OpenFX Tutorials

8/13/2019 OpenFX Tutorials

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OpenFX Tutorials

http://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/index.html

This page contains a list of tutorials which all give simple step by step instructions withcorresponding screenshots. A wide range of design and animation techniques will build up in this

section which should culminate in a comprehensive 'manual of excellence' :) These tutorials are

now available in more languages than just english - a list of available languages is displayed atthe top of each tutorial.

Developer Documentation

Details of how to write plugins are described here

Contributing

If you feel you can explain a method of using OpenFX to create a building block technique that

will be useful to others, please submit screenshots and brief step by step instructions of your

tutorial toStuart.

Animator tutorials

Using paths to define actor movement

Step 1
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In designer make a path using the pen tool. Step 2

In the file menu go to Export Model > Path and save the path object as a closed path.

Step 3

Make a object that will move along the path and save it.

Step 4

Now in Animator in the Add actor menu and select path. Click on Filed.. and choose the path you make
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earlier in Designer. Step 5

In the Add Actor menu select object and choose the follow object you created earlier.

Step 6

Set your animation length Ctrl+L or Frame >

Set Animation Length in the menu bar. For

this example have 30 frames. Note for paths towork, your animation must have more than 3

frames.

Step 7

Select the follow object and double click onthe position time line for the object at frame 1.

This will open the Movement Timeline for

Model1 Actor.
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Step 8

In the dialog box press select in the follow

information box and select the path object.

Back in the main dialog box make sure the'follow' check box is checked, see opposite.

That's it. Have fun.

Download resource fileshere

Tutorial written byAndrew Heyworth

Animating a skeletal structure

Step 1

Make a tube object in designer. This will be a basic arm which will have a skeleton applied to it, so scale

and proportion it to look something like an arm.

To help with modelling use the subdivided tool (Ctrl+V) to add more detail to selected verticies.

Step 2

Now to add the joints with a basic skeletal frame. The skeleton is just a set of joints attached to selected
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vertices which will modify the mesh when moved. Step 3

With nothing selected, select Edit > Skeleton > Build joints. This will open a floating tool bar. Hover over

each of the buttons in the floating menu will give you a brief description.

Select move and click on the root joint (this is the initial joint) it's the small yellow box. Reposition it at

the top of the arm mesh.

Think of the root as the shoulder, which in this exercise do not need to move.

Step 4

Now select build in the floating tool bar. Click on the root and with the left mouse button still held down

drag the pointer to the middle of the mesh and let go of the mouse button. A dialog box will open

prompting you for a name for the new joint you just made. Call it elbow.

Step 5
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Do the same as above but click on the elbow joint and drag down to the end of the mesh. Call this joint

hand.

Step 6

With the joints made and in position we can

attached the separate joints to the necessary

vertices. Close the build joints menu and openthe Hierarchy Joints floating menu. Select the

elbow joint in the hierarchy window. In the

rear window lasso the top three rows ofvertices (see opposite). Go back to the

hierarchy menu and press attach. This will

assign the selected vertices to the elbow joint.

You can now deselect these vertices bypressing deselect.

Step 7

Do the same for the hand joint but this time

select the bottom two rows of vertices (seeimage).

Save your newly make arm and go intoanimator.

Step 8

Set animation length to 30 frames and load the

newly created object as a robot.
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Step 9

With the robot loaded insert a key frame in therobots costume time line at frame 15. Make

sure the keyframer window is open so that you

can see the time line ( press 'k' to openkeyframer). In the camera view press on the

Go To Frame button and enter 15. This is the

newly created key frame for your arm which isrequired before you can modify the mesh with

your skeleton.

Remember a costume keyframe has to be madeand the Go To Frame has to be on that frame

before you can use the skeleton.

Step 10

Select the robot actor by pressing 'a' andclicking on robot1. Press 'v' this will display

the robot view. In the robot hierarchy window

select the hand joint and rotate it about the y

axis in any view port this will create a keyframe pose for your object.

To create the effect of the object bending insert

a key frame at 2 without repositioning any of

the joints and follow steps 9-10.

Support files are availablehere.

http://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/armskeleton/step-9.jpghttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/armskeleton/skeleton-tutorial.ziphttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/armskeleton/skeleton-tutorial.ziphttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/armskeleton/skeleton-tutorial.zipmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/armskeleton/step-10.jpghttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/armskeleton/step-9.jpghttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/armskeleton/step-10.jpghttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/armskeleton/step-9.jpgmailto:[email protected]://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/armskeleton/skeleton-tutorial.zip


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Step 1

In this tutorial we will use look at one aspect of saving a template motion for a robot actor so that it can

be used and applied in compound character animations.

We will begin with a model of a man that can be made to move using the built in skeleton. If you look at

the image you will see the skelton inside the arms and legs etc. Note also the skeleton extends beyond

the rear of the figure. The purpose of this skeleton is to allow the figure to turn, pivot, bend rise and fall.

In order to use this model as a robot in the animation we will need to be able to move it in these ways.

In this tutorial we will make a very short animated sequence that represents the figure taking one step

as part of a walking aniamtion. Once we have the sequence we will save it as an animated sequence that

can be imported and combined.

Step 2

We start by opening the animator and insterting our figure as a robot actor. We are just going to use this

animation to set up the repeat sequence required to make the man take one step. To do this we will

move the camera and the camera target so that we can see the whole figure from the side. It also might

be a good idea to add a second camera at the front of the man watching how he moves from side to

side.

In building a walking sequence there are two aspects that we will need to consider. Firstly the
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movement of the man's arms, legs and body. And secondly how the whole man moves forward as he

takes his step. He will also rise up a little as he takes his steps. To achive this we will need to create key

frames for the movement of the man and for the change of pose of the man.

The walking sequence will requre 30 frames per step. To go through the step will require 5 keyframes

and 5 poses. We will also use 5 keyframes in the movement timeline.

Step 3

An important part of the walking action is that the movement (forward) of the figure as he takes his step

matched the movement. (So that he doesn't look like he is moonwalking!) we find that adding a ground

plane and several Target actors can help in this process.

The image in this step illustrates the keyframer with the keyframes for pose and for position. The main

task now is to "Do the Walk". This will take a bit of work and adjustment and a little artistic skill in

'posing the robot' and positioning it. To help with this, the tutorial includes post files for each key frame

in the sequence. These files are then used in turn p1.pze,p2.pze,p3.pze,p4.pze,p1.pze (the last post is

the same as the first to allow for cyclic animation.

Step 4

To load the poses, select the Robot actor (click on its hold point) and engage the vertex tool, this will

show the 3D Pose window and the Skeleton Hierarchy view. Using the hierarchy view the pose for the


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robot can be loaded for each key frame in turn. Step through each keyframe using the buttons below

the camera window the pose is loaded into the active keyframe, i.e. that frame is indicated below the

camera window.)

Step 5

To get the required movement takes a bit of time and some trial and error. Once the character's poses

look correct, you can move the character in the direction of walk to get a good looking relationship

between the start of the step and the end.

Step 6

Now that the animation has been

created we have to save the sequence

so that it can be used in as many

animation as we need this man towalk. We shall see in other tutorials

that we can load this sequence into

longer animations and tell the man towalk along paths of any shape.

(Making Character animation much

easier to achive.) N.B. Do not confusethese types of sequences with the

sequences that OpenFX can export to

a special OFX program that builds

animations for the "Virtools" virtual

reality simulator software.

Double click on the Robot actor's root

node (the hold point.) This ishighlighted in green on the enlarged

snapshot. The Costume Information

dialog will pop up. In this dialog click


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on the Export button and save thewalking sequence as an .RSQ file (a

Robot SeQuence). We will be able to

use this robot sequence in anyanimation where the man is walking.

Step 7

If you want a complete spectrum of

actions for this man you can build up a

library of .RSQs. For example, going

from standing to walk start. Walk stepto standing transition. Or perhaps,

getting up out of a chair. With a

library like this, a very rich set ofactions can be called on to animate a

wide range of scenes.

Finally: The RSQ files are just basictext files and they can be easily edited

in Notepad to apply to a different

model. So if you have another manwith the same skeleton (and all

humans should be buit with the same

skeleton) then you can have any

bipedal figure walking through your

animations.

This tutorial is still underconstruction....

Download resource fileshere.

Tutorial written byStuart

Insert SkeletonThis tutorial show how to us an exported robot sequence.
http://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotexport/tutorial.ziphttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotexport/tutorial.ziphttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotexport/tutorial.zipmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/insertskeleton/page1.htmlhttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/insertskeleton/page1.htmlhttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotexport/step-7.jpghttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/insertskeleton/page1.htmlmailto:[email protected]://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotexport/tutorial.zip


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Step 1

This tutorial follows on from the Robot Export Tutorial. If you have not tried the export tutorial you will

need to load the START.OFX file from the TUTORIAL.ZIP file and export the .RSQ file. (Following the

instructions in theRobotExport Tutorial.Because the .RSQ file contains a full path specification for therobot actor's MFX file it is important that you keep the MFX file in the same place that you used when

exporting. In the .RSQ file included with this tutorial I have assumed that the model file is called

male_large.mfx, and is in folder \data\tutorial\make_large.mfx. The .RSQ files are basically text files and

if necessary the text path can be edited to match your location. e.g. the first few lines in the .RSQ files

will look like:

5 1 30 30

c:\data\tutorial\male_large.mfx

1 1 1

26

1.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000

0.000000 1.000000 0.000000 0.000000

...

The line: "c:\data\tutorial\male_large.mfx" is an absolute file path reference and can be edited using

Notepad to change this if you need to use the .RSQ file in a different folder. To use the robot actor .RSQ

file it has to be inserted in an animation. Open the animator, or you can use the example included in the

resources (file scene.ofx, with some objects and a path that will be used in Robot Path tutorial.

Step 2
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We are now ready to insert our robot sequence. However, it is important to appreciate that the .RSQ file

defines one ONE cycle of our walking animation, in this specific example, a sequence of 30 frames. For

that 30 frames it contains skeleton poses and position key frames with a reference position taken from

the first position keyframe in the sequence.

The animation we are goint to insert the "skeleton sequence" into may not contain 30 frames (the

example here is 150 frames) so we have the option of inserting multiple copies of the sequence (5

copies for our 150 frame animation.)

We need to insert a Robot actor into the scene, this can be done in several way, click on the Insert icon

from the toolbar and select a Robot actor. The robot actor selection dialog wil pop up. You can choose

either to insert a normal robot model (from an .MFX) file or your can select a robot sequence (.RSQ file.)

Note the extra line along the bottom of the selection dialog!

This extra dialog will allow you to insert copies of the sequence. The insertion process will use the

position information in the squence to ensure that sequence after the first are moved so that the action,

in the second, and subsequent sequences, starts where the last sequence left off.

As we have a 30 frame sequence and a 150 frame animation we will choose to insert 5 copies of the

sequence. Step 2

The Robot is inserted to begin its walk at the current of the 3D cursor and will perform its action until

the number of frames alloted have passed. Adjustments to what happens can be made to the actor in

any of its 'pose' or 'position' key-frames. For a walking figure it is a good idea to follow up the action of

loading the sequence, to make it follow a path. (See theRobot Path tutorial.)



Robot PathThis tutorial show how to move a robot sequence so that a robot can be made to follow a

path, to give the appearance of walking, running etc.
http://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotpath/page1.htmlhttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotpath/page1.htmlhttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotpath/page1.htmlhttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/insertskeleton/tutorial.ziphttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/insertskeleton/tutorial.ziphttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/insertskeleton/tutorial.zipmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotpath/page1.htmlhttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotpath/page1.htmlhttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/insertskeleton/step-3.jpghttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotpath/page1.htmlmailto:[email protected]://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/insertskeleton/tutorial.ziphttp://www.openfx.org/resources/tutorials/robotpath/page1.html


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Step 1

This tutorial follows on from the

Insert Skeleton tutorial, so we shallstart with the this scene. The

animation is set to extend for 150

frames and 5 cyles of the walkingsequence apply to the walking man.

Note in the scene the robot (man )

figure that walks in the negative Ydirection for 150 frames. This is made

up from 5 copies of the walk cycle.

During the walk cycle, as well as

moving the limbs and body of thefigure, the whole figure moves a

distace of one step. As each cycle

repeats the figure begins the cycle at

the location here the last cyclefinshed. This gives the appearance of

a semaless walk in the -Y direction.

Note that there are a lot of keyframes

in the costume and position time line.

We could change the direction the

figure walks by moving the object ineach keyframe, but that is a lot ofwork. Instead, OpenFX has a feature

that will move this figure so that itwalks along a specified path. When

OpenFX moves the figure to follow a

path it uses the figure's stride length to

make sure that the figure walks in anatural way along the path.

If the figure reached the end of thepath before the alloted duration it will

stop at the end but continue to perform

its wait cycle. Should this occur any

timeline segments can be trimed fromthe end of the costume timeline.

If the figure does not reach the end ofthe path in the number of frames then

the figure will stop short of the end.
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Step 2

Now we can instruct the robot actor towalk along the path. Note that this is

NOT the same as telling an actor to

follow a path. This special function isdesigned only for character animation

and it moves all the key frame

positions to lie along the path. If youlater move the path the figure will

NOT follow the path it will stay where

it was. Of course, you could later tell

the robot actor to follow the same (oranother) path and that will move all

the position keyframes to their new

location.

Also note that in telling the robot to

move along a path will require the

introduction of a number of rotationkeyframes, so that it moves in the

direction of the path, and does not just

glide along.

To instruct the robot actor to follow

the path: select the robot actor double

clicking in the actor/object hold point

(indicated 1) in the image. You couldalso double click on any of the actor's

costume timeline keyframes (marked2). This will bring up the actor

information dialog, at the bottom there

is a button (3) that says "Robot Follow

Path" click this button and select the"Path2" actor to follow.
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Step 3

That is about all there is to do! Theremay be some tidying up, or it may be

necessary to undo the step, change the

path length or move the path and thenre-apply the robot to follow it. If other

actors are added this path can be

moved, e.g. to walk parallel to the firstactor, and the "Robot Follow Path"

applied again.

In the image you can see that thefigure now moves along the path.

Note: It is possible that you build the

walking sequence with the figuremoving along the +Y axis and not the

-Y axis. In such cases the figure will

appear to walk backwards. To rectifythe situation if you hold down the

CTRL key while selecting the path

OpenFX will rotate the figure by 180degrees so that it walks forwards.

Download resource fileshere.When

available.


ParticlesThis tutorial demonstrates how to set up animator particle effects and the great flexibility that

can be achieved with the particle actor .
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Step 1

This totorial does not build step by step. A different partical setup is illustrated in each step.

Inserting a partical actor is done in the same way as all other actors are inserted. partical actors

can also have position, orientation and scale timelines. In the Animator particle actors arerepresented as cubic wireframe boxes. The cube illustates where the particles are located in the

scene and give an approximate scale. The scale is only approximate because the particles have

quite a degree of variability.

To get the greatest benefit from the use of the OpenFX particle systems it is worth knowing a

little more about the concepts that underlie them. They are based on an idea from an interactiveprogram that normally runs in real-time (using OpenGL for its rendering) and shows the particle

system moving and evolving dynamically. This concept has had to be modified to allow for the

reproducibility required by OpenFX, i.e. the ability to render individual frames in any order at at

any instant of time (because of this OpenFX's particle system does not quite render in real time.)

Each particle system actor represents of a single particle system, and within a particle system

there may be anything from as few as 1, to as many as 10,000 particles. Like all the other actors

in OpenFX, the particle system exists in the scene for the duration of its costume timeline. It ispositioned, sized and orientated with appropriate timelines and keyframes in the same way as all

the other actors. In the case of a particle system, the UP (vertical or Z) direction has a particular

significance.

A particle system consists of a set of one or more particles. These particles are the visible

components of a particle system. They are dynamic and behave like a set of projectiles that are

fired off from from the centre of the particle system. One good way to initially think of a particle

system is as a sort of exploding firework; the bright sparks in the firework are the particles, eachfirework itself is a particle system. Of course our particle system can do more than look like a

bursting firework. We can arrange for a continuous stream of particles to be ejected from the

centre of the particle system. We can arrange for the particles to remain active (alive) for longer,we can arrange for the particle to be ejected with high speed or slow speed. They can be affected

by pseudo-gravitational forces and appear to be affected by a degree of randomness in their

ejected direction or speed, or anything else. By carefully choosing these settings we can modelthe appearance of a wide range of phenomena.
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Since the particle system is dynamic it evolves over the time period of its costume timeline. The

rate of change is designed to look realistic when the rendered movie is viewed. (For example,fireworks that should go off at 1 second interval - will go off at 1 second intervals, flames that

flicker will appear to flicker in a natural way. etc. etc. etc.) If you want a particle effect to last

longer you will need to increase the length of its timeline, a 10 second effect will need to be setfor 300 frames

At the centre of each particle system is the particle emitter, this is location in the scene at which

the particles in a particle system are created (it is also the location from where the particles areprojected.) The bounding box that appears in the Animator's window is intended to give a rough

guide to the size of the particle system once it reaches a steady state. We talk of a 'steady state'

because normally the particle system has to go through a transient phase, for example, while a

flame builds up.

In addition to the major properties of a particle system (lifetime etc.) the realism is increased by

adding some random fluctuations to each of the particle's parameters. For example, in thefirework effect above the direction in which the particles are emitted is totally random. (In the

case where no randomness is given to the direction of particle emission, they are ejected

vertically.) In OpenFX the vertical direction is local to the particle actor. Thus, if you wish to

eject a stream of particles in a horizontal direction you would simply use the particle actor'sorientation timeline and keyframes to point it in a different direction.

One last point concerns the particles themselves, are they just points of colour? NO! To addrealism the particles are actually little pictures (monochrome bitmaps.)

The pixels in the bitmaps coloured white are replaced with the colour of the particle and the

bitmap's alpha channel is used to set the particle's transparency, (white=opaque,

black=transparent) Step 2

So the controls of a particle system consist of settings for:

Emission rate, the number of particles generated per second.


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Speed of emission.

Lifetime

Colour

Alpha (how transparent a particle is.)

Acceleration, (gravity) may speed the particle up, or slow it down.

Variation in direction of ejection.

Variations in all the other properties, speed, lifetime, colour,

In this first example we build a simple fire inside a small object. (Click on the illustrations toreveal more information and show the particle dialog that achieves the effect.)

Step 3

This show a fireworks effect. (Animations of all these effects can be seen in the Particlesgallery.)


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Step 4

A particle fountain. (Click on the illustrations to show the particle dialog that achieves the

effects.)

Step 5

A glow like fire.
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Step 6

A blue/white flame moving in front ofthe camera.

Step 7

Fluid flowing out of a pipe, usedroplet texture. And a LOT of

particles. No variability and the same

particle size at start and end of their

lifetime.

Step 8

A smokey fire, use darker colours.

Gravity is reversed at the end so that

the smoke forms a cloud before fading

away.
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Step 9

A starfield drifting past the camera.

Simulated by a strong gravity force

towards the camera. The particles donot change colour.


available.


Designer tutorials

BooleanThis is a tutorial aimed at beginners to OpenFX and 3D modelling in general. It explains how to

cut one object out using the boolean action in the OpenFX designer.

Step 1

Start Designer select 'Insert Primitive' from the tool bar and create an object.
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Step 2

It's always a good idea to colour each piece of geometry to help with identifying it later. To access the

materials attributes press F8 or go to attributes > materials setting in the menu bar. Then deselect the

newly created geometry by pressing Ctrl+D. Step 3

Create another object, move it by pressing m or selecting the move tool on the tool bar so that it

intersects the first object you made. This new object will be the tool object for the boolean process.

Don't forget to give it a new colour in the materials editor. Leave this object selected for the time being.

Step 4
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In the Actions menu select Boolean. Step 5

For a subtractive Boolean leave all the setting as they are and press OK.

Step 6

Now the Boolean operation is complete

you have four pieces of geometry: tool,

workpiece and two cut objects formedfrom the intersection of the two primary

objects.

Step 7

Select none (Ctrl+D) and then object

select any vertex within the new

booleaned objects. This will highlight the

objects vertices turning them yellow.Now delete this object.
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Step 8

What you have left is the original tool

object and a new cut away of the

workpiece.

Step 9

With the two objects selected go to the

Actions menu and perform a weld

command (leave the settings as they are).This will combine the two object into one

single object.

Have Fun.


Simple SkeletonThis tutorial is for beginners who want to make a model that can be posed easily using

the skeletal structure.

Updated:Revised version available (02.03.2001)
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Step 1

We are starting off by making a

simple structure to animate. We aregoing to make a tank with a swinging

turret. Make a box for the base and acylinder for the barrel. I have the start

of the barrel directly above the

centroid of the box to make things

easier.

Step 2

Click any Selector tool. I find that the

Hierarchy Joints menu is sometimes

unavailable if you are not using aSelector. Go into Edit > Hierarchy

Joints. In the Hierarchy Joints Menu

hit the "+". Click on the 1 that appearsin the menu. Wait a second and it

should go into rename mode. Type in

"Base" then click anywhere in the

pop-up except for the button area.This joint will be used to rotate the

model relative to the model center.

Since the barrel is going to be rotatingrelative to the base, it needs to be in a

subsection of the base. Click on the

joint Base if it isn't currently selected.To make things easier on yourself,

you might want to reposition the blue

crosshair in the 2d views before

making each joint. Hit the "+".Rename the 2 to Shoulder. Make

another joint off Shoulder and rename

it Barrel. The Shoulder is there so that

there will be a joint at the start andend of the limb (barrel). Renamed

joints are an asset because they stop

you from asking yourself questionslike: Was joint 5 a left arm or was it a

right arm? If you distribute your
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model, renamed joints are appreciated.Select the box on your model. Click

on "Base" in the Hierarchy Jointsmenu. One of the buttons in the pop-

up corresponds to attach. It is the sixth

button from the left. Click it. The cubeis now known to OpenFX as "Base".

Deselect the cube and select the

cylinder. Click on "barrel", thenattach. Close the Hierarchy Joints

menu.

Step 3

Go into Edit > Skeleton > Reposition

joints. You should see a a light blue

square and three circles appear withlines connecting them. If you didn't

reposition the crosshair before makingjoints, you have trouble spotting the

circles. All of them will be where you

left the blue crosshair. Press Shift-A to

locate any lost circles, rememberingthat some circles may be stacked on

one point. Move the square so it is in

the middle of the cube. Move the first

circle so it above the square. Move the

next circle to the start of the bunbarrel. Move the last circle to the other

end of the gun barrel. You havefinished making the skeleton for your

tank! This is a very good point to save

your work. You may never be able toget your model straight again, so this

save should be your base, unposed

work. Save your model as something

else from here on in.
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Step 4

Go into Edit > Skeleton > Pose or hitShift+A to go into Pose mode. Your

tank should appear as two boxes now

with the skeleton visible in it. Click onthe Square. Dragging will rotate your

entire model that you made around the

square. Press Tab to move the yellowaxis indicator to a new axis and a new

rotation plane. Click on the first circle.

This will rotate the base and

everything below it on the hierarchy(like the barrel). This is different from

the square due to if you added an extra

shape to your model, the square would

rotate it but the first circle wouldn't.You should note at this time that the

OpenGL Window that displays your

model will not be updated into thenew position until you use the pan tool

to move one of the other windows

around. (V1.0, possible bug) The finalcircle rotates the barrel and anything

that would be below it on the

hierarchy (nothing on this model is

below it). Press tab a few times and

you will see that the axis indicator hasthree positions on the previous circle

and one on the current circle. Thisfourth position is the spin axis. Note

that repositioning the joints will cause

the rotation axes to move from their

current vectors to other, moreconfusing vectors.
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Step 5

If you were to add another cylinder tothe end of the barrel, you could adapt

the barrel into an arm. Create another

joint below barrel in the JointHierarchy and attach the new cylinder

to it (If you are smart you may want to

move the blue crosshair to the end ofthe new cylinder before making the

new joint). Reposition the joint if

necessary. This will leave you with an

arm with an elbow joint. Try making asecond arm on the model as your

homework.

Have Fun making posable models.

Download modelhere.

Tutorial written byKeith Kelly

Shampoo BottleThis demonstrates the use of the Lathe tool in the designer and texture mapping. It

also shows how to use the animator to create a simple static scene.

Step 1

Using the pen tool create the three main components of the bottle: Lid, Body and Liquid. To help later

on its better to construct the profiles about the Z axes (see opposite).

Try to leave a small gap between all the components so no geometry is intersection any other
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component, it will look better when finally rendering. Step

2

Selecting each profile separately apply the Lathe tool with a setting of 14 segments and 360 degrees. As

you lathe each profile assign a material in the Attributes menu or press F8. The setting are:LID,BODY,

andLIQUID.Use a refraction index setting of 1.50 (glass) for the body texture and 1.333 (water) for the

liquid.

Remember: when rendering a refraction surface turn on trace shadows and trace reflections.

Hint: To Lathe accurately about the center, open the Display Co-ordinates dialog box in the view menu.

Click anywhere in the top view and change X, Y, Z in the Display Co-ordinates box to 0,0,0. Then Actions >

Lathe or Ctrl+L. Step 3

Now to select the faces that will have a Decal mapping applied to them, for the label. Using the selector

tool from the tool bar hold down shift and lasso the front 5 vertices top and bottom. With these

selected go into Attributes > materials settings and open the maps tab. Here select set and choose

. Amend the menu to look likethis example.

Hint: Selecting the required vertices couldn't be easier, just remember what ever you want to zoom in onmust me visible in all three view ports before you can select it.
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Step 4

Some sections of the label image are not required these sections can be made transparent by telling

OpenFX which colour isn't required in the Decal Colour section of the Image Map Settings dialog box. In

this dialog box we must also select the label which is to be applied to the surface as a still image.

Step 5

Still in the Image Map Setting dialog box, press the move button. A small floating menu will appear, in

the rear view window click on the top left hand vertex were the map will go and press the T/L button

then click on the top right vertex and press T/R click on the bottom left vertex and press B/L and finally

press Done. The Decal is now positioned.

Save the file as bottle.

Step 6

From the original file we'll produce two. One

for the bottle and lid and the other for the

liquid. Copy the original file and open it,delete the lid and bottle objects and select theliquid. In the Actions menu select Duplicate,

click ok. Now we have a copy of the liquid

object. Double click on the scale icon andreduce it in all axis to .99 click on scale

vertices and scale from center. Now flip the
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normals using Actions > Reverse and changethe material tothis example.Save this file as

liquid. Open the original file, delete the liquid

and save the file as bottle.

Step 7

Create a new file for the backdrop object.Using a single extruded polygon and assign

the plate plugin as a texture. Set the Scale for

X, Y, Z to 3.0, don't select dirty plate and have

colour variation as 0.0. Save this as wall.

Step 8

In animator load the bottle and liquid model. If

they appear in different places select one at a

time, double click the move icon and set the X,

Y, Z to 0,0,0. Load the wall object andposition as opposite. This scene has been light

with a spot light for the refraction surfaces and

a general omni light. A ground object forms

the floor and a sky object set to gradient ofpale blue / light yellow.

Play with the lighting and sky to get the bestbalance of colour and shadows.

Step 9

Render the scene with trace reflection and

trace shadows and trace glass on. Be warned

this does take a long time, so go make yourselfa cup of tea and sit back.


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Rubber Bones in DesignerThis shows how to use the rubber bones mechanism to distort objects in the

designer.

Step 1

Two spheres and two bones. The extent of the range is shown for each bone, this is drawn as a radius

around each end of the bone. The range of bone 1 extends over the whole of sphere 1 but does not

influence sphere 2. The range of bone 2 is larger and does extend to cover the sphere around bone 1.

Step 2

When bone 2 is elongated (by moving node 2) there is a small distortion of the top part of the sphere

around bone 1.
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Step 3

When we rotate bone 1, the sphere around it is distorted but the influence does not affect the sphere at

the end of bone 2 as it is too far away.

Step 4

In this example we see the effect of distorting a sphere when all vertices lies within the range of all the

bones. (Start)
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Step 5

In this example we see the effect of distorting a sphere when all vertices lies within the range of all the

bones, move vertices 1 and 2 (at the end of the bones) together.

Step 6

In this example we see the effect of

distorting a sphere when all vertices(bone nodes) lie within the range of all

the bones, move vertex 4.

Step 7

This example is a variation of the

previous example, where the bone

joining nodes 3 and 4 lies too far awayfrom the vertices in the sphere to

influence it.
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Step 7

The result of moving vertices 1&2 and

3&4 together is illustrated. (Moving3&4 has no effect)

Step 9

Moving 1&2 causes an 'on-block'

move of the the vertices because all

those bones influencing the verticesmove by the same amount at the same

time.



Shrink WrapThis tutorial shows how to use the shrink wrap feature (based on the marching cubes

concept) to build models with a regular mesh arond any arbitrary shapes.
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Step 1

In this tutorial we will demonstrate the Shrink Wrapping plug-in action. This action uses the Visualisation

Toolkit library to provide the marching cubes algorithm for rendering an iso-surface in a potential field.

The field is generated by using OpenFX's mesh topology to define the potential field. This can be done

using either a vertex, an edge or a face.

The idea of the action is to place a volume filling cubic array of points (a point cloud) around all the

selected vertices and then to use this array to build a surface mesh that lies in this within this volume of

points and lies at a place where the specified equi-potential takes the value zero.

The shape of this surface is defined by the choice of element (vertex, line, face) to be wrapped and the

distance from the element that is defined to be the location of the zero potential value.

The action requires that this distance is specifed in terms of the 'units' of scale in the model, so the first

thing that any user of this tool must do is make sure they are aware of the scaling in use. The best way

to see how this tool works is to start with a few simple shapes and look at the results of the application

of the tool.

Step 2

We will start with two vertices, and link them together with an edge so that we can see the effect of

shrinking around vertices and around edges. The vertex on the left is circled in red, the coordinates

dialog is used to set the coordinate origin at the position of this vertex. The 3D cursor (circled in yellow)

is then placed at a distance along the x axis and the coordinates dialog used to make the distance

between vertex and 3D cursor (current location) 1 (one) unit. The hold point for this model is indicated

at the yellow cross. The second vertex is located approximately 1 unit to the right of the second vertex.
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(This action requires at lease two vertices to be selected.)

Step 3

We can now try the shrink wrap tool. Bring up the dialog Action->PlugIn_Actions->Shrink_Wrap. This

brings up the dialog. Click on the button that says "Round Vertices". The default maximum sampling

distance and surface sample distance will suffice for this first step. Note that at the bottom of the dialog

are 3 boxes to enter the samping resolutions. These 3 numbers dictate the coarsness (or finenss of the

mesh.)

To understand the sampling resolution: Think of the X (horiziontal direction) the default is for 25 mesh

points to be spaced out along this dimension to enclose the whole span of the selected vertices (in the X

direction) and an additional distance of the "Maximim Sampling Distance From Feature". The location of

the surface will be drawn at a distance of the "Surface Sampled at Distance From Feature". A fair choice

of these paramters will depend on the dimensions of the model itself but a Sampled distance of about

25% of the maximum sampling distance will give a nice smooth surface around the vertices.

Step 4

Back to the example. With the "Round Vertex" action selected - Click OK. The resulting mesh has beencreated around the two vertices. It is not very smooth because the 25x25x25 grid points cover a very

large region of space out to a range of 1.0. If we repeat the process using a surface distance of 0.7 the

mesh surface will be built at a much greater distance.
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Step 5

This shows the result when we set a range of 1.0 and surface distance of 0.7 instead of 0.1 (again using

the "Round Vertex" option.) You will see that the surface is drawn much further away from the vertices

and it looks like two spheres intersection. However if you check out the mesh in detail you will see it is a

single surface. Essentially it is mesh that maps out the value of a potential field emminating from the

two vertices.

Step 6

If we now re-load the original two vertex modeland repeat the Shrink map example, but this time

with the "Round Edges" option selected we will

get a cylinder with rounded off edges. This isbecause we are considering the field emminating

from the edge and is it does not "fall off" from just

the vertices.

Step 7

Again, changing the surface distance to 0.7

(leaving the max set to 1.0) will produce a surface

that is further away from the edge used by the tool.
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Step 8

It takes a little experiment to get a good feel for theadjustment of the parameters of the Shrink Wrap

function. It should not be necessary to change the

default Sample Resolution. Begin by trying to getthe form of the shape that you want by choosing

values for Sampling distance and the Maximum

Sampling Distance. Remember, that thesignificance of these depends on the unit distances.

I suggest that you start by assigning the "Sampling

Distance", use the "Units" floating dialog to

visually decide how far away from the shape youwant the surface to lie. Then choose the

"Maximum Sampling Distance" so that it about 2

to 3 times as far away. (This allows for the surface

to have a fairly smooth appearance and tomaximise the use of the Sample Resolution. (The

UNDO function is a useful way to experiment.)

When you have a good shape you can alwaysrepeat the step with a larger Sample Resolution.

If you make the Maximum Sampling distance too

large or you make the Surface Distance too largethen the mesh will come up against the internal

boundary that surrounds all the selected vertices,

giving a result like this.

Step 9

The Shink Wrap action can also wrap around

polygons, for example if you shinkwrap around acube a nice "dice' type object can be created. The

image for this step illustrate the effect of shrink

wrappping around a point cloud, a 3D curve and a

cube. Lots of interesting shapes can be built usingthis tool alone. It can even be used to build a more

regular mesh around some shapes that have a poor

mesh.

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have the same image mapping applied. (The initial mapping is necessary because, if no mapping

coordinates are applied before the map coordinates editor is started all the vertices in the mesh will be

superimposed. (Important: The mesh that appears in this editor is NOT the mesh that makes up the

shape of the object being textured, this mesh is a mesh of surface mapping coordinates.

We can start with this arrangements of planar polygons that have an arbitrary map applied and select

the indicated vertices. These apply to the rectangle hightlighted in the 3D window.

Step 3

Once the faces (vertices) and map have been selected the mapping coordinates editor appears as a

floating window about OpenFX (on a two screen desktop it can be dragged off onto a second screen.)

The editor will show the map image and superimpose on it a mesh representing the location of the

image map coordinates of the vertices within selected faces of the original model mesh. (Remember,

the model structure mesh is three dimensional, wheras the mapping coordinate mesh is two

dimensional, it covers the surface of the selected faces.)

Here we see the picture used for the map with the mapping coordinates of the vertices of the selected

mesh drawn in red.

The mapping coordinate editor has a single menu with a number of commands that represent the tools

and functions of the editor, the most commonly used ones also have keyboard equivalents.

By moving the position of the vertices in the above texture mesh map, the part of the map that covers

any particular part of the object may be altered.
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Step 4

If we reposition the mesh in RED as shown then the rectangle is painted by that part of the map image

that lies inside the rectangle. (As shown.) We can use the "Update" command to update the mapping

and the Select commands to select and de-select the vertices in the mesh. (Note that this selection onlyapplies to vertices in the "Paint Mapper" is has nothing to do with selected/de-select/hidden vertices in

the normal designer!)

Update - Update the mapping coordinates in the model from the data in the Paint Map Coordinates

editer (also called the Texture Coordinate Editor (TCE) (After this, the design module and renderer, can

be used to inspect the effect of any mapping changes without leaving tje TCE.)

Selection - This menu offers the option to select all or deselect all the vertices in the editor (selected

vertices are drawn as larger rectangles, deselected vertices as small rectangles.) The following keyboard

equivalents may be used

Select All (ctrl+A)

Deselect All (ctrl+D)

Select (keyboard key S)

When this tool is active you can click and drag a selection box to enclose one or more vertices. Clicking

on a single vertex (without dragging) will select it. (or deselect it, if it is already selected.)

Step 5
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By rotating, scaling, moving (one vertex or several selected vertices) we can obtain the mapping shown

here.

Move (keyboard key M)

Move the selected vertices by clicking and dragging the mouse. If no vertices are selected you can move

a single vertex by clicking and dragging it.

Rotate (keyboard key R)

Rotate the selected vertices. Click in the image and drag the mouse (LMB held down.) Rotation is around

the point of first click.

Scale (keyboard key X)

Scale the selected vertices. Click and drag the mouse. Scaling takes place at the point of first click.

Step 6

After re-alignment the map rectanglesurrounds the upper row of characters.

This is applied to the indicated

rectangle with the result pointed to inthe 3D window.

Step 7

When we select all the vertices and

reposition the image map coordinates

the result will be like this. To finishwe use the "Exit" command.

Exit - Return to the OpenFX design

module

We can change the pen colour in

which the mesh and vertices are drawnusing the menu command.

Pen - This submenu offers a selectionof colours in which to draw the map
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mesh. Choose the one that offers thebest contrast with the background

image.

To look at a part of the image/mesh in

greater detail the Pand and Zoom toolscan be used.

Pan (keyboard key P)When the window is showing an

enlarged image (i.e. when zoomed in)

this tool will move the image so that

those parts of it, that lie outside thevisible window, will be moved into

view.

Zoom (keyboard key Z)

Use this tool to enlarge part of the

image, for fine mesh adjustment.


available.


Renderer tutorials

Renderer SettingsHow to use the renderer settings - especially the Ray Tracing settings.

Step 1Select the desired rendering settings in the Control, Options, Settings, and Tracing tab pages of
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the Renderer dialog. Press one of the the Render buttons on the right of the Renderer dialog to

start rendering.

By default the Scanline (Software) renderer is used to produce the images. Various levels of Ray

tracing can be enabled in the Tracing tab page. Phong rendering is suggested in most cases since

ray tracing is notoriously memory and time intensive.

If your hardware can support it the GPU Render button will be un-grayed and you can use it.

The software renderer is multi-threaded and will benefit greatly if additional processors/cores areinstalled in the system. Rendering on a two processor system will almost be twice as fast as with

one processor.

Step 2The GPU renderer uses the same control settings as the scanline renderer Because this renderer

relies on the graphics adapter's processor hardware it is important to appreciate that some

limitations apply to this renderer.

Only the first 8 lights are used.

No spotlight shadows are available.

No light distance attenuation applies.

Not all image post-processors or plug-textures are available.

Ray tracing is disabled.

This renderer works much faster than the software renderer - up to 32 times as fast. Whenrendering some animations it will work almost in real-time at large frame sizes and high settings

of anti-aliasing. It works most efficiently when rendering ansimations because all the models and

image files are only loaded once at the start of the sequence and do not have to be loaded at

every frame. When just rendering a single frame all the modes and images in use for that framehave to be loaded.
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Step 3: Renderer Control Tab PageThe Control page of the Renderer offers the most significant control parameters. The most

important buttons are on the right and control whether the scanline software renderer is used or

the harware rendering engine(GPU rendering) is used. The hardware rendering engine will bemuch faster for most images and movies (up to 30 times faster) but it will not work on older

hardware and some graphics cards may not be compatible. (You must have a graphics adapter

that supports at lease OpenGL 2.0)

Resolution- Choose the resolution to which the image is rendered. Choose one of the presets or

enter the number of horizontal and/or vertical pixels in the edit controls. The number of pixels inthe image is horizontal resolution multiplied by the vertical resolution. The higher the resolution

the longer it takes and the more memory it needs to render the image.

Anti-Aliasing- Choose the level of anti-aliasing. In low resolution modes the appearance of an

image can be improved if it is anti-aliased. Basically, anti-aliasing smoothes out some of the'jaggies' that are visible at the edges of colored regions in the image. Anti-Aliasing is very time

consuming: it will take a little under 4 times as long to render a Good anti-aliased image than an

image with no anti-aliasing. Using Best level of anti-aliasing, the image will take approximately9 times longer to render than a non anti-aliased one.

Accelerated Anti-Aliasing- Accelerate the anti-aliasing process, with small quality reduction.Normally anti-aliasing an image increase the rendering time quite significantly, up to 9 or 10

times for a setting of Best. The main effect of anti-aliasing is seen near the edges of models or

where faces with different colors join. Pixels in the interior of faces benefit very little from anti-

aliasing. When this option is selected, anti-aliasing is applied near the edges of faces and not in

the center. For most models this is as good as full anti-aliasing and it can be up to 3 times faster.Images with models that have image maps or shaders, where there is quite a bit of detail in the

interior of faces, will not benefit as much from having their anti-aliasing accelerated.

Image Format- Select the file format into which the image or images will be stored. This

automatically determines the color resolution in the image. For an single image or multiple still

images the GIF format uses an 8 bit palette, while the TGA and TIF formats are either High-Color or True-Color (16 bit or 24 bit).


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If you tick the Apply Software Post..... button then the images created by the OpenGL renderer

will be passed to the software processor functions (external DLLs). This is useful since not all

the postprocessors have been re-written for use with the OpenGL renderer.

If you tick the Copy Hardware Depth... button then the hardware depth buffer is copied to the

software depth buffer and you can use depth dependent software post-processors (like fog).

Step 5: Renderer Settings Tab PageThe Settings page of the renderer offers additional control parameters. The Smoothing angle,ambient light, shadow density and spotlight buffer size ONLY apply to the scanline software

renderer. Note: These settings only apply to the Software Renderer.

Animation Speed - Set the speed value built into the FLI/FLC files. The value is in jiffies, zero

implies the animation will play as fast as possible.

Smoothing Angle - Set the maximum Phong smoothing angle. If the angle between any adjacent

faces exceeds this value, the Phong smoothing is automatically turned off for those faces. Thisswitch can help eliminate artefacts that sometimes appear in an image if the smoothing in a

model has been set inappropriately.

Ambient Lighting % - Overrides the ambient light settings usually specified in the Sky Actor. A

maximum of 30% works quite well, values greater than 70% produce images that have very little

contrast.

Shadow Density % - Specify the darkness of shadows cast on the Ground. Set the density of theshadows. 50% is the default, 100% gives completely black shadows, 0% gives no shadows at all.

Spotlight Buffer - Alter the resolution of the shadows cast by spotlights. The shadows created bythe spotlights require a block of memory. A setting of 320 reserves a block of memory of 256k

for each spotlight. The size of the block dictates the smoothness of the shadow. A value of zero

implies that a spotlight will not cast a shadow. You can calculate optimum settings for bestresults by multiplying the number of pixels by 4 (e.g. 320x200x4=256,000 bytes required).


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Motion Blur - Higher values generate Motion Blur. The normal range is 0-10. When a number

outside this range is entered the full integrated motion blur comes into play.

Digits in Filenames - Specify the number of leading zeros in a Rendered filename.

JPEG Picture Quality - Specify the JPEG compression quality. Higher quality creates larger filesizes.

Step 6: Renderer Ray-Tracing Tab PageThe Tracing page of the Renderer enables Ray Trace rendering to be used. Turning on any of theTracing options instructs the Renderer to use ray tracing where appropriate. Note: These options

and settings only apply to the Software Renderer.

Trace Shadows - All shadows will be ray traced, this increases the rendering time significantly..

Trace Reflections - All reflective surfaces will be ray traced, this also increases the rendering

time.

Trace Glass - All glass surfaces will be ray traced, this included normal glass, like windows, as

well as refractive glass.

Algorithm Parameters - Ray tracing a sene with 10,000 of polygons requires some optimisation

to be undertaken before the scene is rendered. This is explained more fully in the section on

"Setting the ray tracing parameters". There are no 'hard and fast' rules for chosing which

approach to use. If you have a very complex scene then you may wish to increase the "Polygons

per Voxel" setting. Up to 1000 polygons per voxel will still be acceptable if you have a scenewith several hundred thousand polygons. It would be unwise to increase the Recursive depth

beyond about 10 as this will hugely increase the amount of time it takes to optimise the scene

before ray-tracing begins, and will also increase the amount of memory used to store the data.

To understand how to use the ray-tracing setting we need to explain a little of how Ray Tracing

is optimised. Depending on what the scene is, one of these algorithmic approaches may workbetter.


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Step 7: Status Information

The reported information in the status line of the renderer window can be very useful in makingsubsequent renderings of the same scene go faster.

F = (Number of faces in scene) V = (Number of vertices in scene) Dp = (Maximum octree depth used) Th = (Target number of faces to be assigned per voxel) F/V = (The maximum number of faces assigned by the optimisation algorithm per voxel) Size = (The [maximum(and minimum)] dimension (in internal units) of any voxels

created by the optimisation)

Vox = (Number of voxels created by the optimisation) Fc = (Total number of face assignments made to voxels in the spatial subdivision)

Some of the terms used above may be unfamiliar to you but in order set the optimisation

parameters you will need to understand these terms which arise in the standard ray tracingalgorithm and how it is optimised to enable scenes with very large numbers of polygons (faces in

the jargon) to be rendered.


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Step8 Ray Tracing Basics:

Ray tracing may be a slow procedure but it does give superb photographic quality images. Thereare many books that describe the theory of ray tracing in detail. A full description of a complete

package is given in [1] and there are also many available freeware and shareware ray tracing

programs. One of the most comprehensive is POV-Ray which is available from a large numberof WWW locations. The idea on which ray tracing is based seems almost too simple to be true

but - here it is:

Follow the paths taken by particles of light (photons) on their journey from light source through

the scene (as they are scattered back and forth between objects) and on until they are either

captured by the camera or head off to infinity.

In practice this is a hopeless task because of the huge number of photons emitted by a light

source and the fact that all but a minute fraction of them will ever be scattered into the camera or

eye. So ray tracing does it in reverse. It sends feelers or rays along the path of the photos from

the camera out into the scene. If the feeler rays find anything they work back towards the sourcesof illumination and give us a path for the photons to follow from source to photographic plate.

Sometimes these feeler rays may encounter reflective surfaces and when that happens they

follow a new path and continue their journey. There are lots of other things that can happen tofeeler rays. Sometimes they may divide with each sub-ray following separate paths. The way in

which the ray tracing algorithm handles such situations and the sophistication of the

mathematical models it uses for light/surface interaction governs the quality of the imagesproduced.

The standard algorithm for ray tracing can be summarised in five steps:

Load the data describing objects in the scene to memory.

Move each model into its appointed position. Apply the viewing transformation. Calculate the direction of a feeler ray from the viewpoint so that it passes through the

point in the projection plane equivalent to a pixel in the display raster.

The feeler ray is followed (traced) out into the scene until it intersects a polygon. Oncethe point of intersection is located the surface properties can be determined and the pixel

set to the appropriate colour value. If when a ray first hits something in the scene it isn't


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totally absorbed we can continue to trace its path until it reaches a final destination or is

so attenuated that there is nothing to see.

So that's the basic algorithm, but if you have ever experimented with ray tracing software you

probably found that at most you could use about 100 primitive shapes. Your main observationprobably was the hours it took the computer to trace even an image of moderate resolution. What

is worse is that the rendering time increases as the number of models in the scene increases thus

if you need to render a scene with models made up from thousands of polygons a basic raytracing renderer is virtually useless.

So the main question is: Why is ray tracing so much slower? The answer is in the algorithm, in

particular the step: For each pixel test every polygon and find the one closest to the origin of theray. This is potentially an enormous number of operations. For example to synthesize an image

of size 640 by 480 using a 2 by 2 anti-aliasing supersample with a scene of 20,000 polygons

requires 24 billion tests.

To try and reduce the time it takes to render a scene with a ray tracer some attempt must be made

to try and reduce this enormous number of calculations. A technique we call optimisation.

Step 9: Ray Tracing Optimisation:

It is the job of an optimisation routine to divide the scene up in some way so that every ray does

not have to be tested against every polygon. Optimisation usually requires two modification tothe ray tracing algorithms:

A scene evaluation step that takes place before the scene is renderer. As each ray is traced the

scene evaluation data is used to reduce the number of polygons that must be tested against it asthe ray passes from point to point. There are two approaches that have received much

investigation:

Bounding volumes

Spatial subdivision


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The renderer uses the spatial subdivision method and we will look at that.

The idea here is to break up space into a number of small boxes so that only a few polygonsactually lie in each little box. Then as the rays are traced through the scene we follow them from

box to box and check to see if a ray hits any of the polygons lying inside the boxes. If there are

only a few polygons in each box we will have considerably reduced the number of calculationsand hence the time it takes to render a scene! Ideally putting only one or two polygons in eachbox (in technical terms the "boxes" are know as "voxels") should be the goal of the first part of

the optimisation scheme. A two dimensional illustration of this principle is given below, it shows

a collection of objects and a series of rectangles that divide up the region in which the objects lieso that so that only one object is in each little rectangle:

It is the job of the first optimisation step (scene evaluation) to divide up the scene into the boxes

to be used in the later tracing step. There are conflicting goals here, each voxel should have asfew polygons (faces) inside them as possible. This implies that they should be small - but if there

are too many boxes then the tracing step will not be very fast because as the ray is followed it

will have to travel through a very large number of boxes. This is a "balancing act" - technicalterm "Optimisation". It requires quite a bit of processing to find the best arrangement of the

voxels but since many hours of processor time might be saved during rendering it is usually well

worth the effort. One comment worth making: The time it takes to optimise a scene is dependent

on the number of polygons in the scene not on the number of pixels in the output picture. So ittakes just

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