and solid model modes as well. Note that you can replace the editor aspect ratio using the aspect ratio option in the solid model control screen: this aspect ratio option is used for solid model rendering only. This is useful if you use a frame buffer with a separate monitor, using the two options you can define suitable aspect ratios for each display. - PAGE 39 - - PAGE 40 - 3 WIREFRAME MODEL ----------------- The wireframe model has two basic purposes in Real 3D: - With the wireframe model you can view the objects in real time in three dimensions. - The wireframe model defines data which is later used in solid model rendering. You can enter the wireframe model using the editor menu Modes -> Wireframe, the gadget 'WIRE' on the solid model screen or by hitting the 'w' key. (Picture "PIC41") The gadgets of the control window have the following functions: AIMPOINT In these fields you can type the position of the aimpoint in the frame being displayed. Remember to hit return after entering a new value. POSITION With these fields you can change the position of the observer (the camera position) accurately by typing the desired coordinate values. POSITION GADGET The large gadget on the right side of the 'Pos' fields can be used to define the position of the observer. The button of the gadget defines the direction of the motion of the observer (not the position itself). If you move the button to the right, the observer starts to rotate - PAGE 41 - around the aim point to the right, and if you move the button upwards, the observer moves upwards, until it reaches the position above the aimpoint. The more you move the button from the center of the gadget the faster the motion is. DISTANCE This gadget defines the distance from the observer to the aimpoint. If you move the slider to the left, the observer moves nearer to the aim point. Also, you can type a desired value in the field containing the distance. SCREEN With the screen gadget you can adjust the size of the picture. Again, you can define an accurate value by using the numerical field on the right side of the 'Screen:' text. AR This is the automatic recording gadget. If this gadget is activated, all changes made to the observer and the aim point positions are stored. Furthermore, the numerical fields of the control window are updated continuously. << Rewind gadget for changing the current animation frame. A sharp click on the gadget selects the previous frame, whereas keeping the gadget pressed will make the frame index countdown continuously until the first frame is reached. >> This is the forward wind gadget, which works as above. REC Records the wireframe settings which corresponds to the image currently being displayed on the current frame. The next frame (if exists) is then displayed. These recorded settings are used when rendering ray traced images from the scene. SAVE It is possible to save wireframe animations as IFF images. To do this, define a suitable name in the name field of the solid model rendering control window (use a '_w' postfix, - PAGE 42 - the index will be automatically inserted), activate the SAVE gadget and click on the PLAY field. RBOX With this gadget you can select the faster 'representation box' drawmode. RECord the current situation before activating/deactivating this gadget, if you do not want to lose it. CLEAR Resets the observer, the aim point and screen distance values to the default ones in every frame of the animation. PLAY Starts the wireframe preview of the animation. It shows the animation as a continuous loop. The animation can be stopped by deactivating the gadget. FRAME Displays the index of the current animation frame. EDITOR Exits from the wireframe model to the editor. SOLID Exits from the wireframe model to the rendering screen (solid model). The controls of the wireframe model can be hidden by pressing the 'f' (full) key or the right mouse button; second press brings them back. The following picture shows how the picture is calculated in wireframe mode. - PAGE 43 - (Picture "PIC16,25,27,44") By changing the location of the screen you can either enlarge the object or reduce it. By taking the screen closer to the observer you can decrease the size of the picture of the object because the light rays reflecting from the object to the eyes of the observer will intersect the screen nearer each other. If the distance between the screen and the eyes is set to zero, the object is seen as a single point. The perspective can be changed by looking at the object at different distances. If you first set a small value for screen distance, you can then move the observer very near to the object and still see it fully. This gives a very strongly perspectived image as produced by a wide angle lens. With the observer position gadget you can look at the object from any direction. If you want to know your location in space, click on the REC gadget with the left mouse button. If you wish to see this information continuously when moving in space, turn continuous Recording (AR) on so that your location will be shown all the time. Many of the control gadgets in the wireframe model are used for defining data to be used in animations and solid modeling. The solid modeler needs various information, such as the direction from which you are looking at the object, the distance from the object and, finally, the distance between your eyes and the monitor screen. You can set these settings with the controls of the wire frame model and store them in memory with the AR and REC gadgets. Creating animations and defining location information for the solid model are described in greater detail in the sections on Solid Model and Animations. - PAGE 44 - 4 SOLID MODEL ------------- Until now you have only created tables, light sources, etc. But, you havn't seen anything but wireframes. In this chapter we will learn about the Real 3D's solid model screen, the most complex and sophisticated part of Real 3D. This of the software renders the images of your scenes using the so called ray tracing prinsiple. The surfaces of the objects that you have created in the editor are colored in by the solid model using a mathematical model of the reality. In this model light rays are emitted from the light sources and reflected from object to object until they hit a place which causes vision: your eye. Whilst solid model relies on complex routines, it is very simple to use. To render a ray traced image of a group of spheres of different colors: - Create the spheres. - Choose Modes -> Wireframe. - Find a suitable viewing point and 'take a picture' of the object using the REC operation. Once the image is rendered by solid model the objects will be seen in exactly the same size and composition as in the wireframe model. - Exit the wireframe model by choosing SOLID. Real 3D then brings up the solid model screen with which you can select the modeling resolution, the picture size, etc. Leave all the defaults and just click on 'RENDER' so that the scene will be modeled using the default FAST method. - When the picture is ready. Choose Control -> Exit or Control -> Save if you want to save the picture. (Picture "PIC45") - PAGE 45 - The solid modeling control window includes the following functions: FRAME You can move to any frame in the animation using Frame fields. NAME This field contains the name with which the pictures will be saved when you are modeling an animation. The default name is the name of the object, so remember to add a suitable directory path to the beginning of the name (for example df0:pictures/root). Otherwise the images will be saved in the current directory. BOX OFF If you have a box definition on the rendering display, and you want to render the whole screen, you can use the BOX OFF gadget to remove the box. BASELIGHT When this gadget is activated, you can define the brightness and the color of the ambient light using the RGB sliders beside the gadget. In other words, this function defines the amount of diffused reflected light that is present. A good real world example of a diffuse reflecting surface is a white wall in a unlit room on a cloudy day. in the world of Real 3D this light is called base light. The greater you set the base light intensity the less contrast there is between lit and shadowed surfaces on objects. BACKGROUND The R, G and B sliders can also be used to define the background color for the picture. This is done by clicking on the background gadget, and then using the RGB sliders to define the background color. BRIGHTNESS The intensities of the light sources can be set to a proper level with the brightness gadget. When you create light sources in the editor, you don't have to pay attention to their brightness, since the differences in intensities will automatically be scaled to appropriate levels. This scaling is based on the amount of light these light sources cast on the origin, the brightness ratios of the light sources are preserved. The outcome of the scaling depends on - PAGE 46 - the value of the brightness control. This control has no affect on surfaces that are in shadow. OVERLIGHT This gadget defines what happens in the bright parts of the picture. If overlight is zero, even the color of the brightest objects does not turn to white. On the other hand, if you start to increase the overlight value, you get more and more overexposed pictures. This effect can be used to trick Real 3D into making objects that usually look matt look shiny instead. This is quite useful, because matt surfaces are very much faster to render than truly reflective surfaces. ANTIALIASING You can select a suitable level of anti-aliasing using this gadget. The effect of this function is to smooth jaggies caused by insufficient picture resolution using color sweeps. If the value is 0, no anti-aliasing is done, but if a value of 2 or 3 is used, you get quite a nice, smooth picture. The only disadvantage is that the rendering process gets slower as the anti-aliasing factor increases. When outputting to standard Amiga picture formats, there is no need to use a higher anti-aliasing value than 4. However, if the rendering is done using 24 bit color resolution, increasing the factor may give a visible improvement in the picture quality. The FAST and OUTLINE modes do not support anti-aliasing. RESOLUTION The resolution fields specify the resolution of the rendering picture, that is how many pixels are rendered dor a single calculated point. This function is useful for previewing. WIDTH AND HEIGHT It is possible to define the size of the image to be rendered using Width and Height fields. If the size defined is bigger than the screen size, rendering is done directly to disk using the file name given in the Name field. The picture size is limited only by the Amiga's operating system: under Workbench 1.3 the maximum is 1024 * 1024 pixels, but under Workbench 2.0 the theoretical maximum is 32768 * 32768 pixels. RECURSION DEPTH The recursion depth field defines how far light rays are traced when they reflect from surface to surface. For example, this field can have a value of three, which means that only - PAGE 47 - the first three reflections of any light ray can have any effect on the environment. If an scene does not contain any reflective or transparent bodies this field has no effect. However, if your object does contain transparent and reflective materials, the bigger the value of this field the better and the more realistic the result looks. Unfortunately, the rendering time may increase dramatically, so it is best to keep it as small as possible. For example, if your target includes one glass sphere, a recursion depth 3 is probably enough. Instead, if yous model represents two glass balls and you are looking through both of them at the same time, the recursion depth must be at least five. FASTMODE When the FAST field is set, modeling is executed using the so called fast mode. Here all the objects are converted to a basic material which is neither mirrorlike nor transparent. It also does not have any texture. The modeling is done using a single light source that is in the same place as the observer. Fast mode is the fastest ray tracing mode in Real 3D. Although the speed is partly obtained by simplifying the model, the mode is adequate for many purposes, such as previewing before final rendering or representation of technical objects. In the latter example, shadows and reflections can only cause unwanted visual confusion. Fast mode in combination with greyscale and interlace options offers an excellent alternative to produce clear and detailed graphics. NORMAL MODE When the NORMAL field is set, a complete model is used. This means that the rendered picture will have shadows, reflections, etc. SHADOWLESS MODE In this mode rendering is done as in NORMAL mode with one exception: the shadows of objects are not calculated. This makes rendering considerably faster. Therefore this mode is especially suitable for animation production. LAMPLESS MODE This mode is even faster than shadowless mode. It can be described as a combination of the fast mode and the shadowless mode: only one automatic light source is produced, but textures, properties of materials, etc, are taken into account. - PAGE 48 - OUTLINE MODE The OUTLINE mode renders a two color contour picture of the object. SINGLE OPTION The single option is usually used with animations. If this field is set, only the current frame is rendered. Otherwise the animation is rendered from the current frame of the animation and the pictures are saved automatically to disk. Of course, you can autosave one single frame as well as a series of frames. Note that when automatic picture saving is enabled, the pictures are indexed automatically before saving by assing a growing index to the name given in the name field. This indexing starts from zero, unless you define another value by writing it to the end of the name field. Thus, if the name field contains the string "pic" and automatic saving is enabled, the pictures are saved as "pic0", "pic1" etc. AUTOLIGHT OPTION The AUTOLIGHT field sets on the automatic scaling of light sources. Then the brightness of the picture is determined on the overall brightness of the object. This option can be compared with the automatic exposure function of a camera. INTERLACE OPTION By setting the INTERLACE field you can select an interlaced video mode thus doubling the vertical resolution of the screen. OVERSCAN OPTION The OVERSCAN field enlarges the picture to fill the entire screen including the borders. GREYSCALE OPTION Instead of color graphics with a horizontal resolution of 320 pixels, you can use a grey scale shading which enables a better horizontal resolution of 640 pixels per line. This option has no effect if OUTLINE mode is selected. DITHER OPTION The DITHER field turns dithering on. Dithering is a method to increase the number of colors available by mixing existing colors. Dithering works best in high resolution pictures. - PAGE 49 - You can choose between different dithering methods using the Dithering menu. The first dithering method, random 1, is the default one. It adds the same random deviation to each color component. Random 2 dithering uses separate random deviation for each of the R, G and B components. Line dithering mixes the colors linewise, not pointwise, thus giving slightly faster rendering and better image compression. The menu Dithering -> Scale menu option can be used to define the maximum amount of color deviation in dithering. The default value is 16 and the maximum is 256. The higher the value is, the more mixed colors you get. Note that the 24 bit rendering modes do not use dithering. SAVEMEM OPTION This option may be neccessary if you want to run another program while you are producing a picture of a complex object with Real 3D. Real 3D uses RAM to speed up the rendering and therefore it may use all the memory available. If you set this option, Real 3D leaves at least 100kB of CHIP memory free, but rendering will get a little slower. HL-SHADE OPTION This option offers an alternative shading mode. The default shading mode maintains the proportions of the RGB color signals when calculating different shades for the color of an object. This principle, which is theoretically correct, does not always produce good looking pictures when using HAM graphics, because the number of the colors available is limited to 4096. This happens especially when colors are not pure, that is, when there are not significant difference between the R, G and B components. HL-Shade uses an additive method instead of a proportional method: all the RGB components are changed the same number of units between consecutive shades of a color. The original color may distort, but the result is fine. TARGA OPTION The TARGA gadget selects 24 bit rendering where the image is constructed using over 16 million colors. The renderer writes the image directly to disk with the file name defined in the Name field (unless a frame buffer is used). The file format Real 3D uses is the true color Targa format, which is a popular standard in professional computer graphics environments. Note, that the FAST and OUTLINE modes do not support 24 bit rendering. Note also, that 24 bit rendering creates very big picture files, for example a picture with 1024 * 1024 pixels requires three megabytes. - PAGE 50 - IFF-24 OPTION The IFF-24 field selects compressed IFF ILBM format output in 24 bit rendering. FRAME COMMAND The rendering control screen contains two frame command menus: the Define- menu and the Use-menu. With the former one you can define a character string containing an executable command, that is, any command you can execute from Amiga command line interpreter CLI. Use-function then activates this command so that if you render an animation (the SINGLE- gadget off), whenever a new frame is ready the frame command is executed, the images are not saved. If the rendering is done directly to a disk file, then of course the pictures are also saved. The main purpose of this function is to allow animation recording to a video tape frame by frame. In that case the frame command is usually of the form 'execute fscript', where fscript is a text file including all the commands needed for a single frame recording. ASPECT RATIO This menu allows the user to define the pixel aspect ratio (pixel height/ pixel width) for rendering. If a value 0 is given, then the program uses default ratios, which are the same as defined in the editor's screen object (for example in HAM-INTERLACE the default aspect ratio for PAL is 0.5). If a nonzero value is given, then it replaces the default pixel aspect ratios. Note that the last aspect ratio definition is saved automatically when exiting the program. RENDER The RENDER gadget starts the rendering process. EDITOR Exits the rendering unit and goes to the editor. WIRE Exits the rendering unit and goes to the wireframe model. - PAGE 51 - You can acquaint yourself with the solid model by rendering your scene using various rendering resolutions and rendering modes. If you use NORMAL or SHADOWLESS mode, remember to create a light source to illuminate your object - otherwise all the objects in your picture will have only base light. NOTE: If you have started rendering and for some reason want to interrupt it (the resolution isn't right...), you can stop it by choosing Control -> Cancel or by hitting the 'q' key. After rendering has started, the user can select some functions. With the box functions, the user can define the part of the display that is to be rendered. The purpose of this is to make the time consuming rendering process faster. Using the 'Set box' function you can define a rectangular region to be rendered. In this way you can take a quick look at a critical part of the frame before you start rendering the whole frame. It is also possible to render a frame using a lower resolution, after which the regions required can be defined and rendered using a higher resolution. In animations the box function can be used in many cases to greatly speed up the rendering process by excluding those parts of the frames that don't change. The Fill box function fills the box, and Box off removes the box definition that is defined. Note that if you define a box and then return to the editor, the solid model rendering screen is not removed. So when you enter the solid model again, the old picture is still there. FRAMEBUFFER SUPPORT Real 3D Professional contains direct support for some frame buffers. At the moment, support for the Harlequin frame buffer is included, and a special program version for the VD2001 from Austria is available too. These support features become active automatically, when the frame buffer is properly installed in the system. For example, when using Harlequin, just plug the card into your machine and copy 'harlequin.library' to the 'libs:' directory. Then start Real 3D and select Modes -> Solid. If the frame buffer installation was successful, you should now find a set of new menus in the rendering control screen. To render directly to the frame buffer display: - Activate the LAMPLESS rendering mode. - Activate either the TARGA or IFF 24 option. - Select the 'Open screen' function from the frame buffer menu. - Select RENDER. - PAGE 52 - - After rendering, you can save the image using the Save function on the frame buffer menu. To change the frame buffer display attributes: - Select the desired options from the frame buffer menu. - Select the 'Open screen' function again. - PAGE 53 - 5 MATERIALS ----------- As mentioned before, Real 3D can represent objects as solids which can be given properties like brilliancy, texture, color, transparency and speed of light in the material. The color and transparency specify how much of the light hitting a body is reflected, absorbed or let through. (Picture "PIC54") The color of a body is for example white, all wavelengths of light reflect from it equally, while a black body absorbs all the light that hits it. A yellow body absorbs the blue component of light, and so on. The color of the body defines how great amount of each of the light components is absorbed. The rest of the light can either fully reflect from the body, go through the body or something in between these extremes. (Picture "PIC54") - PAGE 54 - In Real 3D, it is possible to define the physical parameters of the objects very accurately. The user can create different materials which can be saved to disk as material libraries. The user can load any of these libraries and then all the materials contained in the library are available for use. When an object is created, any of the materials present can be applied to it. Materials can be created/modified using the material requester below: (Picture "PIC55") The requester contains many proportional gadgets (sliders) such as the surface brilliancy gadget: These gadgets display their values as a percentage of the maximum value. The functions of the gadgets of the material requester are listed below. NAME In this field you can type a suitable name for your material. BRILLIANCY The brilliancy of a surface dictates how the reflected light will travel. If the surface is very smooth, the light will reflect perfectly and the surface will act as a mirror. If the surface is rough or matt, the light will reflect in random directions as in real life. In Real 3D the brilliancy can be set to any value from completely matt to totally mirrored. - PAGE 55 - TRANSPARENCY The transparency can also be defined from fully transparent to opaque. Real 3D is consistent with the theory of relativity, thus 299,792,466.2 metres per second is the greatest speed of light through a body that can be defined. SPEED OF LIGHT The speed of light in a material defines how light is refracted when it goes through the material (refraction happens because light always travels along the fastest route between two given points). This is often referred to as the refraction index. If a body is perfectly impenetrable to light, the speed of light in it is not considered. In cases where light travels from an optically thicker material to an optically thinner material, the refraction index also defines the angle at which total reflection will happen. For the sake of performance, the effect of wavelength on refraction is not taken into account. Therefore, different wavelenghts of light cannot be resolved using a prism. In Real 3D you can create materials that have extremely high refraction characteristics. While diamonds have a refraction index of 2.4, you can create materials with a refraction index as high as 256. TURBIDITY This value defines how turbid a material is. For example, you can create a fog-like material. Note that the transparency factor defines how light rays penetrate the surface of a material, whereas turbidity describes what happens inside the material. SPECULARITY This material property describes how strongly reflected light rays from light sources concentrate around the ideal reflection direction. The higher the specularity the sharper and smaller the highlights created by light sources are. SPECULAR BRIGHTNESS This gadget defines how bright the light spots are. Specular brightness has effect only if the material contains some specularity. BUMP HEIGHT The absolute height of bumps in bump mapping. See the BUMP gadget description below. - PAGE 56 - PICTURE An object can be given a texture by combining it with an IFF format picture. Almost all programs for Amiga use this standard. For example, pictures created with programs such as Deluxe Paint or Digipaint can be used for painting objects. The picture field defines the name of the texture when using the texture mapping feature. SELECT When defining a texture map for the material, you can directly write the name to the picture gadget, but it is also possible to use the select gadget, which activates the file requester for the texture selection. SHOW This gadget displays the texture to be used for the material, if it is defined. TEXTURE INDEX This feature helps you to create animations in which the material textures change during the animation. For example, a wavy water surface can be animated by using a series of slowly changing texture maps and bump mapping. To use this feature, do the following: - Produce the texture and save them with a suitable name followed by a growing index starting fom zero: 'texture0', 'texture1'... - Create a material with suitable properties and write the name of the textures (with or without any index) to the texture name gadget in the material device. - Type the number of different texture files into the Txr.index field. After these steps you can use the material in your scene. When you then start rendering, the texture name is indexed automatically according to the frame number. Consequently, the first animation frame uses 'texture0', second uses 'texture1', and so on. When all the textures have been used once, the indexing skips back to the first texture. MAPPING Textures can be mapped onto an object in four different ways: - As a parallel projection - As a cylinder projection - As a ball projection - As a spiral projection. - PAGE 57 - Parallel projection is probably the most widely used. Different kinds of materials, upholstering, wood, etc can be created with it. With cylinder projection the texture can be wrapped around the object, and in spiral projection this wrapping forms a spiral. Ball projection is achieved when you first wrap a picture around an object and then crumple the ends of the picture so that it forms a sphere around the object. Sphere projection can be easily comprehended if we take the globe and a globe map as an example. By projecting a plan map of the earth on the sphere we can create a globe map. (Picture "PIC38,58,61") NO 0-COL If this gadget is activated then the first color of the palette of the texture (usually the background color) is treated as if it were transparent, and the original color of the object is used to replace this color. Textures can be used to define many different properties for objects. With the Maptype gadgets you can activate color mapping, clip mapping, bump mapping and special mapping, which are described in more detail below. You can combine all these mapping methods freely, so for example if you want to define just bump mapping remember to activate the color mapping field. CLIP It is possible to use textures to cut surfaces in the following way: Create a material with a suitable texture and activate the CLIP field. Then create a hollow object and change it to the material you have just defines. Then all the parts of the surface not painted by the texture will be removed. - PAGE 58 - BUMP Bump mapping allows textures to be used for defining 'bumps' instead of colors on surfaces of objects. The red values of the bitmap used define the relative height of the bumps: The higher the red component the higher bump, so the highest bump will be where the red value of the pixel is 16. The absolute height of bumps can then be adjusted using the bump height gadget. SPECIAL If this mapping type is selected, then the green value at any point of the bitmap defines the transparency of the surface in the corresponding position on the object and blue defines the brilliancy. In this way you could map shiny letters onto a matt surface. COLOR This is the default texture mapping method which can be used for determining the colors of objects. Horizontal and Vertical texture mapping options give additional flexibility to texture mapping features. Below is a list of the options; they work in a similar way in both horizontal and vertical directions. GRADIENT This can be used to produce a range of smoothly graduated colours across the surface of an object. If you set this flag, then the color boundaries between rectangular pixels are smoothened. This is especially useful when rendering 24 bit images. TILE This function repeats the texture in a tiled fashion on the material surface. FLIP The flip function inverts every second texture of a tiled map. This gives better pattern continuity in the junctions of textures. For example, if you use a digitized image of a wooden surface as a texture map this function is very useful. - PAGE 59 - ANGLE These fields define the angle to which the texture is mapped. With spiral and cylinder projections only the horizontal angle is considered, whereas ball projection uses both angle definitions. In the horizontal direction the default of 360 degrees maps the texture precisely once around the object. If the angle is greater, only part of the texture is visible. If the angle is smaller, the texture is mapped across a narrower section so that tiling is possible if desired. In the vertical direction the default angle is 180 degrees, which maps the texture from the 'north pole' to the 'south pole'. The following two options are sometimes useful: UNSHADED If you set this gadget, then any object made of the material is not affected by light sources. SMOOTH This option removes specualr reflections on the boundaries of transparent materials. For example you can remove reflections from a transparent, turbid sphere in order to create a fog cloud. OK This gadget exits the material requester and accepts the material definition or modification. CANCEL This gadget cancels the function. Although the list above is long, creating a material is quite easy. For example, to create a birch material: - Draw a pattern imitating the filaments of birch with any drawing program for the Amiga, and save the pattern for example to a disk called 'Textures:' as a file called 'birchtexture'. - Choose Projects -> Materials -> Create, so that Real 3D opens the material device. Type in material name 'birch'. Later, when choosing a material, you will refer to this material by the name 'birch'. - Type the DOS path Real 3D will use to find the pattern ('Textures:birchtexture') to the Picture field. - PAGE 60 - - Define the mapping for the pattern as PARALLEL - Activate the horizontal and vertical tiling gadgets. - Define brilliancy as 30 percent. - Choose OK. When you create a primitive, Real 3D makes it from the default material. The default material has a totally matt surface. This material does not have any texture and neither reflects light nor passes it. To change the material of an object to the material 'birch': - Define the material birch as described above. - Select the object. - Choose Modify -> Hierarchy -> Material. - Select birch as the material when Real 3D asks for it. (Picture "PIC38,58,61") Now the selected object is made of birch. Real 3D shows the new material in the instruction window. The pattern of the material you drew using the drawing program is also attached to the object, and its location, direction and size are given default values. The values depend on the projection method under which the object is created, the scale and the object. The picture of the material is positioned so that its upper left corner is at the object's offset point. The pattern will be the same size as it would be if loaded in the current scale to any of the projection windows of Real 3D. If the material is such that it requires accurate positioning of the pattern, you can modify the size, shape and location of the pattern. - PAGE 61 - MAPPING TEXTURES With the painting function you can accurately position textures. To define the size and location of a pattern/texture that is attached to an object: - Select the object. - Choose Modify -> Hierarchy -> Painting. - Real 3D lets you draw a line segment on the screen. If the projection mode of the selected object is parallel projection, this line segment corresponds to the top edge of the pattern/texture. In cylinder, spiral and ball projections it corresponds to the center point and radius. In these mapping methods the actual projection axis is perpendicular to the window in which the line was drawn, and it starts from the given center point. Furthermore, in cylinder and spiral projections the length of the line segment defines how high the mapped pattern becomes on the surface of the object. Finally, you can also define the direction to which 'the seam' is created in sphere, cylinder and spiral projections; it is the direction given by the line segment. Now you have changed the shape, size and location of a pattern that is used for a texture. You can also try out different projection modes to see how the selected material looks. If you don't set any of the projection fields, the selected material will not have any texture. Painting an object can be accomplished using the so called tile function, and the pattern will be repeated on the surface. In this way it is easy to create, for example, a brick wall withou having to draw a picture of the whole wall. It is sufficient to draw a single brick in a suitable scale. All operations that change the shape of an object also change the shape of the texture. For example, if you move a textured object, also the texture map is moved, too. Textures can be easily created for example with Deluxe Paint's brush tool. The Real 3D software package includes a large collection of readymade textures. OTHER MATERIAL FUNCTIONS The properties of the material you created do not satisfy you, they can be changed. To change the brilliancy of material 'birch': - Choose Projects -> Materials -> Modify. - Choose material 'birch' when Real 3D asks for a material to be modified. - Change the brilliancy setting of the selected material. - Choose OK. If the whole material is a fiasco, or it has become obsolete, you can delete it. All objects that currently use that material become the default material again. - PAGE 62 - To delete materials: - Choose Projects -> Materials -> Delete. - If you want to delete all materials kept in memory, select the 'Delete all materials' function. If you want to delete one material, select 'Delete one material' and then select a material that is to be deleted. As you have created new materials, you have added them to the material library of Real 3D. When you save a material to disk, you always save all the materials in the library. Likewise, you don't have to load materials one at a time, instead you can load a material library, and all materials in it will become available for use. To save a material library to disk: - Choose Projects -> Materials -> Save. - Name the material library using the file requester and choose OK. To load a material library to disk: - Choose Projects -> Materials -> Load. - Give the name of the material library to load and choose OK. If there are materials in memory, these new materials can be either added to the previous materials or the previous materials can be replaced with the new ones. Real 3D contains a library of ready made materials. It is recommended that you load this library and examine the definitions of different materials using the Materials -> Modify function, because examples of using most of the material features are demonstrated in this library. The UNSHADED option controls the shading of the material. If you set this gadget, then any object made of the material is not affected by light sources. Instead, the whole object is rendered using the unshaded, original color, so that the object looks luminous. The UNSHADED option is very useful if you want to combine 2D and 3D graphics by adding a ray traced picture of a three dimensional object in front of a background picture. This can be done using a genlock or simply by doing the rendering over the old picture, but these techniques have obvious defects: there is no connection between the 2D and 3D worlds - no reflections or realistic looking transparent objects. The following example demonstrates a technique which gives great results: - Create the background picture. For example, take a photo of a view in a town and digitize the picture with a video digitizer. Retouch it with a paint program if necessary. - Create a Real 3D model of a new building. - Create a material which has the background picture as a parallel mapped texture. - PAGE 63 - - This background picture is already shaded and therefore we don't want light sources of the 3D model to affect it, thus set the UNSHADED field. - Create 'a wall' behind the building using an infinite rectangle, and change the material of the rectangle to be the material with the background picture by the Modify -> Hierarchy -> Material function. - Select Modify -> Hierarchy -> Painting and define the size of the background picture so that it corresponds the size of the building. - Add light sources to the Real 3D model so that light comes from the same direction as the background picture. - Set the observer position to be the place where the background picture was taken. - Start rendering. - PAGE 64 - 6 LOGICAL OPERATIONS -------------------- Logical operations offer one of the most powerful means of creating and modifying objects. These operations offer practically unlimited possibilites. Let's consider a situation where an engineer cuts an object made of pine with a tool that has just been painted. Since the paint on the tool is still wet, it sticks to the object and the surface of the cut is covered with the wet paint. The engineer notices this and replaces the tool with another clean one. The new cut surface is clean, showing the beautiful filament texture of pine. The logical operations of Real 3D work in a similar way. Let's suppose that two cylinders are positioned so that they partially intersect. Now we can execute any of the logical operations on the object. The results of these operations are illustrated below: (Picture "PIC65,68,69,70") - PAGE 65 - (Picture "PIC66") If you look at the list above, one of the logical operations would seem to be missing, namely OR. The reason for this omission is the OR is the default operation. That is, it is executed of no other operation is specified by the user. In other words, when you create objects, you add matter to the ether. NOTE: If you position two objects so that they partially intersect, their materials will not fuse. What happens is that Real 3D automatically removes material from the first primitive to make room for the second primitive. In Real 3D it is possible to execute the logical operations so that the tool affects not only the volume of the target object, but also its surface. This is one of the Real 3D's most useful features. For example, if you cut a notch in a pine board using a reflective toll by us- - PAGE 66 - ing the 'AND NOT with paint' operation, you will get a reflective notch on the board. Likewise, if you use a red lathe you will get a red notch. And if you use a chimney to cut a notch, you will get a piece of wood with a notch of brick coating. On the other hand, if you use any of the non painting operations, you will get a clean notch of pine on your pine board. In this case the surface of the tool does not affect the object that is operated on. The objects used in these operations can naturally be complex ones with many levels of hierarchy, and they can contain objects that have resulted from previous logical operations. All logical operations are executed in the same way: - Select an object to operate with (The Tool). - Choose an operation. - Select an object to be operated on (The Work Piece). The operations preserve the tool intact, and it can be used to carry out several operations. One of the simplest objects that can be created with the logical operations is a lens. A lens can be thought of as the intersection of two partially intersecting spheres. To make a lens, firstly create two similar spheres and naming them as work piece and tool. Then make the spheres partially intersecting. If you now execute the AND operation between the spheres, the resulting object will be the part of the work piece that is inside the tool. It is a lens. To execute the AND operation: - Select tool as the active object. - Choose Modify -> Operations -> AND. - Select work piece as the object to be operated on when Real 3D asks for it. Now Real 3D shows a message AND done. - Delete the tool because you will not need it any longer. Now you have created a lens, but in the projection window there are still two partially intersecting spheres visible. Unfortunately, it is quite hard to change the wireframe representation of the spheres automatically so that the resulting lens would be depicted. Therefore, you must keep in mind what the result of the operation represents. If you look at the selection window, you can see that the color of the name work piece has changed to indicate that it has been operated on. For the sake of clarity, change the objects name to lens. At any time, by using the info operation, you can also find out what operation has been applied on the object. If you create objects that you plan to save later to disk, it is useful to change the objects wireframe representation to represent the actual shape of the object. We will return to cre- - PAGE 67 - ating new wireframe representations later on. If you render your creation in the solid model, you will notice that you really have created a lens shaped body. If you change the material of the lens to glass, it can be used as a magnifying glass... (Picture "PIC65,68,69,70") To cut an oval hole into the lens: - Create a cylinder and stretch it into an oval form. - Locate the cylinder so that its axis goes through the focal points of the lens. - Choose Modify -> Operations -> AND NOT while the cylinder is the active object. - When Real 3D prompts for the object to be operated on, select the lens you have created. - Delete the cylinder because it is no longer needed. - Render an image of the object. - PAGE 68 - (Picture "PIC65,68,69,70") Finally, we may make a section diagram of the lens by splitting the lens in two, using a plane surface. You are already familiar with the two dimensional primitives like circles, rectangles and triangles. When used in logical operations, these plane primitives are not extremely thin two dimensional surfaces, but, on the contrary, are infinitely thick halves of space. In other words, a plane divides the space into two halves and involves one of these halves. The wireframe representations of plane primitives have a small peak, that tells you which side of the plane is defined by the two dimensional primitive. Because we want to see the real material and color of the objects, we do not use operations which affect the cut surfaces of the work piece (the 'and paint' operations). If you set a plane so that it goes through the focal points of a lens, and then execute the AND NOT operation, the half of the lens that is on the same side of the plane as the spike is removed. The AND operation would preserve the half that is on the spike's side of the plane. To remove half of a lens: - Create some plane primitives, e.g. a rectangle, and place it so that it goes through the focal points of the lens. - Choose Operations -> AND NOT while the rectangle is the active object. - Select the lens as the object to operate on. - Delete the rectangle since it is no longer needed. Now you have made half a lens with an oval hole through it, which is a very simple object to Real 3D. You can, for instance, stretch it if you want. In a similar way you can create more and more complex objects, which can be saved to disk and used to create noew objects. As you complete useful new objects and tools the program becomes easier and faster to use. - PAGE 69 - (Picture "PIC65,68,69,70") As you can see, using the logical operations is very simple. The only drawback can be seen when you look at the recently created lens with a hole in the editor. An outsider could not tell what these wireframes of the two spheres, the cylinder and the plane depict. For this reason the program includes options to replace the original wireframe representtions of the primitives with a new wireframe that more closely illustrates the recently created object. The easiest way to modify the wireframe of an object produced by a boolean operation is to use the Extras -> Rethink function: - Select the object to be modified. - Select Extras -> Rethink or hit the '!' key. - If the result is not suitable, use the Extras -> Undo function. This operation makes all wireframe line segments outside the volume of the current object invisible, which usually gives a better representation. The result of this automatic wireframe modification can then be further improved with the other representation tools. The rethink function may sometimes leave too little of the original wireframe, because Real 3D tries to represent the objects as minimally as possible. The Observer function (alt-key + 2) is the function for making individual points invisible. Use it in the following way: - Select the primitive to be modified. - Select the Extras -> Representation -> Obscure function. - Click near the point you want to make invisible. - PAGE 70 - Extras -> Representation -> Draw wire is the function for drawing a new wire for the object (alt-key + 3). This function can be applied only to objects that do not have a wireframe yet. That is, only to boolean operations and other hierarchical objects which have sublevels. This function allows you to draw a single curve, which you can afterwards edit with the Obscure function if necessary. One method of replacing the wireframe is to steal the wireframe representation of an existing primitive. Then, you can modify this wireframe until it represents the operated object with sufficient fidelity. To use this technique: - Create a primitive whose wireframe you wish to use as a starting point, and modify its wireframe to give a preliminary representation of the required object. - Choose Extras -> Representation -> Add wire while the object to which the wireframe is to be added, is selected. - When the program asks for it, select the primitive whose wireframe you want to use for the replacement. The wireframe of the primitive has now been added to the active object, and the primitive is deleted. - You can modify the wireframe by moving individual points of the wireframe using point editing operations. - Using the Info function, make the substructures of the replaced object invisible. You can add a wireframe to any object that does not have a wireframe yet, as illustrated above. It's sole purpose is to give information about the real shape of the object. In the solid model the extra wireframe has no effect whatsoever. You can delete a wireframe representation by choosing menu item Extras -> Representation -> Delete wire while the required object is selected. Once you have operated on an object, the hierarchical structure of the object is modified to reflect the volume of the resulting object. If we, for example, drill a round hole through a cube using a cylinder as a tool, you will notice that the hole moves with the cube when you relocate the cube. The following figure shows the structure of a hole drilled through a cube with a cylinder. - PAGE 71 - +------+ | CUBE | +------+ +------+ +------+ | CUBE | | CUBE | +------+ +------+ The substructure of an operated object can be exposed by first selecting the whole object and then pressing the 'Ctrl' and 's' keys simultaneously. Real 3D will then let you use the selection window to move the substructure of the operated object and to apply a modifying operation to these substructures. The substructures, however, should not be modified with operations that change the hierarchical structure of the object (e.g. Locate or Delete) unless the user is familiar with the results of such modifications. NOTE: It is possible to close any hierarchical object in the same way as boolean operations are. The keyboard function 'Alt' + '4' closes the hierarchical structure. This protects you from creating objects into unwanted hierarchical levels. You can move through the closed level using the Ctrl-s keys. If you choose the function again, the structure will be opened up. By changing the location or size of the substructures or by stretching them, we can easily create animations where you can actually see the hole being drilled. Anotehr example would be an object being turned in a lathe. The possibilities go on and on... (Picture "PIC72,78") - PAGE 72 - It is possible to carry out operations that have no meaning. Although, in theory, it is possible to execute for example an AND operation with the object itself, Real 3D won't let you carry out such nonsense. The result of such an operation is always either the object itself or nothing at all. For instance, the EOR operation between two objects that are the same deletes the whole object. However, this can be done more practically using the normal deletion method. - PAGE 73 - - PAGE 74 - 7 FREE FORM MODELING AND POINT EDITING -------------------------------------- In this chapter we will learn to use the modeling techniques of Real 3D which are more suitable for creating free form objects such as a human face. This approach is based on curves and polygon meshes whose points can be freely edited to obtain a desired shape. The usual procedure for creating a free form surface is the following: - Create some curves, which contain enough information for the basic shape of the surface. - Manipulate and edit the curves if needed. - Use one of the tools to build a surface from the curves. - Use linear and nonlinear modifications to edit the overall shape. - Use point editing for detail and fine tuning. CREATING CURVES A curve is just a sequence of points in space, and is an important object in free form modeling. The free form tools of Real 3D create surfaces by combining curves in different ways. Another context where curve data is used regularly is animations: free form motions in Real 3D animations are defined using curves. There are two classes of curves in Real 3D: open curves and closed ones. The result of many of the operations depends on this difference. For example, when defining an orbit for an object, a closed curve gives a different result to an open one, even if the start and the end point of the open curve coincide. To create a free form curve: - Select Freeform ->Create curve -> Curve. - Use the left mouse button to add new points to the end of the curve. - When the curve is ready, use the right mouse button to end the definition. The following special options are available during curve creation: - Esc key removes last point. - C key closes the curve and ends the definition. - * key allows the user to select a primitive (for example another curve), whose point data is copied to the end of the curve being defined and ends the curve definition. Circular curves are easy to create using the Circular-loop function: - Select Freeform -> Create curve -> Circular loop. - Click the centre point position. - Shape a circle. - PAGE 75 - - Type a suitable number of points for the curve when the program asks for the subdivision factor and click OK. Usually the default value 12 is sufficient. There is also support for easy creation of spiral curves: - Select Freeform -> Create curve -> Spiral. - Click the centre point position. - Shape a circle, which defines the radius of the spiral. - Define a suitable number of points, length and an angle for the spiral. For example, the default angle 720 gives two revolutions around the spiral's axis. - Select OK. Sometimes it is necessaryto produce a curve which goes along another curve, maintaining a constant distance from it. This can be done quite easily in the following way: - Activate the curve from which you want to create a parallel curve. - Select Freeform -> Create curve -> Parallel. - Draw a line from the first point of the active curve in the desired direction: the length of this line defines the distance between the curves. The functions described above can also be selected from icons in the selection window (in the seventh row). SELECTING POINTS When freeform modeling, hierarchical access to objects is often not sufficient: To get a desired result, an operation must be restricted to a subset of the points of a primitive. Therefore Real 3D includes support for point selection, which enables editing of individual points within object. This kind of editing is mainly intended for free form curves and meshes out it can be used to modify other primitives too: A modification of individual points may be used if it preserves the shape. For example, a point on a triangle can be moved freely, but moving a point out of the surface of a sphere gives a very impredictable result. In certain situations point selection can be used to define some additional information for a function. For example curve subdivision can be restricted to the interval between two points instead of subdividing the whole curve. The points which are specifiedusing point selection are called active points. Point selection overrules the hierarchical selection. For example, the normal Move function moves just the active points instead of the current object. There are five functions available for point selection. They can be selected from the menu. Freeform -> Point editing or from the selection window icons (on the bottom row). The Select function activates more points in the current object (the current selections to main valid). - PAGE 76 - - Select Freeform -> Point editing -> Select. - If you want to select only one point, click near it. You also have the option to drag a box around the points you want to make active. The Select new function works in a similar way, but it first deselects all the currently active points. The Deselect function allows the user to deselect particular points: - Activate the object whose points you want to deselect. - Select Freeform -> Point editing -> Deselect. - You can only deselect one point by clicking near it. But, if you drag a box, all the points inside the box will be deselected. The Deselect all function deselects all the currently selected points. The Show points function shows the positions of all the points of the current object. This is useful for point selection. BUILDING FREE FORM OBJECTS Real 3D includes a set powerful functions, which can be used to create polygon meshes from curves. These objects can then be edited at an individual point level. The program supports 3 classes of mesh: Open meshes, cylindrical meshes and torus meshes. A mesh surface consists of a regular grid of curves, which usually show the shape very clearly. The regular representation allows also some special surface manipulation techniques such as remapping, which is described later. When rendered, mesh surfaces are represented using polygons and smoothened using Phong shading. This smoothing turned on using the SMOOTH gadget in the Info requester. Mesh surfaces are always hollow. This means that you can use the Boolean operations to cut them, but you cannot use them as tools so you can't cut with them. The conventional way to define a surface is to use the coplanar sweep. using this tool the surface is obtained by sweeping one curve along another. To use this function: - Select Freeform -> Build -> coplanar sweep. - Define a profile curve which shows the shape of the surface's cross section. - Define a curve to sweep it along. - PAGE 77 - (Picture "PIC72,78") NOTE: You can define curves in the same way as you create a free form curve using the Freeform -> Create curve -> Curve function. See the section 'Createing curves' in this chapter. Among other things it is possible to take the curve data from predefined, carefully created curves using the '*' key. Sometimes this method is better because it allows careful and accurate positioning of the curves. Also, if the result is bad, it may be easier to edit the input curves and to build the surface again rather than editing the surface itself. The Orthogonal sweep is quite similar to the coplanar sweep, but while it sweeps the profile curve along the sweeping curve, the profile curve is also rotated according to the direction of the sweeping curve. (Picture "PIC72,78") - PAGE 78 - The rotation function is a special case using the orthogonal sweep: the difference is that the sweeping curve is always circular. You can create rotational forms in the following way: - Select Freeform -> Build -> Rotation. - Define a profile curve for the rotation. - Define the rotation axis by drawing a line. - Define the rotation angle and the subdivision factor and click OK. Swinging is another theme on the previous rotation function. It inputs a swinging curve, which scales the radius of the rotated profile curve and moves it in the direction of the axis. Use it in the following way: - Select Freeform -> Build -> Swing. - Define a profile curve for the swing. - Define the rotation axis by drawing a line. - Define a swinging curve around the axis (is is usually in a plane perpendicular to the axis. Note that the cursor defines the axis position in this plane: draw the swing curve around it). (Picture "PIC79") - PAGE 79 - The join function joins a curvo or a mesh to another curve or mesh. For example, it is possible to create a sequence of section curves, which define the cross sectional shapes of an object in desired places and then join the curves into a single mesh. (Picture "PIC80") This function can be used in the following way: - Draw a sequence of intersection curves: curve1, curve2, curve3.... - Activate curve2. - Select Freeform -> Build -> Join. - Select curve1. Now curve2 is joined to curve1, and curve1 becomes a mesh. - Activate curve3, select joining function again and select curve1. This adds a new section to curve1. - Continue adding the new curves to curve1, until the shape is ready. - The remaining curves curve2, curve3, etc. may be deleted if the operation is successful. To get the best results each curve should have the same number of points and the curves should be oriented equally. Also the start points of the section curves should be located along the same longitudinal direction. - PAGE 80 - As well as two curves, two meshes can be joined together. In the previous example it was assumed that the curves positioned in the correct order. If the situation is such that there order is not known so that you do not know which sides of the curves/meshes will be joined then the joining can be defined accurately by activating a couple of points in the desired edges of the meshes. The following image demonstrates this: (Picture "PIC81") The procedure for joining two meshes is: - Activate the target mesh to be modified with the join function (this mesh will grow in the operation) - Select two points on the desired edge curve of the target mesh. - Activate the tool mesh, which will be joined to the target mech. - Select two points more this time on the desired edge curve of the tool mesh. - Select Freeform -> Build -> Join. - Select the target mesh. - The tool mesh is not modified in the operation: you may delete it, if the operation was succesful. If one of the objects to be joined is a curve, then there is no need for point selection on that curve. The mesh building function can be activated from the selection window icons too (in the eight row). - PAGE 81 - MODIFYING CURVES AND MESHES The function on the Freeform -> Modify menu can be used to manipulate free form objects in many ways. The remap function is a very powerful feature of Real 3D. whit it, you can modify the number of the points with which a curve or a mesh is represented. Increasing the number of points smoothens the shape: this is useful, because the basic form can be defined very roughly and the remap function can then be used to get the final smooth shape. By decreasing the number of points instead, it might make it easier to edit the shape. A smaller number of points is easier to control. When you've finished editing you can restore the smooth shape by remapping the object back to the original point count. Of course, if you first decrease the number of points and then remap it you will not always get the same shape. This is because with fewer points you cannot store the same amount of information as with the original number of points. To modify the number of points in a mesh: - Activate the mesh. - Select Freeform -> Modify -> Remap. - Real 3D requests the new point counts and displays the current counts. Define suitable numbers and click OK. Another reason for decreasing the point count is related to memory problems: if you find that you cannot render a free form surface because of lack of memory, you can reduce the number of points in the scene until the you succed in rendering it. The show spline function shows the form, which is achieved if the curve/mesh is remapped with a high number of points. This is useful when editing the shape with few points. The smoothen function can be used to smoothen the shape of a curve or a mesh. For example, hand drawn curves or curves vectorized from bitmaps tend to have unwanted irregularities. These can be eliminated with this function. If smoothening is applied to an open curve, the point count is incremented by one, whereas with closed curves the point count is maintained. If the object to be smoothened contains relatively few points smoothening may change the shape quite radically. The result of smoothening an object which has densely spaced points is easier to predict. To use the smoothening function: - Activate a curve or a mesh. - Select Freeform -> Modify -> Smoothen repeatedly until the result is smooth enough. - PAGE 82 - When creating a curve, the curve can be closed using 'C' key option. An open curve can be closed afterwards using the closing option: - Activate the curve. - Select Freeform -> Modify -> Close. If you apply the Close function to an open mesh, you get a cylindrical mesh, and closing a cylindrical mesh produces a torus mesh. Curves can also be opened or broken into pieces: - Activate the curve. - Activate the point where you want to break the curve. - Select Freeform -> Modify -> Break. When breaking a mesh, a curve along the break must be defined. This can be done by activating two points on the desired curve. To break a mesh: - Activate the mesh. - Define a break curve on the mesh. - Select Freeform -> Modify -> Break. If you break a closed curve, it becomes open. With an open curve, the result is to divide it into two separate curves instead. Similarly, if you break a torus mesh you get a cylindrical mesh. Note that the break operation does not produce any visible gaps, because the break point/break curve is copied to both ends of the opened/closed shape. It is possible to connect two curves together using the Concatenate function: - Activate the curve, which you want to concatenate to another curve. This curve is not deleted in the operation (tool curve). - Select Freeform -> Modify -> Concatenate. - Select the target curve to which you want to concatenate the tool curve. - Draw approximately a line from one end of the tool curve to one end of the target curve. This line defines the desired way to connect the curves. Meshes can be connected using the join function as described earlier in this chapter. The Remove points function can be used to remove unwanted points from a curve: - Activate the curve. - Activate the points to be removed. - Select Freeform -> Modify -> Remove points. - PAGE 83 - If you want to remove a point from a mesh, you must remove the whole curve containing the point: - Activate the mesh. - Define the curve containing the points to be removed, by activating two points on that curve. - Select freeform -> Modify -> Remove points. The subdivide function subdivides each point interval of a curve to give a number of subintervals, thus increasing the point count of the curve. Note that this does not smoothen the shape as the Remap function does, all the new points lie on the lines connecting the original points. To subdivide a curve: - Activate the curve. - If you want to subdivide only a line between two consecutive points, activate the points too. - Select Freeform -> Modify -> Subdivide. - Define the subdivision factor and select OK. Mesh subdivision works in a similar way. All the curves on the mesh are subdivided. Mesh subdivision always affects the whole mesh. - PAGE 84 - BENDING FUNCTIONS In addition to conventional modification functions such as move, rotate or size, Real 3D contains a large set of nonlinear functions for bending objects. These functions are intended for modifying curves and meshes rather than primitives, because bending often distorts primitives to badly. There are 24 different bending variations availabale: That's four different bending functions combined with six different bending mode combinations. All the bending functions on the Freeform -> Bend menu first require a line called the bending axis. This defines the bending interval. The following picture illustrates the differences between the bending functions: (Picture "PIC85") On the picture, the arrow on the left is the bending axis, and the straight cylinder is the original object. The small arrow defines the amount of bending. For the sake of clarity the four left mousebutton clocks needed to define the modification are numbered from 1 to 4. Local bending affects only the points of the object that are inside the bending interval, whereas global bending affects every point. End point bending bends the object so that the start point of the bending axis is not affected at all, but the amount of bending grows the further along the bending axis you go. For example, to bend a small curve into a tube: - Activate the tube mesh. - Select freeform -> Bend -> Global (use the default modes Bend & Move and 2D) - PAGE 85 - - Draw a line in the middle of the tube along its length: the length and position of the line defines the area where the bending affects the object. - Grab the object by clicking with the left mouse button. - Move the mouse in the direction you want to bend the object. - When the result is OK, hit the left button again. The Bending modes menu contains two sets of bending options. If the option Bend & Move is activated, all the points under modification are moved an equal amount in the bending direction regardless of their distance from the bending axis. If the option Bend & Size is selected, bending becomes multiplicative: That is, the further the point lies from the bending axis the more it will be moved. The following picture demonstrates this: (Picture "PIC86") When using the Bend & Size mode, the distance of the bending axis from the object is very important. For example in the picture above the bending axis was positioned precisely along the left edge of the cylinder and therefore that edge of the object remained unchanged after the modification. Also the distance from the point which you grab to the bending axis is important the greater the distance, the more accurate the control you have. On the other hand, if the point where you grab lies on the axis itself moving the pointer even a bit produced a dramatic change in the shape. - PAGE 86 - The second set of bending options defines how the points distance from the bending axis in a direction perpendicular to the plane that the bending axis was defined in is taken into account in the modification. If the 2D option is selected, then the bending effects the object to the same degree regardless of its depth in the screen. The 3D option effects the points of the object in the direction perpendicular to the bending axis in precisely the same way as in the direction of the bending axis. When using the 3D option the position of the cursor defines the middle point of the bending area in the depth direction. Finally, the Radial option directs the modification radially away from the bending axis. This example picture will give you a better idea of what all this means... (Picture "PIC87") - PAGE 87 - 8 ANIMATIONS ------------ INTRODUCTION In this chapter we will look at the animation interface of the software. The first four sections give information on the easy to use animation functions of the program, which you will find sufficient for most purposes. The section on exposing and de-exposing contains more detailed information on Real 3D animations. It is possible to use most of the animation functions without knowing about exposing and de-exposing, but advanced users who want to have a through knowledge of the animation system should read it. The rest of the sections contain general information on other animation features. We call a database from which images can be rendered an animation. In Real 3D an animation consists of a sequence of frames where each frame may have its own objects, observer and aim point positions. Animations can be thought of as the basic data structure of Real 3D, because if you create a scene in the editor you are in fact creating a one frame animation. Consiquently, when you save an animation, you save the objects in the scene, the editor settings, the palette, the rendering options etc... When you start working on an animation with more than one frame, you will find three new gadgets at the right end of the instruction window. << (X) >> Rewind Expose Wind With the wind and rewind gadgets you can move to any frame. You will find the same gadgets in the wireframe screen and the rendering control window. The expose gadget is explained later in this chapter. When creating an animation, the first step is to create a screen to be animated. The scene should be finished as possible before animating because it is usually easier to edit one single frame than a sequence of frames. When the scene is ready, the next step is to define the camera settings. The best way to do this is to use the wireframe mode functions, which control the observer (or the camera) and the aim point positions and the screen setting (or the focal length of the camera). In the wireframe mode it is easy to find a good viewing angle for the scene and record the position with the REC gadget. If you are going to animate the observer, you can easily include the position of the observer you have defined in the wireframe mode in its orbid. When the scene is this ready, it is finally time to animate the objects in the scene. Real 3D supports several animation techniques, which are described in the following sections of this chapter. - PAGE 88 - THE FIRST ANIMATION Let us practise the whole animating procedure with the following example, in which we will animate the scene by moving the observer around it. - Create a simple scene in the editor. For example, a rectangle with a sphere and a cube above it. - Choose Projects -> Animation -> Size - Type 50 when the program asks for the size of the animation. - Go into the wireframe mode by selecting Modes -> Wireframe. - Find a suitablr viewing angle for the scene using the wireframe controls. - Activate the AR (continous recording) gadget. - Grab the position gadget and slowly start to move the camera around the scene. All the changes in the camera position are recorded. - When the frame counter displays 49, release the position gadget. - Deactivate the AR gadget. - Activate the PLAY gadget. This shows a continous preview of the animation. - Stop the playpack by clicking the PLAY gadget again and wind the animation to the beginning using the gadget marked <<. - Select the SOLID gadget and you will enter the rendering control screen. - Type a name in the name field for the file name that the images generated for the animation will be saved as. For example df0:myscene. - Set the rendering resolution and the other settings to suit you. - Switch off the SINGLE operation, so that the whole sequence of pictures will be produced automatically. - Put an empty, formatted disk on which you want to save the animation in the disk drive and click on RENDER. Depending on the complexity of the scene and the frame count, rendering will take from several minutes to several hours. NOTE: Because the rendered pictures will be packed to save space when saved to disk the size of the animation that fits on a disk varies. If the frames contain large surfaces of the same color upto a hundred pictures can be saved on one disk. In the worst cases, not even ten pictures will fit on one disk. When a disk becomes full, Real 3D interrups rendering and prompts you to put a new disk in the disk drive. When Real 3D saves the rendered frames, it adds an index to the file name given in the name field. This index shows the number of the frame in the animation. Thus the name of the first frame of our example animation will be myscene0, the second frame will be named myscene1, and so on. - PAGE 89 - To show a rendered animation: - Open one of the pictures of the animation by moving the mouse pointer on to its icon and doubleclicking the left mouse button. This activates the default tool of the picture - the Display program. It shows the pictures directly from the disk and therefore it is not fast. There are, of course, other faster methods of showing the animation, which are described in the sections which deal with the Delta software and the Realplay program. ANIMATING OBJECTS WITH THE ORBIT FUNCTION Free form motions are propably the most important way of animating objects. If you want to define a smoothly curved orbit for an object: - Activate the object. - Select Projects -> Animation -> Orbit. - Now you can draw a path of several consecutive line segments by clicking the mouse in the desired places. These line segments define the orbit or path that the object will follow in the animation. - Use the right mouse button to stop the orbit definition. - Real 3D asks for the number of frames over which the defined motion happens. Give the number of the first frame and the last frame, and click on OK. Real 3D will firstly increase the animation size necessary, so that the number of frames defined will be included in the animation. Then the program calculates a smooth spline curve from the first point of the path to the end point of the path. Althought the line segments form sharp angles, the spline curve defines a nice, smooth motion for the object. The path is smoothened so that the start point of the path and the end point of the path are included in the resulting orbit: the other points of the path are not necessarily included. Instead the orbid goes through the middle points of all the line segments, and the edge points or control points of the spline curve act as magnets which attract the orbit towards them. The orbit does not directly define the absolute positions for the animated object: The distance of the object in the first frame of the orbit from the first point of the orbit itself does not change throughout the animation. This sounds complicated but in practice it means that the object need only have the correct position before the orbit function is applied. You can accelerate the motion by defining long line segments, whereas shorter segments slow down the object. For example, if you want a motionless object to accelerate slowly click twice on the first point of the path. And of course, if you want an object to move directly from one point to another point, just draw one straight line between the points. - PAGE 90 - The example above shows the easy way to define orbits. However, this orbit can only be drawn in two dimensions, and editing the orbit afterwards is difficult. The accuracy required for complicated motions can be obtained using predefined curves for orbit definitions. Real 3D offers versatile curve editing features, which are all available for orbit manipulation when using the method described in the following example: - Go to the first frame of the orbit. - Create a curve, which defines the desired orbit, using the free form curve tools (create the curve immediately under the root level of the hierarchy). - Use the Show spline function to ensure that the smoothened orbit is suitable. If not, edit the curve some more. - Select the object to be animated and move it to its initial position. - Select Projects -> Animation -> Orbit. - Hit the '*' key and select the curve using the selection window. The path definition is taken from the curve you created. - Define the frame interval and click OK. - Preview the animation using the Projects -> Animation -> Play function. If the orbit is not yet good enough, edit the curve and use the orbit function again. It is recommended that the curves for motion definitions are created in the root level of the hierarchy, so that the orbits themselves are not animated by a mistake. Never but the curve in the hierarchy of the object to be animated - that is unless you want to see curves flying around your animation. It is a good idea to create an abject 'orbits' under the root and place all the objects in this hierarchy. Then it is possible to make the whole collection of orbits invisible if necessary. Another good idea is to name the orbit curves. For example 'ballorbit' would be a suitable name for the motion curve of a bouncing ball. When creating looping animations with the orbit function, use the 'C' key to close the path or use the predefined closed curve. THE ROTATE FUNCTION If you want an object to rotate, do the following: - Activate the object. - Select Projects -> Animation -> Rotation. - Click the mouse at the center of the desired rotation. - Real 3D asks for the rotation angle and the frame interval. An angle of 360 degrees produces one revolution. Naturally you can give an angle of 720 degrees which would give you two revolutions or any other angle you desire. Also define the first and the last frame during which the rotation occurs. - Click OK. - PAGE 91 - As with the orbit function, the animation will automatically be enlarged if necessary, and the rotation is created throughout the given frame interval. NOTE: The rotation movement does not replace any other movements that have already been applied to the object, so that combinations of different movements are possible. Therefore, if you have defined a rotation that does not suit you and you want to redefine it, you cannot just set a new rotation because these ywo rotations would be combined probably producing an unwanted result. The right way to do this is to first remove the object to its initial location in the first frame of the rotation. Then de-expose the object in the rest of the frames and after that use the rotation function again. THE DIRECTION FUNCTION The directoin function changes the direction that an object points in with regard to the direction of motion. The following example demonstrates this feature: - Make a simple model of a car and rotate it so that it points in the direction that you are initially going to move it. - Use the Orbit function to give the car a wiggly, curved path to move down. Now, when the car moves around the curvesin its orbit, it will move sideways or even backward. - To direct the car along its path, select the menu Project -> Animation -> Direction. Define the frame interval to be from 0 to the last fram and select OK. Note that you must initialize the direction of the object yourself, because the program cannot guess what part of the object should point ahead. The direction modification is additive that is, it does not replace earlier rotations of the object. This means that you can supply this function only once to an orbit, therefore you must prepare the orbit completely before using the direction function. Note also that the object is never turned upside down when directing it. For example, if the direction of the object changes a full 80 degrees it is impossible for Real 3D to decide whether you mean to turn it horizontally or vertically. In such cases the function will always select the horizontal turn. Here is a practical way to describe the proble: The function is more suitable for directing carn than aeroplanes. EXPOSING AND DE-EXPOSING A Real 3D animation consists of a sequence of frames. When you move to a new frame the selection window displays the hierarchical structure of the objects shown in the frame. In each frame, the objects can be devided into two classes, which are called exposed and de-exposed objects. Exposed objects are usually the ones that have been animated. Whereas de-exposed objects are motionless. More precisely an object is exposed in a - PAGE 92 - certain frame if the frame contains a 'private' copy of object, so that any animation effect modifying the object is stored in that frame. Object exposure is a hierarchical property: If an object is exposed, all its subobjects are exposed, too. The operation, which makes a private copy of an object for a frame, is called exposing, and removing that copy is called de exposing. If an object is not exposed in a frame, the frame uses the object in the first preceding frame where the object has been exposed. For example, if an object is exposed only in the first frame of the animation, any modification effects that object in every frame of the animation, regardless of the frame in which the modification was made. On the other hand, if an object is exposed in every frame, then the modification will effect only the object in that frame. In this case, global modifications to the object must be made individually in each frame (macro techniques can be used as described later). This way of representing animations has a couple of significant advantages. First of all, memory is spared, since motionless objects are stored only once. Furthermore, creating cel animations becomes easier, since the previous state of an object can be used as a good starting point for editing. This is done by exposing the object when entering a new frame. You can find out if an object is exposed by activating the object and clicking one of the projection windows with the left button. If the object is exposed, the instruction window displays the message '<n>(X)Object', whereas de exposure is indicated by the message '<n>()Object'. An object can be exposed in the current frame using the '(X)' gadget on the right hand edge of the instruction window. Most animation functions (orbit, rotate, macros) expose objects automatically when modifying them, so the user does not have to do it frame by frame. The function for de-exposing is the Projects -> Animation -> De-expose function. The next figure shows an animation consisting of six frames: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ()root ()root ()root ()root ()root ()root (X)Obj ()Obj ()Obj (X)Obj ()Obj (X)Obj It shows that you have exposed the object. Obj in the first and the fourth frame so that: - The frames 1 - 3 share the same data from Obj which is stored in frame 1. - The frames 4 and 5 share the same data from Obj which is stored in frame 4. - The data for Obj in frame 6 is for that frame only. - PAGE 93 - This means that if you modify the object Obj in frame 2, you will at the same time modify it in all those frames that share the same data - frames 1 and 3. On the contrary, modifications that are performed to the object in frame 6, effect only that frame. Usually the root level should not be exposed, because this makes it easy to add objects to a single frame in an animation: If a new object is created in a de-exposed hierarchy level, it is visible in every frame of the animation. De-exposing can be used to initialize the state of an object in an animation, for example to remove an unwanted motion component. OTHER ANIMATION FUNCTIONS The menu Projects -> Animation contains several useful functions for animation handling. To resize an animation: - Choose Projects -> Animation -> Size. - Enter the new size for the animation. If you increase its size, new frames will be added to the end of the animation. If you decrease the size, some frames will be removed from the end of the animation. Note that if you add frames to the animation, the new frames are identical to the last frame. To delete the animation you created: - Choose Projects -> Animation -> Delete. - Confirm the deleteion by selecting OK. NOTE: The function Projects -> Animation -> Delete is the same as the new project function: it resets everything except the curent material library, which is kept in memory. To save the animation to file 'testanimation' on drive df0: - Choose Projects -> Animation -> Save. - Enter the name of the animation 'df0:testanimation' and choose OK. To load an animation: - Choose Projects -> Animation -> Load. - Enter the name of the animation to load, 'df0:testanimation', and choose OK. - Now Real 3D asks if the new animation should replace the current animation (replace), should be concatenated to the end of the current animation (concatenate), or should be joined to the current animation frame by frame (join). If the last alternative is selected, the joining will be started from the current frame and the settings (e.g. the color palette) of the original animation will be preserved. Choose the alternative that suits you. - PAGE 94 - When you want to insert new frames at a certain point in the animation: - Move to the frame after which you want to add the new frames. - Choose Projects -> Animation -> Insert. - Give the number of frames to insert. If you want to remove frames from a certain point in the animation: - Move to the first frame to be removed. - Choose Projects -> Animation -> Remove. - Give the number of frames to remove. If you want to remove the exposure of some frames: - Move to the first frame in question. - Choose Projects -> Animations -> De-expose. - Define how many frames you want to expose starting from the current frame, click OK. NOTE: You cannot remove the exposure of an object in the first frame. To move to a new frame: - Select Projects -> Animation -> Goto frame. - Type the index number of the desired frame and click OK. Also the editor contains an animation preview function: - If you have the visible grid turned on, turn it off using 'G' key. - Select Projects -> Animation -> Play or hit the 'P' key. - The animation is played once. You can cancel the playback using the 'Esc' key. ANIMATING WITH MACROS You can create an animation using the Macro feature in the following way: - Create an object. - Go to the wireframe model and find a suitable viewing angle and distance, click REC and return to the editor. - Resize the animation to 100 frames with the menu Projects 0> Anumation -> Size. - Choose Projects -> Macro -> Define. - Execute appropriate modifications which define what happens between two consecutive frames. You could for example move the object slightly. - Choose Project -> Macro -> End. - Make sure that the part of the object that is to be modified is the active one, and choose Projects -> Macro -> Execute. - Set Frames = 100, Startcount = 0, Increcment = 1 and click OK. - PAGE 95 - The macro function then advances the animation, beginning with the frame being edited and manipulated the given number of frames as it goes. Each frame of the animation is modified by the macro and the number of modification cycles is incremented as the next frame is entered. The modifications are executed to those parts of the object that correspond to the current object in the frame being edited when the peration was activated. If a frame is not exposed, it will automatically be xposed before any modifications take place. All this should result in the desired animation effect. Note that if the picture count is greater than the number of frame, the remaining modifications have no effect. The previous description says that the macro is executed on the counterpart of the active effect in each frame. The identification of the object to be modified is based on the object name. Therefore, identical object names in the same hierarchy level can cause problems, because the animation function always select the first object having the correct name. The precise meanings of the three fields in the macro device are the following: - The frame field determines how many consecutive frames are modified by the macro, starting from the current frame. - Startcount defines how many times the first frame is modified by the macro. - Increment tells Real 3D how many more modifications per frame to do as the frames advance. If increment is zero, the effect of macro modifications does not accumulate with each frame: the number of modification cycles per frame does not increase and the frames will not be exposed automatically. Let's suppose that you execute a macro containing a little shift upwards, to an animation. Increment = 0: the object will be shifted the same amount upward in each frame, whereas with the increment greater than zero the object would have an upward movement when animated. Macro modifications with the increments value zero can be used to edit several frames at a time. For example, if you want to change the material of an object already animated from shiny to mirror you can use the following technique: - Move to the first frame. - Activate the object. - Select Macro -> Define. - Select Modify -> Hierachy -> Material and select the material 'mirror' from the material list (it is assumed that the standard materials are loaded). - Select Macro -> End. - PAGE 96 - - Select Macro -> Execute and give Frames = number of the frames in the animation, Startcount = 1 and Increment = 0. - Click OK. Note that using the meterial function directly would change the material in the current frame only. The macro method offers the most general way of doing animations in Real 3D: a macro can include whatever modifications you like. Nevertheless, this generality means that the user has to define quite a number of things when creating an animation and therefore the macro method can be somewhat laborious. In fact, defining a macro including several steps is very similar to writing a small computer program. ANIMATING THE OBSERVER AND THE AIM POINT. It has already been mentioned that the observer can be animated using wireframe functions. Although this method is easy, the results tends to be inaccurate. If you create the objects observer and aim point in the hierarchy using the menus Creation -> Observer and Creation -> Aim point you can animate them in a similar manner to other objects. For example, you can create a scene where the observer is located in the hierarchy of the car, and the aim point is located in the hierarchy of an aeroplane. When you animate the car and the plane, you get an animation where the camera moves along inside the car while tracking the moving plane. Even if you do not want to animate the observer or the aim point, it may be useful to have these objects in the hierarchy, because then it is possible to control their positions in the editor too, instead of just in the wireframe mode. If you group the objects observer and the aim point under one object 'camera', you can animate them together. For example you can initialize the camera direction, then draw a free from orbit for it and finally direct the camera using the Animation -> Direction Function. This creates a nice 'spacelight' type effect. CREATING BIG ANIMATIONS When you create large animations, it may be necessary to produce the animation in several parts. Then you must take into consideration the picture indexing convention mentioned before. Also, the automatic scaling of light source intensities will be carried out using the first frame of the animation, so it might be necessary to place the same frame at the beginning of each of the animations. You should not change the color palette between rendering separate parts of an animation althought the colors of the object will remain the same, the solid modeler may come to - PAGE 97 - different solutions when it produces HAM pictures. This will cause unpleasant fluctuations in the picture when the entire animation is played. One fact to keep in mind is that if you use a macro, it is best to modify all parts of the animation at the same time because the current version of Real 3D does not support macro saving and loading Sometimes much memory can be saved using simple tricks. For example, if you are going to render an animation of a spinning logotype using the lampless rendering method, do not spin the logotype: spin the camera around the logotype, instead of rotating the logotype. Then the observer is the only moving component of the scene, and as it is a simple object it does not require much memory. - PAGE 98 - 9 PRACTICAL INTEGRATED FUNCTIONS -------------------------------- THE DISPLAY The projection windows of Real 3D can be thought of as holes through which the user can see space. Changing the scale changes the size of these holes. When these holes are large, the user will see a large portion of the space, and when the holes are small, tiny details of the objects can be seen accurately. As if you were looking at the same scenery on a map at different scales. To change the scale: - If you intend to enlarge the object on the screen, choose the operation Settings -> Display -> Scale in. - Then move the mouse pointer to that part of the screen you want to enlarge. When you press the left mouse button, you can draw a rectangle on the screen. The region inside the rectangle will be enlarged so that it takes up the whole screen. You can reduce the size of an object by choosing the operation Settings -> Display -> Scale out. Then you can define a rectangle that will, after reduction, contain that part of the space that is visible on the screen when the operation was initiated. These operations can produce at maximum, a hundredfold magnification or reduction of the screen. A quick way to change the scale is to use the '-' and '+' keys. When Real 3D is started, all projection windows are positioned so that when you the origin (0,0,0) of space is located at the center point of the window. Using the Pan operation you can change the position of the windows in the space, so that you can observe in detail an object that is on the edge of the space. To move a projection window in space: - Choose menu Settings -> Display -> Pan. - Grab an object and move it to any place you want. Instead of moving the object, Real 3D moves the window so that the object will show in a different part of the window. The new position of the window's center will be shown in the instruction window. The autofocus function offers a fast way to pan and scale the display around the active object: - Activate the desired object. - Select Settings -> Display -> Autofocus or hit the '>' key. The display will be centered around the actibe object and the active object will be magnified to fill the display. If you want to reset the scales and the position of the windows to the default values: - Choose Settings -> Display -> Reset or hit the 'o' key. - PAGE 99 - DISPLAY REDRAWING MODES Even though it may be possible to fit several thousands of basic objects into a main memory of 9 megabytes, modification calculation and display updating probably takes so much time that working interactively becomes impossible. Real 3D includes many methods with which these kind of problems can be reduced considerably. These methods are described in the next two sections. You can speed up screen updates by choosing Settings -> Drawmode -> Reduced. Then the program updates only the active projection window and you can, when necessary, redraw the whole screen using the Extras -> Redraw operation. This does nor make calculations much faster, but since only one window of all three is redrawn, drawing takes only one third of the normal time. If the previous technique is not fast enough, select Settings -> Drawmode -> None. Then the program does no automatic updating at all. When the display gets to confused, select Extras -> Redraw or hit the return key. Extras -> Drawmode -> Normal turns the default automatic updating on. If you have selected draw mode Reduced or None, object modifications are also affected. When you try to modify a complex enough object, Real 3D automatically creates a simpler representation for the object. This simpler image, consisting of boxes that cover the object that are fast enough to rotate, move, etc. A small drawback is that at the beginning of any modification it takes some time to create a new representation, so some patience is needed. NOTE: If you select draw mode None and go to the wireframe model, the simplified drawing method is used also there (the RBOX function). NOTE: Decreasing the screen depth to two will usually make display updating remarkably faster. THE VISIBLE RANGE OF THE OBJECT Often it is unnecessary to draw an object to the screen other than the object you are creating. For example, if you are creating a rocking chair inside a house, drawing the house all the time is no use. The house should be drawn only when the rocking chair is ready and can be positioned in the living room. Usually, only a portion of the object, as small as possible, should be kept visible, so that the screen update is fast. The visible range of an object can be defined in relation to the active object. You have three levels of visible range: - All. The whole project is drawn to the screen regardless of which object is active. - Parent. Only objects that are in the same hierarchical level as the active object, or, if the active object is a primitive, objects the are on the same levels as the object to which the - PAGE 100 - active object belongs, are drawn. - Current. Onlyt the active object, or, if the active object is a primitive, the object to which the active object belongs, is drawn. Real 3D automatically takes care of updating the screen and determines which objects will be drawn depending on which object is active at a given time. Likewise, the screen will not be updated if user actions do not require it. If you want only the active object to be drawn on the screen: - Choose Settings -> Drawlevel -> Current. From then on only the active object is drawn. MEASURING METHODS You have three methods of measuring: - Absolute measuring - Relative measuring - A combination of absolute and relative measuring When the absolute measuring method is used, the program continually displays absolute coordinates. With relative measuring the program displays coordinates that are relative to the cursor. If you use the combination of absolute and relative measuring, the program displays absolute coordinates until the user chooses a creation or modification operation. From then on the program displays relative coordinates to show the size of the object created or the magnitude of the modification. The measuring method can be chosen from menu Settings -> Coordinates. THE GRID The grid function of Real 3D rounds the mouse coordinates to a desired grid. You can activate a grid using the menu Settings -> Grid, which displays the follwing requester: - PAGE 101 - (Picture "PIC102,104,105,106") The four top rows are for fast grid selections. You can redefine their contents by clicking one of the rows, and then writing the desired grid values to the X, Y and Z fields below the four rows and selecting OK. Next time you enter the function, the new values are available. You can also define directly an arbitrary grid by typing the desired measurements to the X, Y and Z gadgets and selecting OK. The gid can be made visible by activating the VISIBLE gadget. The value on the right side of the gadget defines how densely the visible grid is drawn; for example, if the value is 2, then every second grid position is drawn. The grid visibilty can be quickly changed using the 'G' key. The number keys '1' - '9' can be used to set a grid from 10 to 90, and the key '0' removes the grid. INFO You can use the info operation to get information about objects and to modify this information when necessary: - An object can be made invisible in the editor. - An object can be made infinite by removing the so called standard limits from it. - An object can be made hollow. - The covers, i.e. the surfaces at its ends, can be removed from a hollow object. - An object can be made invisible in the solid model. - A mesh can be smoothened in the solid model. In addition to these, the type, color and material of the object is shown, as well. The color signal values can be also changed using this function. The device allows you to define greater values than 15, which is the maximum color value in the Amiga color system. You can use this feature to obtain very bright objects, light sources etc. - PAGE 102 - (Picture "PIC103") To make a cone visible: - Select the cone. - Choose Extras -> Info. - Set the INVISIBLE field on. - Choose OK. After this the cone is invisible in the editor, but you can still confirm its existence in the selection window. To make a cylinder into a thin walled tube: - Select the cylinder. - Choose Extras -> Info. - Set the HOLLOW and UNCOVERED fields on. - Choose OK. NOTE: If the object is not hollow, you cannot remove its covers. When the covers are removed from a cube, the covers are removed so that you can look through the cube in the projection window in which the cube was created. The UNCOVERED and INFINITE fields of the info operation affect only primitives. Conversely, you can make any complex object hollow. The INVISIBLE function is needed when, for example, the outcome of a logical operation is given a new, more descriptive wireframe representation. Also, all unwanted details, like slight roundings of the edges of a cube, should be made invisible to make the editor faster. - PAGE 103 - The SCENE gadget makes an object invisible in the first phase of ray tracing. This means that you cannot see the object directly, but you can see its shadows, reflections etc. This may sound a bit strange bu consider the following problem: a shiny, golden logotype moving in black space looks good but unfortunately black space produces no reflections at all! The solution is to create an environment, which creates rich reflections in the logotype. However, you do not want to be able to see the environment directly, so make the environment invisible using the SCENE function. The SMOOTH gadget controls the smoothing of polygon meshes in solid model renering. One gadget has not been explained yet: What is the purpose of the INFINITE gadget? We will take a closer look at it in the next section. STANDARD LIMITS Primitives, by their ultimate naturea, are volumes that are associated with information like: The properties of the material they are constructed from, location and direction information, and the wireframe representation. A set of surfaces determines the volume of a primitive. Only a few of these surfaces can be defined a definite volume in space on their own. These surfaces are the sphere and the ellipsoid, which is really just a stretched sphere. All other surfaces limit an infinite volume of space that would be very difficult to represent in the editor using wireframes. For this reason, all the other primitives are defined by more than one surface. For example, a cylinder is a volume bounded by a cylindrical surface and two plane surfaces for the ends. (Picture "PIC102,104,105,106") - PAGE 104 - These surfaces that limit primitives, for example a cylinder, are called standard limits. These limits can be removed so that three dimensional primitives are infinitely long, apart frome plane primitives which become infinitely wide. To create an infinitely long cylinder: - Create a cylinder. - Choose menu Extras -> Info. - Set the INFINITE field on and choose OK. If you look at the object in the solid model, you will notice that it is infinitely long. To limit its length reset the INFINITE field so that the object matches its wireframe. The standard limits are removed most often to give the desired effect when logical operations are used. For example, if you want to bore holes through a cylinder using another cylinder, it is often wise to remove standard limits from the cylinder being used as a drill. By this way, the cylinders can be created of equal length, which makes the wireframe representation more realistic. If you don't do this, and the drilling cylinder is the exactly the same length as the cylinder to be drilled, there maybe a thin membranes left at the ends of the latter cylinder. Because the thickness of these membranes is of about the same magnitude as precision of Real 3D's calculations, they will be visible at some regions and invisible at others. Another thing to note is that removing unnecesary limits also makes solid model rendering of objects faster. (Picture "PIC102,104,105,106") NOTE: Removing limits from spheres or objects modified from spheres has no effect, since such objects do not have any standard limits. The standard limits may play some role in shortening the rendering time when the objects are complex and many logical operations have been executed on them. In the following cases the standard limits can be removed to make the rendering time shorter: - PAGE 105 - - If, after an operation has been applied to an object, the standard limit does not limit any part of the resulting object. - If lengthening a primitive that is used as a tool does not have any effect on the result of the operation. If you have, for example, made bevels at the ends of a polyhedron by cutting it with a plane surface, Real 3D does not check whether the standard limit is still needed. If a standard limit does not delimit the primitive at all, it may be removed. Standard limits are automatically removed from plane primitives (polygons, disks, and ellipsoids) when they are used in operations, unless they are used as targets and are also hollow. In this case they act as two dimensional surfaces. (Picture "PIC102,104,105,106") If you, wanted to, for example, cut holes through a board, they can be cut with an infinitely long tool. In other words, the standard limits of the tool can be removed before cuting the holes. Also, the standard limits may have to be removed to get the desired results. For example, if we want to make a groove in a long cylinder using a hyperboloid, it can be done with the AND operation as in the following picture. ATTRIBUTES The user can modify some default attributes of the primitives, like the names and depths. To change the default depth of a cube: - Choose menu Settings -> Attributes. - Use the slider to find a cube. - PAGE 106 - - Move the mouse pointer on the DEPTH field and press the left mouse button. - Give a new default depth value when Real 3D prompts for it, and choose OK. - If you don't want to change any of the other default values, choose SAVE or OK depending on whether you want the change to be permanent or not. If you now create a cube primitive, it will be of the given default depth. If you want all the cubes you have created to be hollow: - Choose Settings -> Attributes. - Move the slider to the position 'cube'. - Move the mouse pointer over the FLAGS field and press the left mouse button. - Real 3D will now bring up the Info Requester, which you learned about in the section on 'info'. Set the HOLLOW field and choose OK. - If you don't want to change any other settings, choose either OK or SAVE. From now on all cubes you create are hollow. You can verify this using the Info function. You can also change the names of the primitives to a different language e.g. Finnish. If you want Real 3D to ask for the depths of new primitives instead of using the default depth, set the CUSTOM DEPTH field. The Attributes data structure is also used to store the default directory paths of object, animation and material input. CALCULATING OBJECTS' PRICES When needed Real 3D can be used to calculate the production cost of an object. The data structures contained in the program can be used to represent, the material and labor costs of an object for example +-----------+ | Axe ($10) | +-----------+ +--------------+ +-------------+ | Handle ($15) | | Blade ($20) | +--------------+ +-------------+ (Manufacturing expenses of an axe.) As the manufacturing expense of the handle is 15, the blade 20 and the assembly of the handle and the blade is 10, the total manufacturing cost is 45. - PAGE 107 - To set a price for an object: - Select an object. - Choose Extras -> Costs -> Set Price. - Give the price when Real 3D asks for it. To look how much an object created by you will cost: - Select the appropriate object. - Choose menu Extras -> Costs -> Look Price. Now Real 3D shows the price in the instruction window. NOTE: If a larger object is concerned, you can use the Set Price function to look at what the cost is of a particular manufacturing phase. The Look Price function always calculates the price of the whole object. THE MEMORY MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS OF THE EDITOR The Extras menu contains some functions which may be helpful when meeting memory problems. If the program does not execute a selected function, but gives a message 'NOT ENOUGH MEMORY', it is recommended that the scene is saved before further action is taken. Running the system for long periods with insufficient memory may reveal new programming errors, which will often lead to a system crash. The function Extras -> Avail mem displays the amount of free chip and fast memory. The function Extras -> Close WBench tries to close the workbench screen. If the workbench is in hires-non-interlace mode, this saves 40 kilobytes more memory. The close function will not succeed if other programs are using the screen. Therefore, close all other windows and programs before attempting to use the function. The Workbench closing option is saved to the Realpref file when you exit the program. You can open the Workbench again using the Extras -> Open WBench function. Sometimes the amount of free memory may get so low that the user interface of the software cannot run properly: Some menus will not open or selecting a function may not have any effect. If the editor is functional enough for deleting a part of the scene, this situation can be recovered, but sometimes deletion may not be possible. The function Extras -> Get memory is intended for such problematic situations. The function executes the following actions: - Tries to close the Workbench. - Puts the editor screen into non-interlace-NTSC-non-overlapping mode with a screen depth of 2. - Clears the undo buffer. - PAGE 108 - These actions usually give enough memory to recover the lack of memory. If you cannot open the Extras menu, hit the '$'key instead. Deactivating the undo feature using the 'Extras -> Undo on' menu usually helps with a lot of memory problems. NOTE: If your scene causes memory problems in the editor, it is almost certain that you will not be able to render images of it in the solid model anyway. THE UNDO FUNCTION The undo function of the editor can be used to restore the situation as it was before the latest action in the current animation frame. To use this feature: - Select Extras -> Undo or hit the 'U' key. - If you select the function again, you get the original situation. Note that the undo buffer contains only the current frame. Therefore, you canoot undo functions effecting several frames at a time, such as the Animation -> Delete function. You can deactivate the undo feature using the 'Extras -> Undo on' function. This saves memory and speeds up the editor slightly. - PAGE 109 - 10 ADDITIONAL INTEGRATED SOFTWARE IN THE REAL 3D ------------------------------------------------ DISPLAY This program can be used to view IFF pictures. When the solid modeler saves a picture, it makes Real:Display the default tool program. So, when you open the picture's icon, Display will start automatically and show the picture. This program can also show a series of pictures. If the directory from which you want to show the picture also contains pictures of the same name indexed with 0, 1, 2 etc. the program starts to show them in turn. When using the command line interpreter, the command has the form: Real:Display picture n1 n2 Where n2 is the time to show a single picture (excluding the time to load the picture), and if a series of pictures is concerned, n2 indicates how many times these pictures are to be shown. If a single picture is concerned and the parameter n1 has not been given, the picture will be shown until the left mouse button is pressed or a key is hit. The program can also show 24 bit targa images created with Real 3D by converting them into HAM mode. DELTA CONVERT With this program you can convert a series of IFF pictures into a new file, in which the pictures only the differences between consecutive pictures are stored. If the pictures are similar, they can be fitted into a very small space. Above all, this method of displaying the pictures in succession is much more rapid than using the Display program described before. Usually the speed is between 10 to 25 pictures a second, which makes the animation appear continuous. All pictures must use the same palette and display mode. Suppose we want to convert ten pictures such as DF0:pic0 - pic9 to a Deltafile. The following example illustrates the program's use: - Start the program either by double clicking on its icon or by using the CLI (you can give the parameters in the usual manner). - First the program asks which optimization mode to use. If you select Small delta, as small a deltafile as possible is produced. If you choose Fast delta, the program outputs a bigger deltafile, which can be show somewhat faster. The option Anim5 produces a standard Anim5 format file, which gives the best compression but which is not as flexible or as fast as the Real 3D delta format. Choose for example Fast delta. - Give a unique name to save the animation by, when the program prompts for it and choose OK. - Give the name of the first picture to be converted when the program prompts for 'Picture:'. Write df0:pic and then choose OK. - Define the start index as 0 and click OK. - Define the last index as 9 and click OK. - PAGE 110 - - After the program has processed all the pictures with the given name and the given index range, it asks for more pictures. If you have more pictures that belong to the animation, define a new name and a new index interval. These are then appended to the animation. On the other had, if all pictures have been processed, choose ALL DONE. The Delta convert program saves the delta data for both directions. That is, if chnages from Picture1 to Picture2 are saved, then changes from Picture2 to Picture1 are saved too. This allows for much more flexible animation representation, but requires more space. Therefore, the delta data method comes into its own only if a part, say less than 2/3 of the whole display, is changing in the animation. Because of the principle used for organising all the Amiga's display information in main memory, stable picture areas, particularly in horizontal chunks, can be utilized effectively. Whereas, vertical areas are of less importance. For example, if the top quarter of the display in an animation does not change, then the animation is certainly much faster to play and requires one quarter less disk space than an animation involving changes of the whole display. If instead, the stable quarter is on the left side of the display, then the animation may be just as slow and as large as any whole display animation. Note that when the animation is shown, the pictures are synchronized to the display's refresh cycle. In PAL system, the refresh rate is 50 Hz, and therefore possible animation rates are 50 pictures per second, 50/2 (that's 25) pictures per seconds, 50/3 pictures per second, 50/4 per second and so on. The differences between these rates are very significant, and usually only the first three rates are fast enough to produce an impression of continuity. Anyway, even 50/4, which equals 12.5 pictures per second may suffice if the differences between consecutive pictures are small. It should be noted that the Real 3D delta format used is not a standard format in any way. Instead, one must use IFF pictures as a link between various programs. DELTAPLAY With this program you can display the files created by Deltaconvert. Deltaplay is also the default tool program of such files, hence a delta animation is shown simple by double clicking the icon of a delta file. The show ends when you hit 'q' followed by 'return'. The whole file is read into memory before the animation is shown, therefore the size of the animation is restricted by the amount of free RAM. All memory, not only CHIP memory, can be utilized. So if you have 3 megabytes of RAM, you can show quite large animations with your Amiga. If the animation is too big to fit into memory, Deltaplay shows as much of it as possible. - PAGE 111 - You can also specify a control file as a parameter for Deltaplay. This enables you to represent the same picture material in an infinite number of ways. The control file is a text file, which can contain the following commands: COMMAND EXPLANATION <n> Shows next <n> pictures E <n> Shows previous <n> pictures D <n> Delay <n>/50 seconds T <n> Delay <n>/50 seconds in every picture S Shows the animation backwards to the first picture E Shows the animation to the last picture Q Quit H Quit, but leave the last picture on the display R Removes a picture left by a previous delta animation It is also possible to add comments to a control file, which may be necessary when doing long control files. Deltaplay ignores all the characters after the semicolon on any line. The following example script demonstrates how to create a show several minutes long from an animation of 50 pictures: DELTAPLAY CONTROL FILE F 49 Show the animation from the first to the last picture D 100 Shows the last picture for button seconds B 10 Go back 10 pictures D 50 Delay one second E Play from the 40th to the last picture S Show the animation backwards from the last to the first picture T 50 Animation speed 1 frame per second from now on B 100 Shows the animation 2 times backwards D 50 T 0 A small pause and maximum animation speed again B 1 The previous picture D 50 F 2000 Shows the animation many times E And once again to the end Q Then quit! - PAGE 112 - You can use this script from the CLI by the command: Deltaplay <animation> <script> Or from the workbench by giving both the animation and the script as a parameter to Deltaplay by selecting all the icons needed with the 'SHIFT' key pressed. If no script is defined, the animation is shown as a loop. You can also control animations directly from the keyboard with the previous commands by typing the desired sequence and hitting return. H and R commands are used to concatenate several animations together, and in this way to create more complex animations. For example, if the animation is to big to fit into memory, you can create two deltafiles. You can also create a continuation to an animation. sometimes it is best to create an animation of several sub animations, which can be controlled with their own scripts. A good example of this is an animation in which we first approach the target (part 1), then we orbit it for a while (part 2), and then we depart from the scene (part 3). This animation, consisting of three deltafiles, can be shown with the following CLI script, which we shall put in a text file called 'mainscript': Deltaplay part1 script1 Deltaplay part2 script2 Deltaplay part3 script3 The three Deltaplay command scripts could be: script1: E H script2: R E F1 E F1 E F1 H script3: R E Q Now the animation can be started with the CLI command 'Execute mainscript'. The control script 1 leaves the last picture on display, the first command of the script 2 removes it then starting to show the second part. The second part also leaves its last picture on the display, and the third script removes this picture. Note, that the last script ends on the command Q instead of H. Otherwise, when the animation ends, the memory required by the display would be left reserved. In other words, every script ending in the H command must be followed by another script starting with the R command, and the last script must not end with an H command. NOTE: The window Deltaplay opens is its input window. Keep it active, then you can control the program. You can activate it during animation show by pressing the left Amiga and 'n' keys to make the Workbench display somewhat visible, and then by clicking in the window with the left mouse button. - PAGE 113 - DELTA TO IFF This program can be used to produce the original IFF pictures from a Real 3D delta file. The program is used in the following way: - Start the program by clicking on its icon. - Give the name of the delta animation from which the pictures are to be extracted, and click OK. - Give the name with which the pictures should be saved. Remember to add a suitable DOS path to the name. The name will be have an index added to it when the pictures are saved. - Define the index of the first picture to be extracted (the first picture of an animation has the index 0) and click OK. - When enough pictures have been extracted, you can stop the program by clicking the close window gadget in the, top left corner of the window. Usually, a delta file is a much more convenient way to store an animation than original IFF pictures. AmigaDOS is slow in handling large directories, and if you open a Workbench drawer containing 200 IFF pictures, then Workbench takes quite a time to load the icon data. Instead, one delta file icon is easy to handle and since you get the original IFF pictures back if necessary, you can delete the original pictures after creating the delta file. REALPLAY Realplay gives another way of showing animations. Instead of delta data, it can show an animation directly using IFF pictures. To obtain the speed required, Realplay reads pictures into the memory and processes them there before showing the animation. Realplay is equally fast at showing animations as Deltaplay when changes between pictures are big. If an animation is to be shown continuously, without picture swapping from disk, this may require quite a lot of memory. One non interlaced HAM picture in a PAL system requires at least 60 Kb, and an Amiga with 3 megabytes of RAM can show only about 40 pictures continuously. Nevertheless, you do not have to worry about the memory requirements when creating animations. If there is not enough memory to show the animation continuously, Realplay shows it in parts as long as possible. When one part is shown, a new set of pictures is loaded into the memory so that the animation can continue. Realplay requires a script file which defines the pictures and the way the pictures are shown. You can run Realplay from CLI with the command Realplay <scriptname> or from the Workbench in the usual way. - PAGE 114 - The script file is a text file with the following format: picturename picturename pic 5-19 ... picturename command lines In the beginning of the file is a list of the pictures, one name per row. If you have several pictures with the same name and different indexes, you can define the index range by giving the first and last index separated by the character '-'. After the names there must be one empty line as a separator. The rest of the file contains command lines, consisting of the same commands as described in the context of Deltaplay. If no commands are present, then the animation is shown in the usual looping manner. In addition to Deltaplay commands, there are some extra commands you can use with Realplay. Automatic picture swapping can be controlled with a 'P' command (play). When this command is encountered, all the previous commands are executed immediately. In this way you can control the breakpoints caused by insufficient memory and put them in suitable places for the animation. Realplay does not use the deltaplay 'r' and 'h' commands for joining animations together, because it automatically shows animation in several parts when necessary. Pictures in the control script are indexed internally starting from zero. You can jump to any picture in an animation simply by giving the number of the picture. For example, the command 'O' shows the first picture in the animation. Furthermore, you can put any CLI executable commands in the scripts. These commands must be separated with double quotes from other commands. For example, the script: Picture A ... Picture F F5 "Display another pic 5" B5 shows the first 6 pictures of an animation, then displays a picture called "another pic" for 5 seconds, and then continues showing the animation by showing the first 6 pictures in reversed order. The script does not end on the Q command and therefore these actions are repeated until the user breaks the scripts execution from the keyboard: just as with Deltaplay, you can control Realplay from the keyboard. It is possible to use Realplay to show IFF pictures directly without any ASCII script. If you give a picture to Realplay as a parameter, either from the Workbench using icon se- - PAGE 115 - lection or from the CLI with the command 'Realplay <picturename>', Realplay shows the picture until you hit 'q' and 'return' keys. Furthermore, if the program detects that there is an indexed sequence of pictures in the directory, it shows them all just as Display does, only much faster. One advantage of Realplay is that pictures need not be of the same display mode, and they can have different color palettes. The only requirement is that they are in the IFF format. Realplay allows direct jumps to any picture, whereas Deltaplay connot do this. One drawback is that loading packed IFF pictures takes much time, whereas delta animations are loaded five or ten times faster. NOTE: The window Realplay opens is its input window. Keep it active so that you can control the program. You can activate it during an animation show by pressing the left Amiga and 'n' keys simultaneously to make the Workbench display somewhat visible, and then by clicking in the window with the left mouse button. BLON AND BLOFF These two tiny programs in the Util directory are useful if you want to create a video representation which includes several animations and pictures. The Blon command creates a black, two colour screen in front of the display, and Bloff removes it. Usually it is not desirable that the Workbench screen becomes visible between the parts of the show, a pure black display is a much better alternative. The following CLI script illustrates how to use these commands when creating picture and animation shows: Run Real:Util/Blon Real:Display Pictures/Pic0 Real:Deltaplay Animations/DeltaAnim script Real:Display Pictures/Infopic Real:Realplay Animations/Anim2 script2 ... Real:Util/Bloff SCULPT TO REAL A small utility program SculptToReal converts Sculpt scene files to Real 3D animation files. The current version converts only object shape definitions. It is possible to create one point-editable primitive or several individual triangles, each having its own attributes such as color and material. In the latter case the output file requires much more space than when using single primitive conversion. - PAGE 116 - 11 MENU DESCRIPTION ------------------- PROJECTS OBJECTS - Create Craetes so called logical objects in the hierarchy level below the current object. Objects are used to bind primitives or other objects into logical entities. Create root Creates a logical object above the root. Creating a new root is necessary when, for example, an object is loaded from disk into the same hierarchical level as the current root. Load Load an object into the active hierarchy. Save Save the active object. ANIMATION - Delete Deletes an animation. In other words, the size of the animation is set to one and the display is reset. This can be considered as a 'new project' function. De-expose Removes exposure of the current object from a given amount of frames, starting from the current frame. Direction Directs the active object along its animation path during its motion for the given number of frames. Goto frame Inputs the index number of a frame, and moves to that frame. Insert Inserts frames after the current frame. - PAGE 117 - Load Loads an animation into memory. The old animation can be replaced with the new one, the animations can be concatenated (appended) or the animations can be joined frame by frame. Play Shows the animation in the main projection windows. Orbit Allows the user to define a freeform spline orbit for the active object. The frame interval during which the motion occurs can be defined. This function enlarges the animation automatically if necessary. Remove Removes frames starting from the current frame. Rotation Rotates the active object around a given point by a given angle. The frame interval during which the rotation occurs can be defined. The animation size is increased if necessary. Save Saves the animation with a name given by the user. Size Changes the size of an animation. If the animation is made longer, the new frames are appended at the end of the animation. If the animation is made shorter, frames will be removed from the end. MATERIALS - Create Create and add a new material to the list of materials. Modify This function is used to modify the properties of an existing material. Delete Deletes a material that is picked from the materials list. The material of all objects already made of this material will be changed to the default material. Also, deletion of all materials is possible. - PAGE 118 - Load Loads a list of materials, and either appends it to the end of the current list, or replaces the old list. Save Saves the current material list with a name given by the user. MACRO - Define Removes any old macro definition from memory and starts defining a new one. The current object is copied to the memory so that it can later be restored. End Terminates macro definition. The current frame is restored to the state in which it was when Macro -> Define was selected. Execute Executes operations stored in the current macro. SCREEN Sets the desired display mode and the number of colors used. The selected mode is used both in the editor and the wireframe model. EXIT Program termination. CREATION - PRIMITIVES You can create basic objects, i.e. primitives. TOOLS - Circular tube This tool is used to create a tube that has a circular cross section and slighty rounded bends. - PAGE 119 - Conical tube Creates a tube with rounded joints and changing radius. Includes also a smoothing subdivision option. Fence Produces a sequence of rectangles. Lathe The lathe tool is used to create objects consisting of several primitives. Lathe2 This lathe tool creates smooth shape rotational objects. Pixeltool Reads a small brush and replaces each pixel (except ones the same color as the background) with a given 3D object. Also, the size of the output can be defined. Pixeltool2 This tool creates a free form surface using the brightness of a picture as height information. Polygon Creates a free form polygon. Polyhedron Creates a free form extruded polygon. Rectangular tube This tool is used to create a tube that has a rectangular cross section and slighty rounded bends. LAMP Creates a lamp to a user specified location. A lamp is a primitive that radiates light of its own color to its surroundings. OBSERVER Creates an observer (camera) in the hierarchy tree. AIM POINT Creates an aim point to the hierarchy. - PAGE 120 - FREE FORM CREATE CURVE - Curve Creates a free form curve. Circular curve Creates a circular curve. Spiral Creates a spiral. Parallel Creates a curve parallel to another curve. MODIFY - Break Opens a closed curve/mesh or breaks it into two pieces. Close Closes a curve/mesh. Concatenate Concatenates two curves. Remap Changes the number of points of a curve/mesh. Remove points Removes active points from a curve or a selected curve from a mesh. Show spline Shows the smoothened shape of a curve/mesh. Smoothen Smoothens the shape of a curve/mesh. Subdivide Subdivides the intervals between points of a curve/mesh. It is possible to subdivide only one interval in a curve by activating the end points of the interval. - PAGE 121 - BUILD - Coplanar sweep Creates a mesh by sweeping a curve along another curve. Join Joins two section curves to form a mesh. Also two meshes, or a curve and a mesh can be joined. Orthogonal sweep Creates a mesh by sweeping and rotating a curve along another curve. Rotation Creates a mesh by spinning a curve around an axis. Swing Creates a mesh by spinning a curve around an axis and by scaling the radius using another curve. BENDING MODES - Bend & Move With this mode selected, the movement of a point being bent does not depend on the distance of it from the bending axis. Bend & Size With this mode selected, the movement of a point is dependent on the distance from the point to the bending axis. Radial This mode directs the effect of the bending functions radially away from the bending axis. 2D With this mode selected, the effect of the bending functions is independent of the depth coordinate. 3D The depth direction and the bending axis direction are treated similarly in the bending functions. - PAGE 122 - BEND - End point This function can be used to bend an object from its end. Global This function bends the object everywhere. Local This function bends the active object only inside the given interval. Linear Linear bending is a skew transformation. POINT EDITING - Select Activates more points on the active object. Select new Activate a new set of points. Deselect Deactivates points from the current object. Deselect all Deactivate all selected points. Show points Shows the points on the active object. MODIFY HIERARCHY - Move This function is used to move an object to another place in space. - PAGE 123 - Move to Moves the active object to a spatial position given by the user. The position of the object is determined by its offset point. Stretch Stretches an object. Size This function changes the size of an object. Rotate An object can be rotated in space. Mirror Mirrors an object in a user given reflection axis. Extend This function can be used to stretch an object in a particular direction. For example, it can be used to lengthen objects. Explode This function is used to explode an object comprising of several primitives. Copy Duplicates the active object. Rename This function can be used to change the names of objects. Locate You can move the active object to a new location in the hierarchy tree. Delete Deletes the active object. Color Changes the color of the active object to the current color. Material This function can be used to change the material of the active object. - PAGE 124 - Painting You can use this function to change the location, size and direction of the texture of the active object. WILDCARD - The modification operations are done on certain objects based on their properties. The user can define properties that an object must comply with to be selected by the operations. If no conditions are given, all objects under the current object will be operated. Replace Replaces all objects in the active object that satisfy the user given conditions, with an object selected by the user. The replacing object is positioned to its place using the offset point. Color Changes the color of all objects that satisfy the usergiven conditions to the current color. Delete Deletes from the active object all objects that satisfy the user given conditions. Macro Executes the operations included in the current macro to all objects in the current object satisfying the given conditions. OPERATIONS - These operations are executed with two objects. One of the objects is always the active object, its volume is changed as a result of the operation. The volume of the other object, the so called tool, does not change, so it can be used to operate on several objects when needed. AND Executes the Boolean operation AND (intersection) between two volumes. EOR Executes the EXCLUSIVE OR operation between the volumes of two objects. - PAGE 125 - AND NOT Executes the AND operation between two volumes, where the volume of the tool is inverted. AND with paint Executes the AND operation between two volumes, The tools 'with paint' also effect the surface of the target object. AND NOT with paint Executes the AND operation between two volumes, where the 'with paint' volume of the tool is inverted. Also, the cut surface of the active object gets the properties of the tool's surface. DIVIDE Divides the active object into two parts along the surface of the tool. This operation results in two separate objects. COLOR The menu includes 6 default colors. Any objects that are created will be of the last selected color. Each color is defined as three components (R, G, B), each of which can have one of sixteen intensity values. The intensities of the components can be changed using the Palette function. SETTINGS DISPLAY - Scale in Changes the display scale. The operation defines a region to be magnified. Scale out Changes the display scale. The screen is shrunk to the size of the defined region. Pan This function is used to change the locations of the projection windows in space, so that other parts of the space can be seen through them. - PAGE 126 - Autofoucs Centers and scales the display around the active object. Reset Reinitializes the display scale and window locations to their original values. DRAWMODES - Normal All windows are updated automatically whenever necessary. Reduced This function is used to select whether only the active projection window or all three projection windows are updated. When needed, the whole screen can be updated manually using the Extras -> Redraw function. None No automatic display redrawing occurs. DRAWLEVEL - All When the windows are updated, the scene is drawn starting from the root object. Parent When the windows are updated, the object is drawn starting from the parent object of the active object. Current Only the active object, or if the active object is a primitive, the parent object of the current object is drawn to the screen. COORDINATES - Absolute Absolute measuring. Real 3D continually displays absolute coordinates. - PAGE 127 - Relative Real 3D displays coordinates that are relative to the most recently selected point. Abs & Rel The combination of the absolute and relative measuring. The program displays absolute coordinates until the user chooses a creation or modification operation, when the program displays relative coordinates to show the size of the object created or the magnitude of the modification. None No coordinates at all. ATTRIBUTES This function is used for changing default information concerning primitives, like names and depths. ALIGNMENT This function is used to define the so called alignment vector. The vector is used when copying and loading objects. When copying, the object is positioned in a location defined by the vector as an offset from the original object. When objects are loaded from disk, they are positioned so that their offset points are located at the most recently selected point in space. After loading the selected point is moved by the size of the vector. This can be utilized when loading characters from a font directory. GRID This function is used to set the unit length. The coordinates of the objects will be rounded to be an exact multiple of the unit length. Each of the coordinate directions can have its own unit length. The defaults are one hundredth in all directions. The Grid device has four instant selection fields. Their values can be set using the three fields at the lower part of the device and then choosing OK. Also the grid visibility can be defined. - PAGE 128 - EXTRAS REDRAW Updates the editor windows. INFO You can look at and change some properties of the objects. COSTS - Set price With this function you can attach expenses to an object corresponding to that hierarchical level. Look price Calculates the price of an object as defined by the set price settings. AVAIL MEM Shows the amount of available memory. GET MEMORY Recovers a serious memory lack situation. REPRESENTATION - Add wire This function attaches a new wireframe to an object that is not a primitive and that does not yet have a wireframe representation. Wireframes are usually added to objects that have been operated on, since the old wireframe no longer represents the new object. After the new wireframe has been added, subobjects of the object can be made invisible so that the only representation of the object in the editor will be the new wireframe. Delete wire This function deletes the additional wireframe of an object. Move point This function is for moving single points of the wireframe that have been added with the Add wire function. - PAGE 129 - Obscure Hides points from the wireframe of the active object. Draw wire With this function it is possible to define a single curve wireframe. Rethink Automatic wireframe modification for boolean operations. Offset With this function you can change the offset point of an object. The offset is used, for example, to position objects when they are loaded or replaced. CLOSE WBENCH Tries to close the workbench screen and activates 'no workbench' option, which is saved when you exit the program. OPEN WBENCH Tries to open the workbench screen, and disables the 'no workbench' option. NO ICONS If this option is selected, no icon data is created for the outputted date. The file Realpref contains the current state for this icon data option. UNDO ON This function can be used to activate/deactivate the undo feature. UNDO Restores the situation before the last action was executed in the current frame. - PAGE 130 - MODES WIREFRAME With this function you can watch the object's wireframe in realtime. The model is also used to define values that are to be used in the solid model. SOLID The solid model, which renders shaded images. THE CONTROL MENU OF THE RENDERING SCREEN CNCAEL You can use this function to terminate rendering and return to the control screen of the solid model. EXIT When the picture is finished, this function returns to the control screen. SCREEN TO BACK Puts the Real 3D screen behind other screens. SAVE Saves the picture to disk. PRINT This function is used to make a hard copy of the picture. Printing is carried out using the preference settings of the Workbench. Requires SYS:utilities/graphicdump and C:run to be available. SET BOX The box function is made for making the time consuming rendering process faster. Using the Set box function you can define a rectangular region to be rendered. BOX OFF Cancels rendering. If a box definition is on, it is removed. This function does not return to the control screen whereas cancel function does. FILL BOX Renders the defined box, or, if no box is defined, the whole picture. - PAGE 131 - KEYBOARD SUPPORT ---------------- For an experienced user, the keyboard offers a much faster way to control the program than menu selection. In Real 3D, the most common functions can be activated from the keyboard. The keyboard codes for editor functions are given in the following list: KEY FUNCTION a Rotate s Size d Delete f Color g Stretch h Mirror j Explode k Move to l Locate x Extend c Copy v Painting b Material n Rename m Move + Scale in - Scale out . Pan > Autofocus O Reset display to default settings return redraw display 1 - 9 Grid 10 - 90 0 No grid G Visible/invisible grid L Load animation S Save animation D Delete animation - PAGE 132 - F Goto frame P Play animation U Undo function i Info-function ! Rethink-function r Repeat last menu selection ( Define macro ) End macro e Execute macro once to the active object $ Out of memory recovery Esc Break current function execution Space Primitive selection based on the mouse click near the primitive p Selects the parent of the current object w Wireframe model q Solid model Note that the top row of alphabetical keys contains 'general' functions, wheras the two lower alphabetical key rows contain only the modification functions which appear on the menu Modify -> Hierarchy. Also in wireframe mode one key is active: the 'f' key hides/shows the control panel. - PAGE 133 - GLOSSARY -------- ALIGNMENT A line segment that defines how much to move the cursor of the editor when any objects is being copied or loaded. ANIMATION This concept is both a Real 3D data structure and the output of the data, namely a collection of pictures to be shown rapidly in succession. BRILLIANCY A property of materials which defines how 'parallel' the surface of the material reflects and refracts the light. BUMP MAPPING A method with which it is possible to imitate rough, bumpy wavy etc. surfaces. DELTA ANIMATION A method in which only the differences between successive pictures are stored. This produces both a smaller data size and a higher frame rate. DITHERING New colors can be created by mixing the existing colors in adjacent pixels; this is called dithering. EXPOSE An action which attaches a private copy of an object to a frame. If you De-expose an object, you can tell the program that the frame does not need its own object description, it can use one from the earlier frames instead. FRAME The data structure containing the info. HL-SHADE One shading technique in Real 3D, especially suitable for nonpure colors. MACRO A collection of several Real 3D functions. MAPPING A rule which tells how to find a counterpart for each member of a set from another set. As a precise mathematical concept, mapping is a function. For example, every point in the - PAGE 134 - surface of an object can be mapped to the set of the pigels of a picture, and this relation can be used to color the surface. MATERIALS A collection of object properties in Real 3D. These properties define what happens when a light ray hits an object made of the material. MODEL An abstract description of a real world phenomenon. OBJECT In Real 3D, basic forms and their collections are called objects. OBJECT HIERARCHY A tree structure describing how objects are organzied to logical hierarchy groups, which in turn forms new groups. OBJECT ORIENTED In Real 3D, you can modify an object with a modification function, no matter what the substructure of the object is. OFFSET POINT This point which is attached to every object in Real 3D; can be used for accurate positioning of the object. OPERATIONS (BOOLEAN LOGICAL) The technique which allows the user to cut something away, from an object using another object. OVERSCAN Display mode which allows extra large picture sizes hiding the display borders. PICTURE The difference between the frame and picture concepts is that a frame contains information for producing a picture, and picture is the Real 3D output of a frame. PIXEL GRAPHICS This is the principle of creating graphics by using a space consisting of a finite number of elements, such as squares or pixels in a two dimensional plane. - PAGE 135 - POLYGON The surface of an object can be represented approximately using representation only triangles which cover the object. The advantage of this method is generality, and it is suitable for representing free form objects. PRIMITIVE A basic object of Real 3D, for example a cone. PROJECTION A rule which tells how to find counterpart for each member of a set from another set. As a precise material concept, projection is a function. RAY TRACING A method which generates a picture of an object by following the light rays from the observers' eye through every pixel in the screen. If a light ray hits an object, reflections and other things that decide the color of the pixel in question can be calculated according to the laws of physics. Therefore this technique produces very realistic pictures. RENDERING Producing a picture according to the information contained in an abstract model. SOLID MODEL A principle to represent three dimensional objects as volumes containing matter. SPLINE A method to create a new curve by adding a few curves together. In three dimensions, a new surface can be created by adding several surfaces together. Usually in computer graphics this means that the curves/ surfaces are joined smoothly. TEXTURE A picture which is used to paint the surface of an object. TRANSPARENCY A property of materials that defines how light penetrates the material. VECTOR A mathematical object, which includes two things: direction and lenght. In three dimensions, these two can be defined with a coordinate triple (x, y, z). - PAGE 136 - VECTOR GRAPHICS A principle to represent an object using a model, which includes graphics vectors. This model is practically resolution independent, which means that it is possible to create increasingly large magnifications of the details of the object without sacrificing accuracy. Real 3D uses vector graphics. WIREFRAME MODEL A principle to represent the shape of an object using an adequate number of points in the surface of the object and connecting these points with lines in a suitable way. - PAGE 137 - INDEX ----- A Active Points 81 Avail mem 129 Add wire 129 Aimpoint creation 120 B Aimpoint position 41 Background 46 Alignment 128, 134 baselight 46 AND Operations 65, 125 Bend & Move 86, 122 AND NOT Operations 64, 126 Bend & Size 86, 122 AND with paint Operations 126 Bending functions 85, 122 AND NOT with paint Operations 126 Bending Modes 86, 122 Angle/mapping 60 - 2D 87, 122 Animating - 3D 87, 122 - Aim Point 97 - Radial 85, 123 - Macros 95 - Bend 85, 123 - Observer 97 - Local 85, 123 Animation 117, 134 - Global 85, 123 - Delete 94, 117 - Linear 85, 123 - Delta 134 Blon and Bloff 116 - De-expose 117 Boolean operations 4, 65, 125 - Direction 117 Box 46 - Goto frame 117 - Fill 131 - Insert 95, 117 - Off 46, 131 - Remove 118 - Set 131 - Load 94, 118 Break 83, 121 - Orbit 90, 118 Brightness 46, 56 - Play 118 Brightess of light the 36 - Preview 92 Brilliancy 55, 134 - Resize 94 Build 122 - Rotation 118 Building Free Form Objects 77 - Save 94, 118 Bump height 56 - Show 90 Bump mapping 6, 59, 134 - Size 94, 118 Animation support 6 C Animating textures 6 Calculating the objects' prices 107 Anti-aliasing 7, 47 Cancel gadget 38, 60, 131 AR 42 Change Aspect ratio 25, 38, 51 - Color 26, 37 Attributes 19, 106, 128 - Name 19 Autofocus 99, 127 - Scale 99 Autolight option 49 Circular tube creation 31, 119 - PAGE 138 - Clear 43 - Polygon 120 CLI script: 113, 116 - Polyhedron 32, 120 Clip mapping 6, 58 - Conical Tube 33, 120 Close 80, 121 - Lathe2 120 Close function 82, 121 - Pixeltool2 120 Close WBench 130 - Lamp 120 Color 37, 126 Curved Surfaces 4, 79 - Change 37 Curve Creating 79, 80, 121 - Mapping 59 Custom Depth 107 - Wildcard 125 Colors 37 Command explanation 112, 113 D Command frame 51 Decreasing 90 Concatenate 121 De-exposing 89 Conical tube tool 33, 120 De-expose animation 117 Control menu 131 Delete - Solid 46, 126 - Animation 94, 117 - Wireframe 41 - Material 118 Coordinates - Object 25 - Absolute 127 - Point 83 - Relative 128 - Wildcard 125 - Abs & Rel 128 - Wire 129 - None 128 Delta animation 108 Coplanar sweep 78, 122 Deltaconvert 110 Copy 124 Deltaplay 111, 112, 113 Costs 108, 129 Delta To IFF 114 Creating Delpth Screen 38 - Big Animations 97 Depth Recursion 47. 106 - Curves 75, 82, 121 Define Macro 28, 119 - Materials 118 Device input 17 - Objects 117 Direction 92 - Root 117 Direction Animation 117 Creation Display the 25, 99, 110 - Primitives 119 Display modes 6, 38, 125 - Tools 119 Display Redrawing Modes 100 - Lathe 30, 120 Distance 42 - Rectangular tube 120 Dither options 49 - Circular tube 31, 119 Dithering 7, 134 - Fence 32, 120 Divide operation 66, 126 - Pixeltool 34, 120 Drawlevel 127 - PAGE 139 - - All 127 Frame command 51 - Parent 127 Free form modeling 75 - Current 127 Free form objects building 77 Drawmode 127 Free form - Normal 127 - Create 121 - Reduced 127 - Curve 121 - None 127 - Spiral 121 - Parallel 121 Function E - Bending 85 Editing Point 75, 123 - Close 82 Editor 11, 13, 43, 51 - Direction 92 End Macro 119 - Invisible 103 End point 123 - Key 132 Eor operation 66, 125 - Macro 7 Execute Macro 119 - Memory management 108 Exit 119, 131 - Rotate 91 Explode 124 - Smoothen 104 Expose 88, 134 - Undo 109, 130 Exposing 92 Exposure Remove 95 Extend 124 G Gadget - Cancel 38, 60, 131 F - Infinite 104 Fast mode 48 - Scene 104 Fast rendering 7 Get memory 129 Features 4 Global bending 85, 123 Fence tool 32, 120 Glossary 134 File requester 27 Go to frame animation 117 Fill box 131 Gradient mapping 59 Flip 59 Greayscale options 49 Fog effects 5 Grid the 101, 102, 128 Forward 42, 88 Frame 43, 134 - Insert new 95 H - Move to 95 Hardware requirements 8 - Remove 95 Height Width and 47 Frame buffer support 52 Hierarchical 4, 19, 22 - PAGE 140 - Hl-shade options 50, 134 Linear bending 85, 123 Hollow 103 Load - Animation 94, 118 - Materials 63, 119 I - Object 27, 117 Iff-24 option 51 Local bending 85, 123 Increment 29, 33 Locate 124 Index 57 Logical operations 65 - Picture 57 - And (ab) 65 - Texture 57 - And not (ab) 65 Infinite 103, 105 - Divide (ab+ab) 66 Info 102, 129 - Eor (ab+ab) 66 - Device 103 - Obsecure-function 99 Input device 17 Look price 129 Insert animation 117 Insert new frames 95 Installation of the software 8 M Interlace 25, 37, 38 Macro 28, 134 Interlace options 49 - Animation 95 Invisible 103 - Define 28, 119 Invisible function 103 - Device 29, 96 - End 119 - Execute 29, 119 J - Modifications 29 Join function 80, 81, 122 Macro function 7 Mapping 134 - Angle 60 K - Bump 6, 59, 134 Keyboard support 132 - Clip 6, 58 Key functions 132 - Color 59 - Cylinder 58 - Flip 59 L - Gradient 59 Lamp creation 120 - No 0-col 58 Lampless mode 48 - Parallel 58 Lathe 30, 31, 120 - Special 6, 59 Lathe2 33, 120 - Spherical 58 Light - Spiral 58 - Speed of 35 - Textures 5, 57, 62 - Sources 6, 35, 36 - PAGE 141 - - Tile 59 Mouse The 13 Material functions 62 Move 15, 20, 123 Materials 5, 54, 134 Move to 124 - Create 118 Move to frame 95 - Modify 118 - Delete 63, 118 - Load 63, 119 N - Requester 55 Name 46, 55 - Properties of 5 No 0-col/Mapping 58 - Save 63, 118 No icons 130 - Select 57, 61 Normal mode 48 - Show 57 NTSC 25, 38 Measuring methods 101 Memory management functions 108 - Avail 129 O - Get 129 Object 14, 15, 135 Menu description 14, 117 Object hierarchy 16, 135 Meshes 77 Object oriented construction 4 - Join 81 Objects Mirror 124 - Create 117 Mode - Free form 77 - Display 7 - Load 27, 117 - Display Redrawing 100 - Modifying 24, 25 - Fast 48 - Saving 27, 117 - Lampless 48 Obscure 70 - Normal 48 Observer 97, 120 - Outline 49 Offset 130 - Shadowless 48 Offset point 135 Modes Open - Bending 122 - Curve 83 - Solid 131 - Mesh 83 - Wireframe 131 Open WBench 130 Medeling Free form 75 Operations 5, 125, 135 Modify 20, 123 - AND 65, 125 Modifying - AND NOT 65, 126 - Curves 82 - AND with paint 126 - Hierarchy 22 - AND NOT with paint 126 - Materials 135 - Boolean 5, 65, 135 - Meshes 77, 82 - Divide 66, 126 - Objects 24 - Eor 66, 125 - PAGE 142 - - Logical 65, 67 - Show 123 Options - Remove 121 - Autolight 49 Polygon 136 - Dither 49 - Tool 32, 120 - Greyscale 49 Polyhedron tool 32, 120 - Hl-shade 50 Position - Iff-24 51 - Aimpoint 41 - Interlace 49 Position-gadget 41 - Overscan 49 Preface 2 - Savemem 50 Preview Animation 95 - Single 49 Price - Targa 50 - Calculating 107 - Unshaded 63 - Look 129 Orbit - Set 129 - Animation 90, 118 Primitives 24, 119, 136 Orthogonal sweep 78, 122 Print 131 Outline mode 49 Program modules 4 Overlight 47 Projection 136 Overscan 135 Projects 117 - Options 49 Properties of surface 5, 104 Properties of materials 5 P Painting 62 R - Modify 125 Radial bending mode 122 Palette 37 Ratio Aspect 25, 38, 51 Pan 126 Ray Tracing 4, 136 Parallel 58 Rbox 43 - Free Form 121 Realplay 114 Picture 56, 135 Record 42 Pixel tools 34, 120 Rectangular tube creation 120 Pixeltool2 creation 120 Recursion depth 47 Play 43 Redraw 129 Play animation 118 Remap function 121 Point Remove - Delete 83 - Animation 118 - Deselect 123 - Exposure 95 - Editing 75, 123 - Frames 95 - Select 76, 123 - Points 121 - Select new 123 Rename 17, 124 - PAGE 143 - Render 51 Setting the grid 102 Rendering Fast 7 Shadowless mode 48 Rendering 136 Show - Techniques 6 - Animation 90 Replace wildcard 26 - Material 57 Representation 129 - Points 123 Reset 127 - Spline 121 Resize animation 94 - Texture 57 Resolution 47 Single option 49 Rethink 130 Size 124 Rewind 42, 88 - Animation 94, 118 Root 16 - Window 25, 38 - Create 117 Smooth 60, 82, 104 Rotation-function 91, 124 Smoothen function 121 Rotation Animation 117 Smoothly curved surfaces 4 Software installation 8 Solid 43 S Solid model 4, 45, 136 Save 42, 131 Solid mode 131 - Animation 94, 117 Sources - Materials 119 - Light 6, 35 Savemem options 50 - Brightness of light the 36 Saving objects 27, 117 Special mapping 6, 59 Scale Change the 99 Special tools 30 Scale in 126 Specular brightness 56 Scale out 126 Specularity 56 Scene-gadget the 104 Speed 4 Screen the 37, 42 Speed of light 56 Screen to back 131 Spherical 58 Screen depth 25, 38 Spiral 58 Script file 113, 115 - Free form 121 Sculpt To Real 116 Spline 136 Select 57 - Function show 121 Selection Start count 29, 96 - Materials 61 Standard limits 104 - Window 16 Starting the program 9 Selecting points 76 Stretch 124 Set box 131 Subdivide 84, 121 Set price 108, 129 Support Settings 126 - Animation 6 - PAGE 144 - - Frame buffer 52 - Tube 31, 119, 120 - Keyboard 132 Transparency 55, 136 Surface 104 True solid modeling 4 Sweep Tube tools 31 - Coplanar 78, 122 Turbidity 56 - Orthogonal 78, 122 Swing 122 Swinging 79 U/V Uncovered 103 Undo on 130 T Undo function the 109, 130 Targa options 50 Unshaded 60, 63 Tile 59 Vector graphics 137 Texture Visible range the 100 - Bump 59 - Clip 58 - Color 59 W - Flip 59 WBench close/open 130 - Gradient 59 Wildcard 125 - No 0 col 58 - Color 125 - Special 60 - Delete 125 - Tile 59 - Macro 125 Textures 136 - Replace 125 - Animated 6 Width and height 47 - Index 57 Wind 88 - Mapping 5, 57, 61 Window - Picture 57 - Editor 11 - Select 57 - Selection 16 - Show 57 - Size 25, 38 Tools Windows the 10 - Circular tube 119 Wire 51 - Conical tube 33, 120 - Add 129 - Creation 119 - Delete 129 - Fence 32, 120 - Draw 130 - Lathe 120 Wireframe mode 131 - Lathe2 33, 120 Wireframe model 41, 44, 137 - Pixel 34, 120 - Polygon 32, 120 - Polyhedron 32, 120 - Special 30 - PAGE 145 - ************************************************************************* THIS IS THE README FILE ON THE DISK !!!! ************************************************************************* Real 3D V 1.4 ------------- Thank you for purchasing Real 3D, the fastest and most impressive ray tracing software in the Amiga market. This file contains information about the new features not described in the manual. 24 Bit Real 3D supports 24 bit IFF ILBM texture maps. Textures Anti- The solid model screen menu bar contains one new function aliasing for antialiasing control. If the Prefs->No background antialiasing function is activated, antialiasing is not done with the background color. This special feature is usually needed when the computer generated image is genlocked with a video background. Note that animations created with earlier Real 3D versions may have this special anti-aliasing function active when loaded. Therefore, before rendering old animations check the state of this feature from the solid model screen menus. Info/ The new NOREFLECT - gadget can be used to speed up rendering, NOREFLECT when the scene contains many reflecting objects. If this object flag is set, then the object is not considered in the reflection calculations. More precisely, NOREFLECT objects may reflect but they are not reflected; they are not visible in reflections. A good example is a scene, where a golden, shiny logotype is floating above a chequered floor. If the logo has NOREFLECT property, then it reflects the floor, but the parts of the logo do not reflect each other. This is probably acceptable, because rendering speed may be even 10 times higher than with normal reflection calculations. Morphing The program contains two additional functions for key frame And Key animating: Morphing and Key framing. Morphing calculates the Framing frames between defined key frames by interpolating the shape of individual primitives. Free form primitives (polygon meshes) are interpolated pointwise, whereas other primitives are interpolated using their local coordinate systems. Morphing requires each key frame definition of the morphed object to have equally many points. For example, it is possible to morph between a small sphere and a big ellipsoid, but not between a sphere and a cube. To create an animation with morphing: - Create for example a polygon mesh. - Define the animation size (e.g. 50 frames). - Go to the frame 25 and expose the mesh in that frame. - Modify the mesh. You can use conventional linear modifi- cations such as stretch or rotate, but a polygon mesh may be point edited or bended as well. Do not use remap or any other modification, which changes the point count of the primitive. You may also create a new primitive with equally many points, expose it, delete the original one and rename the new one with the original name. - Define the next key frame in a similar way. - When all the desired key frames are defined, make sure that the mesh is active and select Projects->Animation->Morphing. - Define the frame interval during which the morphing happens, for example from the first frame to the last one. - Define the curvature parameter. The default value 5 produces quite smooth and nice interpolation between the key frames. Value 0 gives linear interpolation with rapid direction changes in key frames. Large values such as 15 produce 'exaggerated' point paths, even additional loops. - Click OK and wait until calculations are ready. The previous example shows, that key frames are defined using object exposing and only the current object is morphed. The morphing function searches all the frames inside the given frame interval and takes the frames in which the current object is exposed as key frames. After morphing, the current object is exposed in all the frames contained in the given frame interval. Therefore, if you want to morph again with different parameters, you must de-expose the frames which should not be used as key frames first. The actual key framing function does not interpolate individual points, only local coordinate systems. Therefore, it does not interpolate point editing and bending effects, only conventional linear modifications. It also works hierarchically if possible, producing correct tweening with complex animation hierarchies. Key framing function can be used in a similar way as the morphing function. For example, to animate a logo just define key frames by exposing, define logo position and orientation in the key frames an use the function. Nevertheless, hierarchical animations require some additional preparations which are described in the following example. To animate a robot arm: - Create the arm hierarchically. For example, the hand should be a subobject of the arm, and a finger should be a subobject of the hand. - To ensure that the program can find correct local coordinate systems, add a 3D wireframe to each hierarchical object level. For example, create an aim point, which has crosslike wireframe and add it to the object using Extras -> Representaton -> Add wire function. If you put these additional wireframes to the middle of the joints of the arm, they act as useful reference points, too. - Define the animation size, expose the arm in the desired key frames and modify the arm in the key frames. - Activate the arm, select Projects->Animation->Key framing and define the frame interval and the curvature. - Select OK and wait until key framing is done. Keyboard Two new functions can be activated from keyboard: 'Alt'-'s' Shortcuts jumps to the first frame of the animation and 'Alt'-'e' to the last frame. Attributes The two files Attributes and Realpref, which contain object & Realpref names, screen modes, the editor palette and other such information, are now combined in a single file RealEnv. PDrawToReal Util-drawer contains a program which converts Professional Draw clip and outline font files to Real 3D format. Professional Draw is a two dimensional vector drawing program from Gold Disk Inc. The conversion program creates Real 3D curve objects; with the flexible free form tools of Real 3D it is easy to create 3D objects from curve data. The converter offers easy to use method for high quality 3D font and logotype creation. Use the converter in the following way: - Start the program. - Define point density for output curves. The higher the density is, the smoother and better quality you get, but memory requirements grow respectively. The default value 3 is sufficient for most cases. - Select a clip or outline font file. - Define the name for the Real 3D file. Now the converter produces and saves a Real 3D animation file. - You can continue by selecting a new clip file or exit the program by selecting CANCEL. Sculpt- Point-editable polygonal surfaces created by SculptToReal ToReal conversion program can be smoothed using Phong shading. Smoothing can be activated using Info/SMOOTH flag. Deltaplay The Deltaplay animation player contains some new commands for background sound control. With these commands it is possible to control the Bars&Pipes Professional program of Blue Ribbon Soundworks Ltd. The commands are: V <n> sound on at n/50 seconds (or n/60 seconds in NTSC) V start the sound from beginning X sound off Y try to synchronize sound with animation frame rate Z sound synchronization off When using the commands, Bars&Pipes Professional must be running with Real 3D accessory. The accessory can be found from the disk 'Real2'; it is not copied to hard disk in hard disk installation. The same accessory also works with JAM!, a new interactive composition system from Blue Ribbon SoundWorks Ltd. If you are going to use the software from floppy disk instead of hard disk, copy the first disk, 'Real1', and rename it as 'Real'. After that, you can use the copy as a Real 3D work disk, which contains most material needed for using the sofware. ************************************************************************* CREDITS: DOX WRITTEN BY: DIRTYBUSH / DUAL CREW PICS DIGITIZED BY: D.E.M. +----------------[ D U A L C R E W BOARDS WORLDWIDE: ]---------------+ | | | GURU'S DREAM NODE 1 - 14.4 KBPS - 1 GB - +46 - 8 - 363425 (WHQ) | | GURU'S DREAM NODE 2 - 14.4 KBPS - - +46 - 8 - 368169 | | GURU'S DREAM NODE 3 - 14.4 KBPS - SOON - +46 - 8 - 369205 | | GURU'S DREAM NODE 4 - 14.4 KBPS - 2 GB - +46 - 8 - 369225 | | SYSOP: SNUSKBUSKE (DIRTYBUSH) | | | | EASTERN FRONT - 14.4 KBPS - 105 MB - +358 - 28 - 22834 | | SYSOP: HAKA | | | +-----------------------------------------------------[©1991 DUAL CREW]-+