3.1.3 View Menu
The View menu provides control over several Viewer options
affecting the display independent of the Viewer input.
3.1.3.1 Layout
The Layout button lets you select between one, two, or four 3D
viewers. All viewers will be placed inside a common window using a default
layout. If you want to create an additional viewer in a separate window,
choose Extra Viewer. You may create even more viewers using the
Tcl command viewer <n> show. Starting from n=4, viewers will be
placed in separate windows.
3.1.3.2 Background
The Background button lets you select between the three background
styles Uniform, Gradient, Checkerboard. The effect
becomes immediately visible, independent of the scene being displayed.
Two different background colors are used by the gradient and the
checkerboard background. The option Swap colors lets you interchange
these colors. The option Reset colors resets the default background
colors (which are a dark blue and a very light blue).
In order to change the background color via the command interface use the
viewer commands viewer <n> setBackgroundColor and viewer <n>
setBackgroundColor2. The command interface also allows you to place an
arbitrary raster image into the viewer background (see
Section 3.1.6, viewer commands).
3.1.3.3 Transparency
The Transparency button controls the way of calculating pixel values
with respect to object transparencies during the rendering process.
- Screen Door:
Transparent surfaces are approximated using a stipple pattern.
- Add:
Additive alpha blending.
- Add Delay:
Additive alpha blending with two rendering passes. Opaque objects
come first and transparent objects come second.
- Add Sorted:
Like Add Delay, but transparent objects are sorted by
distances of bounding box centers from the camera and are rendered
in back to front order.
- Blend:
Multiplicative alpha blending.
- Blend Delay:
Multiplicative alpha blending with two rendering passes. Opaque
objects come first and transparent objects come second.
- Blend Sorted:
Like Blend Delay, but transparent objects are sorted by
distances of bounding box centers from the camera and are rendered
in back to front order.
3.1.3.4 Lights
The Lights menu lets you activate different light settings for the
3D viewer. By default, the viewer simply uses a single headlight, i.e.,
a directional light pointing in the same direction as the camera is
looking. This setting may be restored using the Standard option. Two
more options, Blue-Red and Fancy, let you activate other
light settings.
At any time, additional lights can be created via the Create light
option. Except for the viewer's default headlight, all lights are
represented by little blue icons in the Object Pool, just like ordinary
data objects or modules. Any hidden light icons are listed at the end of
the Lights menu (and not in the Edit Show submenu). In order
to make all hidden light icons visible, use the Show all icons option.
For more information about lights, please refer to the
Reference Section of this manual.
3.1.3.5 Fog
The Fog button introduces a fog effect into the displayed scene and
controls how opacity increases with distance from the camera. The fog
effect will only be seen on a uniform background. More fine tuning is
provided by the fogRange Viewer command.
- None:
No fog effect (default).
- Haze:
Linear increase in opacity with distance.
- Fog:
Exponential increase in opacity with distance.
- Smoke:
Exponential squared increase in opacity with distance.
3.1.3.6 Axis
The Axis button creates an Axis module named
GlobalAxis which immediately displays a coordinate frame in the
viewer window. This button is a toggle, so clicking on it again
deletes the GlobalAxis module and removes the coordinate frame
from the viewer window. The axes will be centered at the origin of the
world coordinate system. You may also create local axes by selecting
the appropriate entry from a data object's popup menu.
3.1.3.7 Fading effect
The Fading effect toggle lets you switch on a fading effect which is
applied to all kinds of scene movements. Before a new image is rendered
only a certain fraction of the background will be cleared. In this way
older images remain visible until they fade out after a while. Note that
this mode requires single buffer rendering, and therefore, flickering may
be visible in some cases.
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