3D Madness! Companion CD/3DMADNESS.iso/vistapro/wininst/manual/tutor1.txt

Text File | 1993-08-03 | 15KB | 340 lines

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Tutorial #1
Vistapro User Manual
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TUTORIAL #1 - THE BASICS


To use the following tutorials, Vistapro must be installed on
your hard drive. If this has not been done then refer to the
Installation instructions in Chapters 1 and 2.These tutorials
have been written with the idea that you will start at the
beginning and work your way down to the end. Descriptions will
be more extensive earlier on and become less extensive. The
idea being that the reader, through the use of Vistapro, is
increasingly familiar with the program. If you skip sections
and find something unclear, you will most likely find
clarification in an earlier section.


RUNNING VISTAPRO
----------------
To run Vistapro you will need to be at the DOS prompt. Change
to the hard drive that Vistapro was installed on by typing the
drive reference letter. For example:

C:

followed by pressing the ENTER key. Change to the Vistapro
directory by typing:

CD\VISTAPRO

followed by pressing the ENTER key. Next run Vistapro by
typing:

VISTAPRO

followed by pressing the ENTER key. You will be ready to start
when you see a screen with the gray Control Panels on the right
hand side and the empty green topographical map on the left.

A QUICK INTRODUCTION
--------------------
When Vistapro is first loaded, it starts out with a flat
landscape. Although it's not very interesting, let's take a
quick look at it. Locate the Render button at the lower left
hand corner of the Lower Control Panel. Move the mouse pointer
to the Render button. Press and release the left mouse button
to activate the Render button.

You should now see a sequence of status messages on the screen
in the blue area immediately above the topographic map. Exactly
what these messages mean is documented in Chapter 5 of this
manual -- for now just note that Vistapro needs to make some
calculations before drawing.

After a few seconds you should see the screen switch to the
View screen. At first it will be black, then you will see
Vistapro draw the sky and ground. Then it will draw the
landscape. If you look closely, off in the distance, you will
see a small pyramid. At the current settings (assuming you
haven't changed anything) the pyramid will be barely
discernible.

Well, it's not much too look at, but you just rendered your
first Vistapro image. To switch back to the Control Panels and
topographical map, just click on the left mouse button. Let's
go on to something more interesting.

LOADING A DEM LANDSCAPE
-----------------------
To load a landscape, position the mouse pointer over the Load
button at the top of the screen. Press and hold the left mouse
button. The Load Menu will drop down to reveal several options.
Move the mouse pointer (while still holding the left button) to
the first option, Load DEM, and release the button.

Now you should see the Vistapro Load DEM File Requestor. The
Vistapro File Requestor is used anytime a file is to be loaded
or saved. At the top of the Load DEM File Requestor is a button
labeled Load Vista DEM and a button labeled Abort.The Load
Vista DEM button is this File Requestor's confirm button.
Clicking on it means to go ahead and load the file. The label
on the confirm button varies depending on the File Requestor.

For example, if you were saving a DEM instead of loading it,
the button would read Save Vista DEM.The Abort button is used
to exit the File Requestor without taking an action. Clicking
on this with the mouse pointer means no file will be loaded (or
saved depending on the File Requestor).

Immediately below the confirm and Abort buttons are the
Directory:, Filename:, and Spec: text gadgets. The gadget is
the black box to the right of the description.The terms text
gadget and numerical gadget will be used throughout this
tutorial. A text gadget is a field that accepts text entered
using the keyboard and a numerical gadget accepts numbers. To
start entering information in a text or numerical gadget, click
on it with the mouse pointer. To end and have the information
accepted, press the ENTER key. To abort, press the ESC key. You
will not need to enter anything into these particular text
gadgets for this tutorial.

At the center bottom of the File Requestor is the Filename
Window. It will currently be displaying a list of directories
(the names with "(DIR)" in the right hand column) and possibly
some files ending with ".DEM". Look through the list until you
find the DEM directory. If there are more files than fit in the
window use the buttons to the right of the Filename Window to
scroll up and down the list.

The single up arrow button scrolls up one line and the single
down arrow button scrolls down one line. The three up arrows
scroll up one page and the three down arrows scroll down one
page.After you have located the DEM directory, position the
mouse pointer over it and click the left mouse button. You will
now be presented with a list of the DEM directory. You should
see a list of files ending with .DEM. You can scroll up and
down the list of files by using the up and down arrow buttons
as described earlier.

Find the file TUTORIAL.DEM and click on it. Notice that above,
in the Filename text gadget, is the name TUTORIAL.DEM. We could
have typed the file name directly into this filename text
gadget, but for small lists it's much faster to click on the
name with the mouse pointer. Click on the confirm button, which
is the button labeled Load Vista DEM at the top left of the
File Requestor.

The screen will switch back to the topographical map and
Control Panel and Vistapro will begin loading the landscape. It
could take several seconds to complete.

Once Vistapro is finished loading the landscape, you will see a
topographical view of the landscape in the box near the left
side of the screen.

The topographic map is colored by elevation. Dark greens
represent the lowest altitudes, browns represent the middle
altitudes, and gray-whites are the highest. Move your mouse
pointer over the landscape. Notice that the X, Y, and Z figures
in the Status Window (located above the topographical map)
change. The X and Y values represent the location of the
pointer on the map, and the Z value represents the elevation of
the terrain under the pointer.

SETTING CAMERA AND TARGET LOCATIONS
-----------------------------------
When you first rendered the flat landscape at the beginning of
this tutorial, you used the default camera and target position.
Let's take a look at moving your viewpoint.

If you look at the very top of the topographical map, you will
see a little black box. This is your camera position on the
landscape. At the very bottom of the map you will see a little
black plus (+). This is your target position (the point your
camera will be aimed at).

Look at the X, Y, and Z gadgets located below the Camera button
on the Upper Control Panel. The values in these gadgets
represent the location of your camera on the landscape.

To move the Camera position, click on the Camera button. Move
the mouse pointer over to the topographic map to where you
would like to be standing if you were taking a picture. When
you have found this point, click once with the left mouse
button to set the camera location. You will notice that the
little black box is now at the location you selected.

If you would like to be above the surface, as if on a tall
ladder, click on the numerical gadget below the Camera button
and to the right of the Z button. Enter the altitude (height of
your camera on the ladder) and press the ENTER key. This raises
you up off of the surface, but leaves you in the same location.
You may also lower the camera by entering a smaller value.

Now you need to tell the camera which way to be pointing when
taking the picture. This is done by clicking on the Target
button with the left mouse button, and then positioning the
mouse to the point at which you want to aim the camera, and
clicking the left mouse button again. You can change the
vertical position of the target in the same way you did with
the camera.

Let's pick a point to look at. If you have been following this
tutorial from the beginning, the landscape TUTORIAL.DEM should
already be loaded and displayed in the topographical map.

This landscape has five distinctive objects. Two at the top,
one in the middle, and two at the bottom. Most landscape will
not look like this, but this landscape was made especially for
this tutorial. Also the sky color has been turned off in order
to speed up rendering time.

Click on the Camera button. Now click on the blue square in the
middle of the landscape. Your camera X, Y, and Z position are
set.

Look at the Z value under the Camera button. You'll notice that
it is 30. When setting a camera location, Vistapro will set the
Z value to 30 meters above the landscape. In this case the
landscape under the camera was 0 meters (above sea level).
Let's lift the camera up a bit higher. Click on the Z numerical
gadget under the Camera button and press the number 5 followed
by pressing the ENTER key. The Z position of the camera should
now be 530.

To set the target, click on the Target button and then click on
the oddly shaped object at the top left hand corner. You are
now ready to produce your initial rendering.

VIEWING FROM YOUR CAMERA POSITION
---------------------------------
Right below the word "Poly" on the Middle Control Panel you
will find four buttons. They are "1", "2", "4", "8". These
buttons are used by Vistapro to determine the size of the
polygons used to draw the landscape. Only one can be selected
at a time. If you just want to get an idea of your camera
position, click on the "8" button. This will cause Vistapro to
use large polygons and fewer of them. As you can see, the
larger the "Poly" setting, the less detail the image will have.
The advantage of less detail is more speed.

Another way to decrease rendering time is to click on the
LckPal button located on the Middle Control Panel. This will
prevent Vistapro from calculating a new color palette (which
can be time consuming) each time it renders a picture. Before
rendering your final image, you will want to unlock the color
palette (click on LckPal again) so that Vistapro will calculate
the best colors to use for the image.

Let's take a quick look at the landscape, click on the "8"
button. Click on the LckPal button, just to speed things up.
Now click on the Render button, and wait while Vistapro renders
the landscape.

As you can see, the landscape looks very blocky, but it gives
you an idea of your camera position. Return to the
topographical map and Control Panel screen by clicking the left
mouse button. At this point, you can change your camera and
target positions as outlined above, and re-render until you
have the camera position that you like. Once you like the
camera position, select a smaller "Poly" setting and then click
on the Render button.

Try rendering using each of the "Poly" settings. You will
notice that a "Poly" setting of "1" can take a bit of time to
render. That's why it's a good idea to use the larger and
faster setting to fine tune your camera position.

If you want to abort a rendering in progress, simply press the
ESC key.

ADJUSTING THE CAMERA LENS
-------------------------
Your imaginary camera also has an imaginary lens. To zoom in,
or out, click on the Lens button on the Middle Control Panel.
Once you click on the Lens button, you will notice that the
Lower Control Panel switches to become the Lens Lower Control
Panel. There are two buttons located on this Panel:

   * Wide
   * Zoom

The Wide button is the default selection and has a focal length
similar to a wide angle lens on a real camera.

Click on the Zoom button. Now click on the Main button to get
the Lower Control Panel back. Click on the Render button.
Notice that the object (mound) is now larger.

Click the left mouse button to return to the Control Panels.
Click on the Lens button again. At the bottom of the Lens
Control Panel, you'll notice a numeric gadget. This contains
the zoom value. This value can be changed for a custom zoom
value. The larger the number, the greater the magnification.

MAKING A "SMOOTHER" IMAGE
-------------------------
When rendering a landscape, even at Polygon size "1", you will
often see small triangles in the close up portions of the
picture. This is because the USGS data used to make the
Vistapro DEM files is made up of elevation points that are
about 30 meters apart. When that distance is more than 1 pixel
wide, then that point in the landscape will render as a
triangular block. There are several methods of hiding these
blocks when rendering.

Blend
-----
Blending smooths the changes in color from polygon to polygon,
causing the small polygons to be less apparent, especially in
the distance. To use blending, click on the Blend button, on
the Middle Control Panel, before you render a picture. The
button will remain depressed until you again click on it to
disable it.

Gouraud Shading
---------------
Gouraud Shading smooths the boundary between polygons, making
it much less apparent that they are even there. It also
eliminates sharp transitions from one color to another, giving
the image more of the quality of an artist's rendition. Gouraud
Shading may be enabled by pressing the GShade button, in the
Main Lower Control Panel, before rendering a picture. The
button will remain depressed until you again click on it to
disable it.

Dither
------
There are two methods of dithering available with Vistapro. The
first, using the Dither button causes a blending of the
elevation colors, reducing the sharpness of the snow and tree
lines. This can be changed by clicking on the numerical gadget
below the word Dither in the Middle Control Panel, and entering
a new value. Larger values result in more dithering, smaller
values result in less dithering.

The second method is called pixel dithering, mixing slightly
different colored pixels to simulate more colors. This can be
set by clicking on the numerical gadget below the PDthr button
on the Main Lower Control Panel, and entering a new value.
Larger values result in more dithering, smaller values result
in less dithering. You can add so much dithering so as to make
the image entirely unrecognizable.

EXPERIMENT
----------
Spend some time experimenting with the features we have
discussed. Try changing your camera and target location and
rendering at different "Poly" levels with the different
blending features. After you have a good feel for the operation
of the program, go on to the next tutorial.


*** End of Tutorial #1 ***