Artlantis 4™ Demo Script

Note : Each camera view belongs to a separate Artlantis 4 feature.

1 – Full Radiosity

As you can see in the preview window in the upper-right hand corner of the screen, the demonstration begins with a view for which the radiosity is unchecked. Explain that the scene is displayed in pure ray-tracing with direct light only. As a consequence, parts without direct light will stay totally black. For a realistic view of the project with indirect lighting, Artlantis integrates the real time radiosity feature.

Activate the radiosity in the toolbar by checking the Radiosity option.

2 – Autolight adjustment

Artlantis can automatically balance the intensity and adjust the tone of the light. If some lamps are turned on in a room during the daytime, they wonʼt be visible from outside of the building. The sun being more powerful than the lamps, it will take over the lighting of the scene and the lamps will lose their effect.

To show this, go to the Heliodon inspector and play with the time of day slider. By setting it to night, the lamps will show their effect inside the building.

3 – Sky simulation

Instead of images, users can choose the 3D sky for background. It will simulate a very realistic, natural sky with clouds evenly lit in the entire scene.

Activate the clouds in the Heliodon inspector and play with the sliders. You will show the four different types of clouds, and their distribution on a 360° sky dome by rotating the camera in different directions.

You will also show the position of the sun based on a time of the year, or themanual positioning. Grab the sun in the sky and drag it toward the horizon to simulate the sunset.

4 – Integrated PP

Show the different effects of the integrated post process. These settings wonʼt change the rendering time at all, and they allow you to make personalized renderings.

Open the Post Process palette by clicking on this icon in the upper – right-hand corner of the Perspectives inspector:

5 – Tones

Show the Tone Settings: - The Light Tones slider will help you to avoid the burn-out effect on bright surfaces, while the Dark Tones slider will brighten up those parts of the image which are too dark.

6 – Shader editor

On this outdoor scene you will explain the different settings of shaders. These are the points to follow:

With a right click on the shader in the preview window, you will get a contextual menu and choose: Create Shader from... Show the palette of this function. In version 4, the shader parameters can be completed with the Fresnel transition.

7 – New Fresnel Shader

Artlantis 4 offers a new type of shader, the “Diffuse Fresnel” shader. It is part of the basic Artlantis catalog and it can be found in the Shaders > Surface folder. The Fresnel transition slider will set the transition between the diffuse color of the surface and reflection. Show how it works on the car.

8 – Horizontal Texture

From now on you can make textures follow the horizontal direction when they are mapped on gable roofs. This option can be chosen from the list of mapping types.

9 – Explode by Mesh

Open the shader inspector and click on the building from the preview window. The whole volume is set with the same material. Artlantis 4 allows you to explode mesh geometries.

In our case, each door, window, or frame will get an individual material. To explode it, right click on the building and choose the “Split Material by Mesh” command.

Drag and drop shaders on different surfaces to show their separation.

10 – Rich media

In addition to the basic catalog containing library parts for Artlantis, Abvent offers a wide range of additional media adapted to different professions.

Show these additional media, such as the 3D trees with an optimized geometry and changing aspect based on the heliodon date, or the beautiful cars available on different DVDs, the collection of shaders including the Cultured Stone CD, or the billboards.

Users can see the content of each media CD on the internet at www.artlantis.com.

Some of the objects in the Objects folder of the loaded Media, are samples coming form one of these CDs. Drag them into the scene. Explain thatthey will automatically detect the surfaces and the depth, so they will always remain scaled.

11 – Gravity Dupplication

From now on, we can duplicate trees by taking into account the gravity. Open the 2D window and select the trees on the hill. Hold down the Alt + Shift keys on your keyboard and drag a line representing the direction of the duplication. Click on the + or - signs to adjust the number of copies, then hit Enter.

12 - IES lights

This view will allow you to show the different light types for spots.You need to open the Light inspector and choose the light called “spot_IES” from the drawer. Change the default 360° angle to 120° and you will get a spotlight. Show the different types of fall-off and play with the power slider if necessary.

13 – Layers

Here you will need to show several things:●Automatic and manual placement of media; ●Visibility by View ●Layer management: create and delete layers;

A : Automatic and manual placement of mediaThe placement of media is set to automatic mode by default. As a result, trees will be placed into the “3D Plants” layer, objects into the “Objects” layer, or objects with light sources into the “Light Objects.”If we un-check the “Auto” check box, we switch to the manual mode, and we must choose the destination layer.

B : Visibility by viewPlace some objects (trees and people) in front of the house. Show how quickly you can make these objects “disappear” from view. The visibility of layers can be set in the Perspective views inspector.Please note, that a hidden layer will stay invisible in the final rendering, too. If you wish to have trees in the final rendering, you will need to set visible, for example, the “Plants 3D” layer before launching the final calculation.

C : Create and delete layersShow that you can create a new layer by clicking on this button: And you can delete it with the “Delete layer” button:

14 – Transparency

Sometimes architects like to present plants and billboards half transparent in order to show more of the building, the core subject of a presentation. You can show this new feature by selecting the 3D plants and billboards one by one, and moving the “Transparency” slider in the inspector.

15 – Parallel Views

Being in Parallel Views, you can quickly and easily create plan views for example:

16 – Panoramas

The panorama function has evolved in Version 4 of Artlantis. The goal is to show how to create a panorama with multiple nodes in no time.

First step: create a new node. Open the 2D window, hold down the Alt key on your keyboard and drag a copy of the existing node.

Second step: link the nodes. This joint will allow the navigation between views in the final panorama. To do it, select a node in the 2D window, click somewhere inside its circle and drag the mouse toward the other node you wish to link with.

A line will appear between the two nodes showing that they are linked.

Show the panorama example you can find in the demo file folder.

Plan views can also serve for navigation in panoramas. To create these plans, you need to do the following: 1 - create a plan view in Parallel views 2 - activate the Clipping Box if you wish to see more than one level of the building 3 - Name your plan view 00.jpg 4 - Put the final renderings into the “special” folder of the calculated panorama5 - When you open the panorama again, (.html) a new icon representing a plan will appear6 - If you wish to add more floor plans to the navigation, create new parallel view called 01.jpg , 02...03 etc...

17 - VR Object

This presentation mode works the same as before. The final result will be a QuickTime movie where the camera moves around a point.

18 – Animation

The last chapter of the presentation is about creating animations in Artlantis.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Switch to Open GL mode first with the help of this button in the upper right-hand side corner of the preview window.

Why do we use the Open GL mode instead of the radiosity?

It's simple: when reviewing an animation in radiosity mode, the preview will be refreshed automatically at each frame and the result won't be clear on the screen. The Open GL mode avoids this problem, so it's good to activate it right at the beginning.

A- Camera animation

You'll need to create a path for the camera. To do so, open the camera inspector and the 2D window.

Activate the Edit Path mode:

Once activated, drag the red dot representing the camera from its start point to its end point.

The path has been created and you can easily modify it with the help of the tangents. Show how you can add new control points and tangents to distort the path even more: make a right click on the path and choose Add Control Point. Close the Edit Path mode after you finished editing.

B – Animate a person

To do it, open the Object Inspector.

You will find an animated people sample in the basic catalog of Artlantis. Drag and drop it over the asphalt. It doesn’t have a path yet, however, it is already animated. The list of behaviors from its inspector is set to “talk” mode. You can choose from three different behaviors and the slider below allows you to preview the animation.

To add a path, you will need to make the same steps as for cameras. Stay in the object inspector and open the 2D window. Open the “Edit Path” function from the toolbar. Drag the object from its initial position into its final position.

A rubber line will appear that you can edit with the help of the tangents. As soon as you finished, close the “Edit Path” mode.

As soon as the path was assigned to the object, the list of behaviors changes to “walk”. The animated people object will move along its new path.

In the behavior list, the “run” option too appears, too.

C – Animation de l'Heliodon

To do it, you will need to open the Heliodon inspector.

Drag the camera to the start position on the Time Line and turn on the recording mode.

To reach the end point of the sequence, click on this button:

The goal is to enter the date and hour of the final moment of our sequence. Artlantis saves the different information for the beginning and end of the sequence and it will extrapolate the values between these two dates.

You need to decide the date and hour for the end of the sequence. In our example, we will simply change the hour to 11PM to show the passage between the day and night.

D - Water and clouds animation.

To animate clouds, open the Heliodon inspector and Advanced palette with the help of this

button:

All you have to do is check the Wind option, choose a direction and an intensity.

To animate the water surface, open the Fresnel water shader settings in the inspector. Check the Animation check box and set the intensity of the motion.

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At the end of the presentation, ask the audience to download the evaluation version of Artlantis from www.artlantis.com.