Virtual Reality Homebrewer's Handbook/vr.iso/claywork/help.txt

Text File | 1996-03-19 | 9KB | 311 lines

^UClayWorks on-line help.^U

Topics:

i.   Basics/General info..
ii.  Drawing functions..
iii. File Functions..
iv.  Selection/editing functions..
v.   Memory..
iv.  Credits & contact info..


^uBasics/General info..^u

Drawing in 3d can be tricky, in
writing Clay, I have tried to
make it as as easy as possible.
On startup you have a display
showing a menubar along the top
of the screen, a palette of
drawing tool icons (also accesable
using the 'edit' menu), a palette
box (double click on a colour to
edit it) and a central display
containing 4 windows. These show
the object as you are editing it
and all but the perspective
window (bottom-right) can be used
to create new shapes.
A range of function specific to
the current drawing mode will
appear at the top of the screen.
The perspective window can show
objects in several drawing modes
from plain dots to gouraud shading,
all in realtime. Surfaces are only
visible in this window, the editing
window just views the wireframe
representation.

The first tool you must master is
the 3d cursor. This is visible in
all 4 windows as a red cross. To
move it, hold down the right mouse
button in any of the 3 editing
windows and move the mouse around.
The cursor will follow the movement
in all of the windows. The 3
editing windows show the object flat
along a 2d-plane and are therefore
missing one dimension each, the
cursor is used to make up for that
missing dimension. For example,
select the drawing mode 'Square'.
To draw a square you must click and
drag the mouse in any of the editing
windows. Try this and then try to
move the cursor so that it at a
'deeper' position. Now draw another
square in the same plane as before.
That is all you need to do to draw
in 3d.
  The other basic tool is the select
tool. The icon for this is the
little mouse cursor in the top-left
of the tool box. Try clicking on a
node (the white squares inbetween
the lines), holding down the mouse
and draging it around.
Now try draging a box over a number
of nodes. A bounding box should appear.
You can use this to move, resize and
copy selected nodes, lines and surfaces.
To make a copy of the selected items
simply move the box and click the right
button as well as the left, you should
leave a copy under the mouse cursor.
There are 3 different selection modes:
move/resize, rotate and deform. Select
these different modes using the list
displayed at the top of the screen.
If you click on 'extrude' then when you
copy a selection, lines and surfaces will
connect between the old selection and the
copy. The box containing a number donates
the amount of copies you create in one
use of the copy function.
You can make multiple selections by
holding down 'Alt' when selecting and to
select only a subset of the current
selection, hold down 'Ctrl' (that has no
effect when nothing is selected).
  Another point to node is that the
centre of the editing space is shown by
a red 'X'.

^uDrawing Functions^u

^uSquare:^u
Simply click and drag in any of the editing
windows. The surface of the square is
realized as a double sided polygon in the
current foreground colour.

^uCube:^u
Draw as above. The depth of the cube is
taken from the width. All polygons are
single sided.

^uDot:^u
Simply creates a single node with no
polygon or wireframe connections.

^uLine:^u
Not yet implemented.

^UCone:^u
Creates a cone with a base (all
polygons are single sided, if you go
inside the cone you will not see surfaces,
see 'Selection/editing functions..' to find
out how to make surfaces double sided).
The base can be any equalatrial polygon
with 3 to 30 sides.

^uCircle^u
Not actually a circle but again, an
equalatrial polygon with 3 to 30 sides.
Surface is double sided as default.

^uSphere^u
The number selector controls the amount
of segements and the number of sides on
each segment of the spherical shape.

^uRoted form^u
You need to make a selection first.
You can then draw a circle using the
current selection as a 'brush'.

^uGrid^u
Creates a grid with the X and Y counts
specified using the two number box's.

^uText^u
Enter text into the grey box at the top
of the screen and click in an editing
window. If a font is loaded, text will
appear at that point. To load a font,
goto the font menu and select 'load
font'. Fonts are Borland '.CHR'
stroked font files.
NB. Borland fonts are wireframe and
therefore no surfaces are created
when a font is drawn. You can give
them depth, however with the 'extrude'
tool.

^UFile Functions^U
ClayWorks allows you to load, save and
append files in a number of formats,
these formats are as follows:

'.3d' :Clayworks internal format.
'.RWX':RenderWare scripting format.
'.POV':Pov scene file- now works!.
'.OBJ':Simple triangle format.
'.PLG':Avril/Rend386 single object.

Saving in these formats will work fine
but in some cases I am only able to
parse a subset of the original file
when loading and/or some detail might be
comprimized in converting these files to
ClayWorks' internal representation. (eg,
definitions of primatives will be
converted to surfaces and saved as such,
so keep a copy of your original objects).

^uSelecting/editing functions^u
There are serveral useful tools in the
select menu.
  Clear simply delselects any selected
nodes. Delete will remove any selected
nodes and any polygons or lines and
touch them. Merge will combine all the
selected nodes.
  The 'Flip' menu will flip the selection
in any of the 3 axis.
  The 'Polygons' menu is concearned only
with surfaces. To see any changes, you
will need to have the 3d window on a
surface viewing mode (hidden line upto
gouraud).
  Double sided will make all the surfaces
selected visible from both sides, single
sided will render them invisible when they
point away from you. 'Flip normals' will
change the direction in which a surface is
visible (a normal is a line that sticks
out perpendicular to a surface). Delete
will remove all selected surfaces. Apply
colour will paint to current foreground
colour on all selected surfaces.

^UThe surface dialog^U
Does a similar job to the 'apply attrib'
menu (setting the colour and attrib flags
for the polygons) but you can also change
the RGB/HSV value of the colours by double
clicking on the pallete. The default
attributes are set by the toggle buttons at
the top of the dialog.

^UViewing the object^U
The 3d window is used to view the object
in a slightly fuller way than the drawing
windows. The display is still a little
primative (16 colours is very limiting)
but it shows the important attribute
modes of the polygons -wireframe,
solid and gouraud shaded. This view is
not yet  light source shaded but it does
gives a running indication as to the
final appearance of the object. Using
the program 'Viewer' (or a commercial
viewer) you can see the object fully
shaded form. The viewer program will
soon be intergrated into ClayWorks.

^UMemory^U
The current version of ClayWorks does not
use extended memory. Future versions will
use 32-bit memory access (no need for an
ems-driver) but until then, memory is tight.
Large objects can be edited in Clay
nonetheless but memory might run short if
a large font is loaded and/or many devices
are running.

^UCredits and contact info^U

ClayWorks is written by myself, Tim Lewis
in Turbo Pascal 7 and tasm assembler.
A portable C++ version is in development
and should be complete by 1996.
ClayWorks uses Twin, an object
orientated fully functional multi-tasking
(if non- preemptive) GUI. ClayWorks has
existed in one form or another since 1992.
The original version was written in
Archamidies interperated Basic! It has
improved since then.

ClayWorks is distributed by Imaginative
Entertainment and is copyright
T.Lewis 1992-1995.

Credits:

My friends and family for being
supportive and making sure I get out
and enjoy myself, Lancaster Uni for having
internet access, the bar-staff at Grizedale
bar for doing cheap Guiness, Chuck Durham
and Zach for their kind words and general
interest in my work, Todd Porter for his
help and again, interest in my work (his
is pretty good too, check it out), to
Borland international for doing a good job
of Pascal 7, my bike for taking me to campus
each day, Autodesk for providing a goal to
try and outperform and underpice (I wish
the former but can manage the latter)
Richard F. Ferraro for writing 'Programers
guide to the EGA and VGA cards', Alan Watt
for the book '3d computer Graphics',
Gorsinon College, Swansea for getting me
interested in programming 4 years ago but
_not_ for chucking me off the network there!
To Tom Rodden and the rest of Lancaster
computing dept for being a freindly and
understanding lot and to all the people
that developed the 3d maths, shading
techniques and whatever else that I have
used in this software. Finally, to all
those kind people who have spotted errors
and kept on nagging me to get them fixed.
Carry on doing so, please!

^UContact info^U

Please contact me at this email
address:

[e-mail]

and at this snail mail address:

Tim Lewis, Grizedale college,
Lancater uni, Lancaster,
North England, Britain,
LA14YU.