| Learning the Basics/ Building your first Scene |
Building Your First SceneThis first tutorial project introduces you the basic workflow for building and rendering a simple animation in Realsoft 3D. It is intended for first time users including users familiar with previous Realsoft products, because it introduces several features not available in previous program versions In this tutorial, you will do the following:
Tutorial level: Beginner Building the tableThe first task is to model a simple rectangular table with a simple set of legs. All five of the pieces needed for the table can be constructed using the Analytic Cube tool. Note some of the other tools contained in the Toolbar. To prepare the UI for modeling the table, scroll the View Controls bar (to the right of the View window, and shown below) all the way up so that the grid and rendering options are visible. (You can either drag with the LMB when the mouse is not over any of the gadgets of the View Controls bar (the cursor changes to an up/down arrow) or Ctrl+RMB drag anywhere on the View Controls bar.) Turn on grid display and snap to grid using 'Draw' and 'Snap' buttons, and make sure that Perspective view is Off, and that OpenGL rendering is On (shown below). Click the Front view button (its icon shows a camera aimed at you).
Make sure you are viewing the "Analytic" tab in the Toolbar, then move the mouse pointer over the Cube icon.
The Control bar now displays options related to creating cubes. The default settings are fine for the current task. The Definition type is "Corner-Corner", meaning you define the upper left corner and the lower right corner of the rectangle. Filled is checked, so a closed cube with six sides is constructed. Click the LMB once near the grid intersection at the view's origin to define the upper right corner. (Do NOT hold down the LMB.) Move the mouse to the grid point 7 units to the right and 1 unit down. Click with the LMB button again. The cube is created. However, all you see at the moment is a rectangular shape.
In the Select window, you can see that there is now an object placed under the Root level. The default name is typically the name of the object type (Cube for instance) followed by a number. Since this is not a very descriptive name, we'll change it. We'll also add a new level, which will contain all the parts of the table. To create a new level, right click over the Select window. Extend the submenu of the New option, and select "Level" by clicking it.
Highlight the new Level object, and then right click again over the Select window and scroll down the popup menu and select "Rename".
The default name of the level is highlighted and placed in an edit box. Type the word "Table" and press the Enter key. Now select the cube object and rename it "tabletop", again using Rename from the popup menu. Finally, with the left mouse button, drag the "tabletop" object on top of the Table folder (the cursor changes to a pair of white arrows pointing at each other), and release the mouse button. Open the "Table" folder by clicking its '+' handle. Your scene hierarchy should now look as follows.
Next, you'll create the legs for the table. Again using the Analytic Cube tool with the default options, click once near the grid point at the bottom left corner of the table top, and click the second point one unit to the right and one unit down. Rename this new cube "leg1" and drag & drop it inside the "Table" folder. Your scene should now look as follows.
Table legs normally are not that short. You were instructed to make the first leg this way to illustrate a few issues, one of which is the extrusion depth of the cube. However, from the Front view, you cannot see that detail of the table and the leg. Controlling the orientation of the View windowThere are several ways for you to alter the View window or change its orientation. Currently, you have an orthogonal "Front" view. Let's explore some of the ways you can change the view into your scene.
The View Control bar has buttons for automatically switching to a Front, Side, or Top view. Try each of these views.
The side view shows you that the table leg was extruded the same depth as the table top. Clearly, this is not what we want. The view window's compass menu gives you more options. Drag the RMB in the view window until the compass menu appears. The outermost items are view orientation settings. Here, in addition to the Front, Top, and Left-side views, you can also choose a Back, Bottom, or Right-side view.
There are other view controls that are performed interactively, using the mouse and a key modifier. To rotate, zoom, or pan the View Window, hold down either the Alt (rotate), Ctrl (pan), or Shift (zoom) key and drag with the right mouse button. In the following picture, the Front view was rotated using the Alt+RMB control. From this angle, it is clear that the leg has been extruded more than we want.
Try the following:
Note that if you accidentally press the right mouse button before the Alt key, the view is not rotated; instead, the compass menu is opened. The Esc key closes the compass menu.
Modifying object propertiesSo, now we have a couple of cubes, and we have renamed them to something more representative of their purpose in the scene, but we still do not have a table with legs, or something that even looks close to that as yet. How do you modify the objects you drew initially? Quite logically, this would be done in an Object Properties window. Let's say that the size of the tabletop object is okay at this point, so that what we want to modify is the table leg. Select the "leg1" object, and do one of the following to access the Object Properties window:
Note that in general, selecting objects from the Select window is more accurate and far less error prone than trying to select objects in a view window. The Object Properties window is a floating window with quite a few tabs. In most cases, the Object Properties window shows either the 'Spec' tab or the 'Gen' tab by default. We are interested in the geometric properties of the cube, so we want the 'Spec' tab (this label stands for "object specific attributes"). If it is not displayed, select it.
The dimensions of the cube are expressed in the Width, Height, and Depth fields. When the leg cube was made, it was 1 grid unit by 1 grid unit. This is reflected by the Width and Height fields being equal at a value of 0.01. What we really want for the table leg is that the width and depth would be equal, and the height would be greater, let's say 0.04 (four grid units). Enter these new values into the numeric fields (or use the sliders), pressing the Enter key after changing the value of each field. The cube shape changes accordingly. Switching back to a Front view, you should now have something that looks as follows.
Note that Width, Height and Depth are related to the view direction from which you created the cube, not to the 'world' orientation. If the cube is rotated 90 degrees, the Width field adjusts the vertical edge, although another user who does not know the purpose of cube object might interpret it as the height of the cube. Close the property window by clicking the standard "Close" gadget in the Property window's title bar. You can also press the 'Esc' key to close the active window (this works only for floating windows, not docked windows). Duplicate the table leg:We now have one table leg of the proper dimensions. Rather than make three more legs from scratch, we can just duplicate the one we already have.
Using the object transformation handlesFinally, we want to move the three new legs into their proper positions. First, switch to the Windows (wire-frame) rendering mode, and to a Front view. Also make sure that 'Snap' to grid is on.
Select leg2 from the object hierarchy; the transformation handle is displayed and is associated with leg2.
The red "arm" of the transformation handle, extending from the handle center horizontally to the left, moves the object along the X-axis. Move the cursor over this "Move handle"; the cursor changes to a 4-way arrow. Now drag with the LMB to the right to move leg2 to the opposite edge of the tabletop. Next, repeat this same procedure with leg4 (i.e. moving it to the opposite side of the tabletop).
Now switch to a Side view. Select leg3. This time, use the blue (Z-axis) Move handle to move leg3 to the opposite side of the tabletop. Repeat this step for leg4.
Now use Alt+dragRMB to drag the mouse to the right and upward, giving yourself a perspective view looking down at the table top, and verify that your table legs are correctly positioned. You should have something that looks as follows.
Ray tracing the view windowSo far, we have worked with our table in "shaded" mode and wire frame mode, so let's see what our table looks like when it is "ray traced". You can render the view window by clicking the 'Ray Trace' rendering button, which is at the bottom of the View Control bar.
Note that all the icons have tool tips. If you do not know what a particular button represents, move the cursor over the icon, and in a moment a short message explaining the icon is displayed. You can also activate rendering using the view popup menu Render/Ray Trace. Make any adjustments you want to the view orientation using Alt+dragRMB to get a nice view of the table, and then click the Ray Trace rendering button. The view window renders and should look something like the following.
At the moment, what we have is a rather boring image of our table. That's because we have not assigned a material to it yet. Let's make this a wooden table. Mapping materials to objectsThe Select window at the left side of the screen has several tabs on it. Currently, it is displaying the Geometric Objects tab, which shows the hierarchical structure of the object geometry of your project. Now we want to go to the Materials tab (second tab from the left). However, before clicking the Materials tab, do the following:
Now click on the Materials tab; the window now displays the current material library as shown below. If you see only a list of material names instead of the preview images, click with the right mouse button and select 'Show Previews' from the popup menu.
Click the Wood material to select it (you may need to scroll the material list first). Next, click the right mouse button over the wood material icon to open a popup menu. This popup menu is different from the menu that was available from the Select window. (The popup menu is context sensitive, and its contents depend on the place where you open it.) There is a 'Map' submenu at the bottom of the popup menu. Move the cursor down the list to highlight the Map option. A submenu opens that displays the available mapping object types. A mapping object 'wraps' a material to a target object according to a specific map geometry, which can be cube-like, disk-like, cylindrical, spherical, etc. Which one is most suitable depends on both the characteristics of the material and the shape of the target object. The Wood material is designed so that it works best with parallel mapping. Therefore, select 'Parallel' mapping from the menu.
In the view window, move the mouse so it is 2 units above the tabletop at the left edge. Click to start drawing the mapping geometry. When you move the mouse, a new cube appears, representing the mapping geometry. Move the mouse down 4 units and to the right 4 units, and click again to finish the mapping object.
Click on the Ray Trace Render button to render the view again. The tabletop renders with the Wood material, and the four legs are still the default gray color. Why? We need to take a moment to examine the object hierarchy to see why this is the case. Click the Geometric Objects tab (first on the left) of the Select window. Notice that the structure has changed; now, instead of a "tabletop" object under your Table folder, you instead have a new folder called "tabletop + Parallel Mapping(wood)". If you open this folder, you see that it contains the tabletop object and a parallel mapping object. Because the table legs are not part of this folder that contains the mapping object, the mapping object does not affect them.
Realsoft 3D uses the concept of hierarchy extensively to manage the data a user places in the scene. The object hierarchy is a powerful feature, and models real world organizational structures. For example, a human body consists of several parts: right and left arms and legs, a head, a torso, etc. In turn, an arm has several subparts like upper arm, forearm, and hand; a hand consists of several more parts, and so on. The object hierarchy is designed to categorize and collect object groupings, in the same way that the file system on your computer does. Similarly, the wooden table in this example consists of a tabletop shape, and four table legs (all of which were made using a cube). Remember that we already set up a structure that placed the tabletop and four legs in a grouping (a folder) that we called "Table". When you drew the parallel map of the Wood material for the tabletop object, the mapping tool created a new hierarchy level and placed the wood mapping and the target cube into that level. Why is this significant? A mapping object only affects other objects that are in the same hierarchy level; therefore, any new object that is inserted to the "tabletop+parallel mapping(wood)" hierarchy level automatically becomes a wooden one, whereas objects inserted into 'root' level, or the 'Table' level--where the legs are located--are not affected. A Wood material is now applied to the tabletop. However, the OpenGL shading doesn't render it by default due to speed reasons. If you have an OpenGL accelerator installed, you might want to activate texture rendering. To do this, select the tabletop and open the Object Property Window as previously described. Select the Wire tab and set the 'Texture quality' from None to an appropriate value (128, for example).
Click the OpenGL mode button. You should now see a 'wooden' tabletop without having to perform a Ray Trace render of the view window.
Now that you can see your wood material in OpenGL mode, let's take a look at a few more elements related to material mapping. If you use Alt+dragRMB (upward and to the right) to give yourself a perspective view, notice where the mapping object is placed. It is not actually "over" the table top object. Although it is not required that the mapping object for the Wood material is "over" the tabletop, let's move it so that it is. Also note that the position of the mapping object in relation to its associated geometric object can, and often does, change the look of the material on the surface. While in OpenGL mode, move and scale the mapping object with the transformation handles so it is oriented as follows. (Drag the ends of the transformation handles to scale in that direction.) As you move it, watch the view window and note that the look of the wood material changes slightly (this is because it has changed its orientation with respect to the target object).
Try the following:
At this point we still don't have a material applied to the table legs. If you wanted a different look for the legs (even with a wood material), you could add another mapping object and apply it to just the legs, or you could even add four mapping objects, one for each leg. For now, however, let's keep it simple and use the same mapping object for the tabletop and all of the legs. NOTE: A tabletop and the table legs typically having different graining, so using the same mapping for both usually is not going to produce a realistic look. As you become more familiar with Realsoft 3D, you may want to come back to this project and experiment. If it is not displayed already, click on the Geometric Objects tab of the Select window to display the hierarchy. Since we already created a level in the hierarchy for Table, it makes sense to use it.
In OpenGL mode, the tabletop and all four legs should now render with the wood material. Whoops! What happened? The table legs are not rendered in OpenGL mode. Click on Ray Trace rendering. The legs are rendered with the wood material as expected. Do you know why? Remember that to see the material in OpenGL mode, you had to set a property of the "object". To fix this, multi-select all four legs (click the LMB while holding down the Shift key), then right click and select "Properties..." from the menu. Go to the Wire tab, and change the Texture Quality field from None to 128. Now all of the legs render with the wood material in OpenGL mode.
Creating light sourcesWe now have a wooden table, but the scene is really too dark to see much detail. The next task is to add a light source to the scene. Switch to a front view using either the compass menu or the Front button on the View Control Bar. Click on the Root icon in the select window to make that the current level. Select the 'Light sources' section of the Toolbar at the top of the screen and click the Point light source icon.
Move the mouse pointer over the view window. Click once 5-6 grid units above the tabletop. A 'radiating' object wireframe is drawn. Move the mouse a bit and click a second time. A point light source is now inserted in the scene. The distance between the two clicks defines light intensity falloff rate. However, the default settings work fine in most cases, so for this example we will not make any adjustments to that light attribute. Rotate the view upwards (Alt + dragRMB). Now the View window shows both a colorful wood texture and the effect of a point light source.
Now there is also a Point light object in the hierarchy. Unlike the material mapping objects, which affect only objects at the same hierarchy level, light source objects, by default, illuminate all objects in the model regardless of the hierarchy.
Transforming objectsEarlier, you transformed the dimensions of the original cube used to make the first table leg using the numeric controls of the property window. The numeric controls are most useful when you need to make precise modifications. You can also transform objects using the mouse. While not as precise, using the mouse is much quicker and allows you to experiment with positions, orientations, and scales more freely. Move the mouse pointer over the light source icon on the view window. The pointer changes when it is placed over the light source position; this indicates that there is a 'handle' under the pointer, which can be grabbed.
Drag with the left mouse button; the light source follows. Release the left mouse button, and the light source is moved to a new position. There are many handles that allow modifying object properties simply by grabbing the handle and moving the mouse (we used one of them when moving the table legs into their proper positions and in our experiments with the mapping object). Some transformation handles are common to all objects: for example, the rotate handle consisting of three perpendicular circles can be used for rotating all kinds of objects in their own object space. Some handles are object specific: for example, only a light source can have a light falloff rate handle. Let's now add to our scene. Switch to a Front view, click on the Root icon in the select window and then select the Analytic Sphere tool (from the Analytic tab of the Toolbar). Click once in the view window about 5 units above the tabletop. Move the mouse pointer about 2 units down and click again. You now have a sphere above the wooden table.
The sphere looks rather 'edgy'. This is because the default drawing quality for OpenGL is quite low (for the sake of speed). However, if you perform a Ray Trace render of the view, you'll see that the sphere is a nice, smooth rounded shape, as it ought to be. To improve the quality of the OpenGL display, select 'Object properties' from the view's popup menu. Select the Wire tab, and set the 'Shaded quality' field to a value of 5. Now the sphere appears smooth. Switch to a Top view, and note the position of the sphere relative to the table. Because the sphere was created in the Front view, you could only control the position in the XY plane. Since you did not have control over the position along the Z-axis, the sphere may be above the back edge of the table, or even behind the table. But, getting objects placed, rotated, and scaled the way you want them is one of the reasons we have the transformation tools. The sphere was added to the scene so that it could be animated rolling across the table. To accomplish this, place the sphere at the position where you want the animation to start (in other words, your initial scene). Let's place the sphere at the back of the table. We want to make our adjustments using the Transformation Handle. Do the following: Select the sphere object in the Select window, and make sure you are in the Top view. Your view should look similar to the following.
Turn off Snap to Grid. Move the cursor so it is on top of the X handle line (red). Position the sphere so it is centered to the table. Use the Z handle line (blue) to position the sphere so it will sit on the table (we still have to adjust the Y position, but we do this from a Front or Side view). Switch to the Front view and use the Y handle to move the sphere so it rests on the top of the table.
A gray sphere is just as boring as a gray table, so let's apply a material to the sphere, but this time using the drag&drop interface. Make sure that the sphere is selected, then switch to Materials tab of the Select window. Move the mouse pointer over the Chrome material, and press and hold down the left mouse button. You have just "grabbed" the Chrome material. Now drag the mouse into the view window and position it over the sphere. Now release the mouse button. The sphere has been assigned the Chrome material. To verify this, switch back to the Geometric Objects tab of the Select window and look at your hierarchy.
Drag&Drop is another way to map materials to objects and very useful when you don't have to define a specific mapping geometry. The chrome material doesn't depend on the position of the mapping object, so a specific mapping geometry is not really needed. That is why it is listed in the hierarchy as a "Default Mapping". Note that the sphere has not changed appearance in OpenGL mode. Select the sphere and open the Object Properties window. Click the Wire tab, and set the Shaded Quality field to 128. The sphere turns black. Why?
Chrome is a reflective material, and OpenGL rendering cannot correctly produce the reflections. If you ray trace the View window, you can see the sphere is really chromed. Do this now to see the result. Is something wrong? Chrome is supposed to be reflective, so shouldn't you be able to see the wooden table reflected on the chrome sphere? If you cannot, it is because the view window's "Render Quality" setting is too low. Go to the Select window and click on the third tab from the left. This is the Rendering Settings tab. On it is a list of render settings. Most likely, your view window is set to the 'Speed Over Quality' setting. Change your view to use the 'Quality Over Speed' setting by dragging the setting label onto the view window (in the same way that you dragged the chrome material onto the sphere). Press the Ray Trace Render button again. Now you should have a reflective chrome sphere as shown below.
Creating an animationThe next part of our task is to animate the sphere so it rolls across the table. There is much to say about animation, and we'll get to that in later tutorials. For now, what you need to know is that you "key" the position, rotation, etc. of objects at particular frames, and let the computer fill in the in-between frames (often called "tweens"). So how do you do it? NOTE: Realsoft 3D has the normal main menu below the program title bar. It contains all the general-purpose tools, and if the icon of some tool is not included in the toolbar (because of lack of screen space, etc.), you can find it from here. The main menu also includes the functions that are needed for project management and changing the working environment. First, we should do just a little bit of 'house cleaning' of our scene. Go back to the object hierarchy view in the Select window, and click on the "sphere+chrome" folder to highlight it. Right click over the window to access the popup menu and use the Rename function to change the folder name to "Chrome Ball". Next, we need to display the Animation window. It appears at the bottom of the main window, below the view window, and looks like the following. Note that the little cylinder shape, under the zero, is called the "time slider".
If this window is not visible already, go to the View menu (main menu bar) and select Animation window from the list. Note that all the windows currently displayed have a check mark next to the window name. To make the ball move across the table, do the following:
NOTE: The Move tool that is activated with the 'm' key is not specific to animation recording; it is just another way of activating the Move tool for moving objects. The Transformation tools are presented in detail in later tutorials. Saving projectsAt this point, we must also perform one important step: save the work done so far. Therefore, select 'File/Save As' from the main menu. Choose a suitable folder and file name for saving the project using the browse button. A suitable location might be the 'Projects' subdirectory of Realsoft 3D home directory, and the filename could be 'myintro'. Press OK.
Rendering the sceneIn most cases, the created animation must be rendered to a suitable file format, so that it can be presented as a part of a multimedia show or in a home page, etc. This is the final step for this tutorial. First, choose a suitable, final viewing angle by rotating the view with Alt+dragRMB. Then make sure the Root is selected. Click the Camera tool icon on the Creation section of the Toolbar. Then click the Accept icon in the Control Bar.
Note: do not confuse the Camera Object tool with the View Control buttons at the right side of the view. The View Control buttons do not create camera objects, but simply modify a view's orientation. This creates a camera object that records the current viewing angle of the view window. This camera object is also added to your object hierarchy. When rendering animations or images to disk files, it is necessary to create a camera object for the scene. The camera defines how the scene is viewed in the rendered pictures. The view window cannot define this, because there may be many views opened simultaneously, or no views at all. If you rotate the view and want to get back to the 'camera view', simply drag&drop the camera object from the select window into the view window. If you lost your sphere or table in the view window (for example, you accidentally panned the view too much) just drag the desired object from the select window into the view window. This turns the view to show the dropped object. Select File/Render from the main menu. This opens a File Rendering window with settings for controlling the 'final' rendering of the animation. Do the following: In the "Output" section, enter a suitable path and filename (e.g. 'projects/my anim') in the "File Name" field; use browse gadget if necessary. Press the downward pointing arrow to the right of the "Available Formats" field. Select 'AVI Animation' from the list, and then click the Add button. Also, if you wanted to remove "BMP" from the Active File Formats list, left click to highlight "BMP", then press and hold the RMB until the "Remove" option appears in a popup (it is the only option). Make sure the option is highlighted, and release the mouse button. In the "Settings" section, select the value 'Reasonable quality' for the "Rendering Settings" field. In the Resolution section, set the Width field to 640 and the Height field to 480.
Press the 'Render Animation' button to start rendering the scene. This button renders the entire animation, whereas the Render Image button renders a single still image, based on the current position of the time slider; that is, if the current frame is number 10, then that is the image that will render. Also note that this would match what you see in the view window. Wait until the progress indicator shows 100% and the Render Animation button and Render Image button become enabled again. This indicates that rendering has completed. You can now play the animation using your favorite media player. On many systems, all you need to do is double-click the AVI file from the File Manager. SummaryThis first tutorial has introduced several of the basic concepts of Realsoft 3D. An important element of this tutorial was to show you that there are a number of ways to activate various functions in Realsoft 3D. Some of the methods that were shown are:
All these different methods of performing the same function may seem confusing at first, but it allows for much flexibility as you learn the program. Beginners may use simple methods like tool icons or menus, whereas experienced users may use fast methods like keyboard shortcuts and compass menus. The program includes thousands of features, and all the input devices - mouse, keyboard, etc - are loaded with power features. As you learn to use the program, it becomes possible to execute a complicated workflow surprisingly fast by combining these techniques. This marks the end of the first tutorial. Congratulations on creating your first scene. Hopefully, this first lesson has whetted your appetite, and demonstrated some of the power of Realsoft 3D. Happily, there is much, much more. Further lessons introduce and explore more specific features and techniques. All that can be said at this point is: be patient. 3D modeling and animation is a huge topic, but isn't learning fun! Let's move on.
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