World Builder 3 Tutorial Manual

Transcription

1 World Builder 3 Tutorial Manual Chapter Name & Section Name 1

2 C2 Basic Concepts Installation 13 Starting World Builder 16 Exiting World Builder 17 Tutorial 1 19 Tutorial 2 24 WorldBuilder is a remarkable 3D application that was specially designed to enable artists and animators to create and animate three-dimensional landscapes with stunning detail and realism. It provides all the tools you need to model, texture, light, render, and animate your own unique worlds from naturalistic to fantastic. This chapter begins by detailing WorldBuilder fundamentals including installation, starting and exiting the program. It continues with two tutorials designed to provide you a tour of WorldBuilder and give you a look at some of its comprehensive and advanced tool set. Tutorial 1 - Building a 3D Scene, is an introduction to using WorldBuilder libraries by quickly building and rendering a 3D scene. It takes you step-bystep through building a scene from scratch. You will begin by loading a landscape library and selecting a prebuilt landscape which you drag and drop into a WorldBuilder scene. You will replace the existing sky with one you will choose from a skies library. You will also produce several Phong shaded previews of the scene. Tutorial 2 - Animated Landscape is designed to give you an impression of some of WorldBuilder s advanced functions. It is a tour of WorldBuilder s key features including the viewports, Object Tree, and Property Tree. It consists of viewing a WorldBuilder AVI animation and examining the scene file that was used to create it. Along the way, you will also see how WorldBuilder animation is accomplished. 14 Chapter 2

3 Installation WORLDBUILDER INSTALLATION WorldBuilder and all its associated files are provided on 2 CD-ROMs. WorldBuilder requires Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows XP or Windows 95 to run. To install WorldBuilder, you run an installation program directly from the CD. You do this by clicking Start from the Windows Task bar, selecting Run and specifying the volume and path information to the setup program. WorldBuilder 3.0 no longer requires a hardware lock. Installing WorldBuilder You install WorldBuilder from the WorldBuilder CD-ROM disk 1 which uses Windows Autorun to automatically bring up the WorldBuilder CD dialog. You then click Install and follow the install program prompts. NOTE: If Autorun fails to bring up the WorldBuilder CD dialog, you can access the dialog by double clicking AUTORUN.EXE from the root directory of the WorldBuilder CD-ROM disk 1. Basic Concepts - Installation 15

4 C2 Basic Concepts The WorldBuilder install program automatically copies all required folders and program files to your hard disk drive. A full WorldBuilder installation requires 300 MB of disk space. If your disk space is limited, you can select the minimum WorldBuilder installation which requires only 9 MB of disk space. Installing WorldBuilder procedure 1. Locate the WorldBuilder CD-ROM disk 1 and insert it into your CD-ROM drive. Start the program Setup.exe to launch the installation process. 3. Click Next. The Customer Information dialog appears. Enter your name and serial number and click Next. 4. Accept the default directory or click Browse to specify a destination directory of your choice. Click Next. The Select Components dialog appears. 5. Select the components you want to install on the selected hard drive and click Next. The Ready to Install dialog appears. NOTE: A minimum WorldBuilder installation should include the Program Files. Please check the Disk Space Required and Disk Space Remaining to verify that you have sufficient disk space for the selected WorldBuilder components. If you prefer to minimize WorldBuilder space requirements, you can access all other program components from the CD-ROM. Please remember that this will require that the CD-ROM be present in your CD-ROM drive each time you start WorldBuilder. If you have a CD-ROM that is 4X or slower, we recommend that you install the Project Templates, Libraries, Maps, Materials, and Objects on your hard drive for best WorldBuilder performance. 16 Chapter 2

5 Installation Select Components dialog WARNING: A complete installation will require approximately 348,044,000 bytes. Please be sure to leave at least 100 MB of free disk space for swap space. 6. Click Next to install the selected components to your hard drive. The installing dialog appears and displays a progress bar for each installed component. The Installation Completed! dialog appears. 7. Click Finish to complete the installation. Basic Concepts - Installation 17

6 C2 Basic Concepts STARTING WORLDBUILDER You can start WorldBuilder from the Windows Start Menu or from a WorldBuilder Short Cut. 1. Click Start from the Windows Task Bar. The Windows Start Menu appears. 2. Select the Program Menu, Digital Element Menu, and Animatek WorldBuilder. WorldBuilder Starts, and the WorldBuilder default scene and user interface is displayed. TIP: You can also start WorldBuilder using a Windows Shortcut. Windows Shortcuts provide direct access to WorldBuilder from a program icon that you create and place on your desktop. To start WorldBuilder from a Shortcut, simply double click the Shortcut and WorldBuilder will start. To set up a WorldBuilder Shortcut, locate the WorldBuilder folder and right click the AWB3.0.EXE program, and select Create Shortcut from the File Menu. Then click drag the Shortcut icon on to the Windows Desktop. For more information consult Windows 2000/XP/NT/98 Help or your Windows documentation. EXITING WORLDBUILDER You can exit WorldBuilder at any time by Clicking File from the Toolbar and Selecting Exit. If you have edited the current WorldBuilder Scene you will be prompted to save your changes before exiting. 1. Click File from the WorldBuilder Toolbar. The File menu appears. 2. Click Exit. The WorldBuilder Save Changes dialog appears. 3. Click Yes to Save and Exit, No to Exit without saving, or Cancel to remain in WorldBuilder. 18 Chapter 2

7 Exiting World Builder TUTORIAL 1 - BUILDING & VIEWING A 3D SCENE WorldBuilder s Libraries and its drag and drop interface make it simple to create natural looking landscapes with just a few mouse clicks. You can select from various prebuilt landscapes, water, and skies as well as trees, plants, rocks, roads, and selected architectural objects. In the following tutorial you will create a 3D WorldBuilder scene from a library scene. You will also work with a light, and camera and produce multiple Phong shaded camera views as you add each object. Add a Landscape tutorial part I You will begin by opening a WorldBuilder Library and replacing the current scene. 1. Start WorldBuilder. Default World Builder scene The default scene opens. 2. Select File/New, select Scene from the New dialog and click OK. A blank scene is created. Basic Concepts - Exiting World Builder 19

8 C2 Basic Concepts 3. Select Library from the Menubar and click Landscape from the pull-down menu and select Landscape. The landscape Library is opened and appears in the viewport. 4. Click drag Alien Moon into the center of the Top Viewport and drop it. The Confirmation dialog appears informing you that you are about to replace the existing scene with the Alien Moon Scene. 6...Click OK Click Zoom Extents All from the View Tools located at the lower right of the screen to frame the full scene. 7. Click-drag around the scene to select the full scene and click Zoom Selected from the View Tools located at the lower right of the screen. The scene appears as a series of multicolored lines in the viewports. The Object Tree, located at the top of the Property Editor, (at the upper right of the screen) shows a series of Skeleton Lines, a camera, a water object, a landscape, a sky, and a light source. Landscapes are represented by a series of multicolored Skeleton Lines TIP: It s a good practice to click Zoom Extents All as a first step when opening a new scene or adding landscapes from a Library. This provides a quick view of the full scene extents. Render a Camera View tutorial part II You can render a WorldBuilder viewport using any of several shading methods including wireframe, flat shading or Phong shading. You do this either from the Menubar by clicking Render and selecting a shading method from the list or by clicking a render method from the Toolbar buttons. 1. Right click on the top left of the Front, viewport, on the word Front, and select User as Camera01 from the Context Menu. The Front viewport is replaced by a User viewport with Camera09 s viewpoint. 20 Chapter 2

9 Tutorial 1- Building & Viewing a 3D Scene 2. Click Wireframe Renderer. The camera viewport is shown in wireframe. 3. Click Draft Preview Rendering from the Toolbar. In a few moments, the camera viewport is Phong shaded. Wireframe & Phong shaded views Edit the Camera tutorial part III WorldBuilder cameras consist of the of the point of view, referred to as the Camera, and the Camera Target. You change the camera view by clicking the Move button and moving either element in any orthogonal viewport. You can also adjust the Field of View, dolly the camera in and out, or edit its perspective. 1. Click the Wireframe Render button. The camera viewport displays a wireframe view. 2. In the Left or Top viewport, move the mouse pointer over the Camera. The pointer changes to camera icon, indicating that the pointer is over the Camera. 3. Click the camera icon or select the Camera 01 from the Property Editor on the right. The Camera 01 is now selected. Click the Move tool at the top right. An icon with a blue and left arrow appears over the camera. 4. Click the the green arrow to move the camera horizontally, or click the blue arrow to move the camera vertically. You can click the icon at the base of the two arrow to move the camera freely in any direction. 5. Move the camera to a new position. The camera viewport is updated to reflect the new point of view. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 1 21

10 C2 Basic Concepts A selected camera You can move the camera from any orthogonal view, or you can open a camera window and have current view of the scene while you move the camera. For this we will use two different tools, the Arc Rotate and the Pan tools, located at the botton right of the WorldBuilder interface. 1. From the menubar, select Window/New/Camera 01. This is a true camera window and unlike the User as a camera view, you will be able to move the camera interactively. A new window appears with the dimensions as specified in the Camera Output in the Property tree in the Property Editor. 2. Click on the Arc Rotate tool and a circular icon appears in the Camera 01 window. Click in the middle of the camera view to move the camera freely on any axis, or restrain the motion by clicking on the little box located along the circular axis. clicking the left or right box will rotate the camera horizontally. Clicking the top and bottom box will rotate the camera vertically. Clicking the circular line between the boxes will pan the camera Using the Arc Rotate will rotate the camera but will leave the target unchanged. To move the camera target we will use the Pan tool. 3. Click on the Pan tool and click-drag in the Camera 01 viewport to move the camera target in any direction. The viewport reflects the new target orientation. 22 Note that the Arc Rotate and Pan can also be used in any orthogonal view or in the user view but they will move and pan the view itself, and they will not affect the camera. The two tools can be used to move the camera interactively only in a camera viewport. You can however, move the Chapter 2

11 Tutorial 1- Building & Viewing a 3D Scene camera with the move tool from any orthogonal viewport and the new position will be reflected in the camera viewport. It is important to understand that unlike the Camera viewport, which is a true camera view, the User as Camera is not a real camera view but a User view. Edit the LightSource tutorial part IV WorldBuilder provides three types of light sources; Parallel, Point and Spotlights. The default light source is a single parallel light which is designed to simulate sunlight. The light is represented by a yellow line. You can edit the direction and angle of a Parallel light in any orthogonal viewport the same was that you edited the camera, by using the move tool. You can also enable shadow casting for Parallel lights. 1. In the Top viewport, move the mouse over the yellow line and at the end of the Parallel light. The pointer changes to a light icon. 2. Click on it and click on the move tool to move the light to a new location.. You can use the green arrow to move the light horizontally or the blue arrow to move it vertically. Clicking on the square base will let you move the light freely in any direction. 3. Click Shadow from the Property Tree located in the middle of the Property Editor at the right of the screen. Shadow is currently set to OFF and highlighted gray. 4. Right click Shadow and click to uncheck Disable from the Context Menu. Shadow is set to ON. 5. Click the camera viewport and click Phong rendering. The camera viewport is selected, highlighted blue and Phong rendered with shadows. 6. Select File/Saveand save your scene as Tutor1.awb. Tutor1.AWB is saved to disk. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 1 23

12 C2 Basic Concepts TUTORIAL 2 - CREATING A NEW SCENE PART I We will now create a complete scene starting from the Start.awb basic scene. WorldBuilder uses skeleton lines to profile a terrain surface. You can think of skeleton lines as wireframes over which a cloth is draped to simulate different land forms 1. Start WorldBuilder and select File/Open File from the WorldBuilder Toolbar, if the scene Start.awb is not already open. 2. From menubar, select Library/Skeletons. The Skeletons library opens. the Look-in Pull Down, select the disk drive and folder where your WorldBuilder example animations (AVI files) are located. 3. Select Hills 3 from the Hills folder of the Skeletons library. Click-drag Hills 03 into the Top view. The mouse cursor changes into a + sign to indicate that an object is added to the scene. 3. Select Hills 3 from the Hills folder of the Skeletons library. Click-drag Hills 03 into the Top view. 4. From the Property editor, select Hills 03. Click the Move tool to move the skeletons to the desired location. 24 Chapter 2

13 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene Alternatively, you can right-click into the window to access a pop-up menu of object and select a mode there. The right-click allows for easy and fast access to different commands like Move, Rotate, Scale, Duplicate or Delete. 5. Open a new camera window to see how the skeleton lines have transformed the landscape. From the Menubar, select Window/New/Camera 01. A new Camera view window opens. 6. Click the aa shading mode on the top tool bar to render the view.. The view is rendered with the best quality preview.. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 25

14 C2 Basic Concepts We will now add a new texture to the terrain. 7. From the menubar, select Libraty/Procedural Textures. The Procedural Textures library opens. 8. Click on Area 1 (full) on the Property Editor to select the area. 9. In the middle window of the Property Editor, the Object Tree, click on Area 1 to select it and drag and drop the material Clay & Grass 2 on the Area 1. The new material is now assigned to the terrain. 10. Select the old material from the Property Tree and click the - icon to delete it. You can explore and edit properties of the new material by expending nodes in the Property Tree. 26 Chapter 2

15 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene The Preview Icon opens a small user view and render a preview of the selected material. You can adjust the material parameters as you like. 11. Render the camera view with the new material using the aa rendering. To optimize the creation process and save on rendering time, we can prevent the terrain and sky from rendering each time we add a new object to the scene, by using the incremental option. 12. Click the Incremental DesignStep Forward button. This will freeze the current image and the next time a render is done, the terrain and sky will not be rendered. The last rendered image will be kept in the z-buffer. Our next step will be to add some grass. 13. Select Landscape0 from the Property Editor, and click on the Create Area icon.. You can create area in any viewport but the top viewport is the best suited for creating new areas. 14. Click-drag in the top viewport to create a new area. 15. Select Landscape0 from the Property Editor, and click on the Create Area icon.. You can create a new area in any viewport but the top viewport is the best suited for creating new areas. Alternatively, you can create area point by point, with a single click per point. 16. Click-drag into the top viewport to create a new area. Right click to finishand close the area Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 27

16 C2 Basic Concepts The new Area 2 now appears in the Property Editor. Although it is easy and convenient to use a pre-created grass from the Grass library, for the purpose of this tutorial we will create a new grass. 17. Click on the Area 2 from the Property Editor and right-click on Area: ON in the Property Tree and select Add. A new Select Type(s) of Object dialog appears. 18. Select Grass and click OK to accept the selection. Properties like Blades, Clumps, Patches or Color can be edited from the Property Tree. We will make a taller grass by changing the average height. 19. From the Property Tree, select blades and set the Average Height to Select Clumps and change the clump to clump distance to 2, to make the clumps sparcer. 21. Click the render button to render the scene. Note that this time the terrain and sky is not rendered. Instead, only the grass is rendered due to the Incremental Design being used. 22. When you are satisfied with the grass s appearance, click the Incremental Design Step Forward again to freeze the current render. Next time the render is called, the terrain, sky and grass will not be rendered. We will now add some trees to the scene. 23. Right-click in the library window and select open to open a new library. Open the Plants20.odb from the Open dialog. 28 Chapter 2

17 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene 24. Click-drag WindSweptPine1 into the camera viewport at the desired location. The tree now appears in the scene but it is too small, so we need to scale it. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 29

18 C2 Basic Concepts 25. From the menubar, click on the Scale icon and in the camera viewport, scale the tree up. A skeletal image of the tree gives you an idea of the scale while you manipulate it. 30 Chapter 2

19 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene 26. Render the scene. Again, only the tree is rendered due to the Incremental Design being used. Incremental Design allows you to achieve very fast and precise feedback during the design process. The tree foliage is not dense enough, so we will change it s density. 27. From the Property Editor, select WindSweptPine_1 and select Foliage Density from the Property Tree and set the foliage density to Render the scene again. The tree does not cast a shadow because the shadow is turned OFF in the property editor. 29. From the Property Editor, select Parallel_Light_01. From the Property Tree, right-click on the Shadow to enable it. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 31

20 C2 Basic Concepts Since we only want a single tree to cast a shadow, we can zoom in on the tree from the Shadow View. That will produce a more accurate shadow. 30. From the Property Tree, select Shadow View. 31. Using the Zoom Into Area tool at the bottom right of the WorldBuilder interface, click-drag in the shadow view to select the tree. The default parameters for the shadow are fine for the purpose of this tutorial. The Generate Map is set to First Frame so the shadow map will be calculated on the first frame only and this map will remains for the all subsequent frames. This is fine if the tree is static but if you plan to animate the tree, this parameter should be set to Every Frame. In order to render the scene and to see the shadow on the terrain and grass, we now need to disable the incremental design. 32. From the menubar, click on the Incremental Design Step Backward icon to clear the z-buffer. 32 Chapter 2

21 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene All objects in the scene now appear as wireframe. Finally, we should exclude clouds from the shadow-casting objects. Having those objects cast a shadow would not be appropriate since our shadow map covers only a small area around the tree. For that reason, the shadow from the clouds would not look natural, as it would be clipped. 33, Ctrl-click on the items to exclude them from the shadow casting object list. The objects highlighted in gray will cast a shadow. An object that is not highlited will be excluded from casting shadows. The scene is now ready for a final render. 34. Click on File/Save and save your scene. CREATE A NEW SCENE PART II In the first part of this tutorial we build a very simple scene. We will now explore how to scatter vegetation in areas and how to edit the shape of areas. We will now create a new area and fill it with trees. 1. Open the scene Tutor1.awb if it is not already open, and select Landscape01 from the Property Editor. 2. Click on the Create Area icon on the menubar at the top right You can create area in any viewport but the top viewport is the best suited for creating new areas. 3. Click-drag in the Top view to create thearea and right-click to close the area and finish editing. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 33

22 C2 Basic Concepts Area 3 is created and appears in the Property Editor. We will now add some trees to this newly created area. 4. Right-click in the library window and select Open. 5. Open the library PnExt02.odb and click on the folder FBtree to open it. You can select multiple items by using Ctrl-click, which toggle the selection in the library window A single click resets the selection to the current item. 6. Click-drag the trees FBTree1_3 and FBTree1_4 into the Area 3 in the Property Tree. The Select Type(s) of Object dialog appears. 7. Select Scattered Vegetation and click OK to accept the selection. Scattered Vegetation distributes the trees uniformly at random locations in the area. The Add Object dialog box appears. Since we have selected more than one tree and want them to be all in the same area, we have to add them to the same distribution contents. 8. Check Add object to existing contents and click OK. This dialog box will appear several times, depending on the number of trees that were selected. 34 Chapter 2

23 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene 9. Click Yes on the dialog box Replace Icon. Now we have to adjust the parameters of our new scattered trees. Height is probably the most important parameter and in most case it is only necessary to adjust this parameter. To get a good idea of the height of our new trees, we can see the height of the pine tree that we created earlier and take this measurement as a starting point. 10. Select WindSweptPine_1 from the Property Editor and select Scale from the Property Tree. The height of the pine is around 70, so we can average the height of our new trees to be from 55 for the smallest trees and to 90 for the tallest. 11. Select Area 3 from the Property Editor and expand the node for FBTree1_1 from the Property Tree, if it s not already expanded. 12. Select Size & Density from the Property Tree and enter a value of 90 for the maximum height and 55 for the minimum height in the Height Range dialog box. Leave proportional scale and absolute size checked. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 35

24 C2 Basic Concepts We can optimize the rendering speed by using the option Draw as a filpboard. Render as a flipboard is good for trees that will not be seen from a very close distance. The conversion to flipboard takes place when we render the scene. 13. Select Area 3 from the Property Editor and Objects List from the Property Tree. Check the box Draw as filpboards. We now need to enable the shadow for our new forest. We don t have to enable the shadow for each individual tree, as we can enable it for the full area. By default, scattered vegetation does not cast a shadow, so we have to enable that option. To speed up rendering, we will render the shadow as filpboards. This makes sense since our trees will also be rendered as flipboards. 14. Select Area 3 from the Property Editor and select Shadows & Reflections from the Property Tree. 15. Check as flipboard for the cast shadow option. Since we don t have any water object in the scene, we can leave the draw in reflections to it s default settings. We now need to create a new shadow map so it will include our new trees. We could set the option for the shadow to be calculated for every frame but that would only make the rendering longer. Since all of our trees are static, we only need one shadow map. 16. Select Parallel_Light_0 from the Property tree and select Shadow Options from the Property Tree. 17. Right-click on the Shadow Options to bring up the pop up menu and select Add a new shadow map. 18. Right-click on the shadow in the Property Tree to enable it. The new shadow is now set to ON. 36 Chapter 2

25 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene 19. Expand the node for the new shadow and select Shadow View. Zoom in on the newly created Area 3 with the Zoom tool located at the bottom right of the WorldBuilder interface. Continue zooming until you have framed Area 3 tightly. As with our pine tree, we don t want this new shadow to include the clouds. Since both shadows have independant settings, we need to set it for this new shadow as well. 20. Select Parallel_Light_0 from the Property tree and select Exclude Objects from the Property Tree. Ctrl-click toggles selections in the Exclude Objects list. 21. Ctrl-click on AltoStratusClouds2 to exclude them from the list of shadow casting objects. An object highlited in gray will cast a shadow. 22. Render the scene using the aa rendering mode 23. Click on Incremental Design Step Forward to freeze the rendering. Next, we will create a new area and add some flowers in the foreground of our scene Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 37

26 C2 Basic Concepts 24. Click Create new area and draw the area in the top view as in the following figure. When your area is completed, right-click to close it and exit the editing process. Area 4 now appears in the Property Editor. We will add some flowers from the Plants20.odb library. This library should already be opened, since we used it previously. 25. Right-click in the library window and select Plants20.odb from the pop up menu. If the library is not already opened, select Open and open Plants20.odb. 26. Select 2 or 3 of the AsterFlower with Ctrl-click and drag-drop them into the Area 3 in the Property tree. 38 Chapter 2

27 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene 27. Select Clusters of vegetation and click OK to accept the selection. 28. Select Size and Density and set the values to 5 for the maximum height and 3 for the minimum height in the Height range. Set the average distance to 40. In the case of clustered vegetation, the average distance defines the distance in between clusters, not between each plant. 29. From the Property tree, select Clusters. Set the minimum diameter to 10 and the maximum diameter to 12. Set the minimum object number to 15 and the maximum object number to 20. Set the relative size of objects close to the boundary to Render the scene. Since we use Incremental Design, only the flowers are rendered. This gives a very fast preview. When we are satisfied with the parameters, we can expand the area to cover more of the terrain. 31. Make sure that Area 4 is selected and click on the Move Nodes icon from the top tool bar. The cursor changes to a sqare shape. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 39

28 C2 Basic Concepts You can manipulate multiple nodes at the same time by drag-selecting them first. 31. Make sure that Area 4 is selected and click on the Move Nodes icon from the top tool bar. The cursor changes to a square shape. 32. Drag the selected nodes as you would for any other object with the manipulator tool, as shown in the figure bellow. Many other operations can be performed on multiple nodes or objects, like scaling or rotating. Alternatively, you can select a single node by clicking on it and move it using the manipulator. While you manipulate the area, you can preview the layout of the plants in the camera window. We can also change the distribution of the plants without changing the area shape, by using the random seed option. Each time you change this parameter, press Enter and render the camera view to have a preview of the new distribution pattern. 40 Chapter 2

29 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene This concludes the second part of the tutorial.. CREATE A NEW SCENE PART III We will continue building the scene started in part I and II. In part III, we will add water and set the placing conditions for the material and vegetation so that they will be consistant with the water level. To speed up the rendering time, we will hide the vegetation. 1. Under Landscape01, ctrl-click Area 4, Area 3 and Area 2 to select them and right-click to bring the pop up menu. Select Hide from the options.the cursor changes to a sqare shape. The Areas that were previously in bold font are now displayed in regular font and grayed out to indicate that they are hidden. To speed up the placement of the water on the scene, we will use the Smooth OpenGL shaded preview mode. 2.. Select Smooth OpenGL Rendering from the top menubar. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 41

30 C2 Basic Concepts OpenGL preview is very convenient for many editing tasks, like for adjusting the position of objects precisely. Use the Creation Toolbar located on the left of the WorldBuilder Interface to create the lake. 3. Click on the Lake icon to create a lake object. The lake is a simple square water object with ripples, reflection and transparency. We want to position the water slightly higher. 4. With the Move tool, position the water slowly to a slightly higher location. The OpenGL preview will reflect the changes. If dragging the object does not give you enough precision, you can enter a numerical value in the Property Editor in the Move dialog box. Be aware that if you move the water with the numerical option, you will need to click on the OpenGL preview to see the results, whereas if you move it with the Move tool, the OpenGL preview will be updated interactively. Make a note of the altitude value of the water (z axis) as you will need this number later on. We will now adjust the parameters of the water surface. 42 Chapter 2

31 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene 5 Expand the node of the Water0 object in the Property Editor and select Area 1 (full). If we plan to animate the scene later on, we need the reflection to be calculated for each frame. 6. Set the Generate Map parameter to Every Frame and set the quality to 25 percent, which is enough for the purpose of our tutorial and will make the rendering time shorter. 7. Expand the node for Frensel Water in the Property Tree and select Phong Photometry. A small Ambient and Diffuse value gives the impression of clean and transparent water, whereas higher values give a muddy, opaque look. Higher Specular values give brighter highlights. Higher Power values give a more reflective mirror-like water surface. Adjust these values until you satisfied with the result. Finally, adjust the water color and depth. 8. From the Property Tree, under Frensel Water, select Components Mixing and expand it s node. Select Colors/Dept. The Depth-at value defines the maximum depth at which the water still retains its transparency. Too high values can make the water almost completely transparent. 9. Set the Depth at value to Render the scene using the aa rendering button. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 43

32 C2 Basic Concepts The water looks quite good but the bank of the water does not look very natural. For that reason, we will create a sand material around the water to outline the shore line better. We will now add a new material into the Landscape0 Area Select Landscape0 from the Property Editor and select Area 1 (full) from the Property Tree. 12. Right-click on Area 1 (full) and select Add. The Select type(s) of objects dialog appears. 13. Select Material in area under Texturing and click OK to accept the selection. By default, the material is created empty and will render as black. We can add different components called shaders to make the material look like wet dirt. 14. Select Material in Area from the Property Tree. Right-click on it and select Add. The Select type(s) of objects dialog appears. The Add command is context sensitive, so all available option are displayed. Shaders are organized into groups for easier navigation in the long list which can be scrowled down via the bar on the left. 44 Chapter 2

33 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene We need a constant color for our material, but we also need a texture. 15. Under Texture/Color, select Constant Color but do NOT click on OK yet. 16. Ctrl-click on Phong Photometry under Photometry/Reflection and now click OK. This will allow us to bring two shaders simultaneously into our material. Material components (shaders) have to work together to calculate the correct color for an object. While each of the shaders can be very simple, their combination can create an infinite variation of color The constant color shader defines a generic solid color of the object. Without photometry, it would look totally flat, since it would not be sensitive to the direction, color and intensity of the light. 17. Under Material in Area from the Property Tree, select Constant Color and choose a color that is close to the look of wet sand.. The photometry defines how the water surface is affected by the lighting. This shader needs a constant color as a base. Without a constant color it would not do much. 18. Click on the Preview Material button to see small preview of your material. This preview rendering uses the same light as in your scene so the apparence of the material is identical to the final render in the scene. 19. Set the Ambient value to 0.8. Set the Diffuse value to 0.5, and set the Power value to.2, or to your liking. Now we will specify where we want the sand to appear. The Placing Condition dialog allows us to specify this very precisely. 20. Under Material in Area from the Property Tree, select Placing Conditions and uncheck the option Ignore All check box to enable the manual positioining of the texture. Again, using the preview material will help us to adjust the parameters for the placement of the material. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 45

34 C2 Basic Concepts The default projection is from the top view and show only general layout. We will change the size and the projection of the preview window to make it more helpfull for our purposes. 21. First stretch the window by putting on one of its corners. Then, right-click its caption and select user as Camera01. The preview is now more appropriate. The white color indicates where the sand material will appear. 46 Chapter 2

35 Tutorial 2 Creating a New Scene 21. From the Placing Conditions dialog, set the maximum altitude range to 1.5 and the minimum altitude range to -10 and render the scene. The sand is slightly higher than the water so it appears all around the water but its edge is too soft. We can adjust this by using the Area Feathering parameters. This preview rendering uses the same light as in your scene so the apparence of the material is identical to the final render in the scene. 22. From the Property Editor, under Landscape0, select Area 1 (full), and from the Property Tree, select Area 1 (full). Set the Soft Placing Altitude to Now the boundary is not as soft but it is too uniform in color and does not look natural. We can address this with a Fractalizer. 23. Right-click on Area 1 (full) from the Property Tree and select Add. 24. From the Select type(s) of object dialog, select Altitude Fractilizer and click OK to accept the selection. Leave the parameters to their default settings. Render the scene to see its effect. Now that our water and shore are properly set, we can bring back the vegetation and adjust it. Before you unhide the areas, click the Incremental Design Step Forward to freeze our new rendering. 25. Under Landscape0 fromt he Property Editor, right-click on Area 2, the Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 47

36 C2 Basic Concepts area with the grass, and select Show from the list. We will now need to adjust the placing conditions for the grass so it does not go under the water and on the sandy shore. 27. With the Area 2 still selected, select Placing Conditions from the Property Tree and uncheck the Ignore All check box. We need to set the boundary for the grass slightly higher than the sand. 28. Since the sand higher altitude was 1.5, we will set the grass lower altitude to Render the scene and click the Incremental Design Step Forward to freeze this rendering. 29. From the Property Editor, right-click on Area 3, the area with the trees, and select Show. Render the scene and click the Incremental Design Step Forward to freeze this rendering. 30. Under Landscape0 from the Property Editor, right-click on Area 4, the area with the flowers. 31. Set the placing conditions for the flowers with the same values as the placing conditions for the grass and render the scene. 32. Now that the scene is completed, click the Incremental Design Step Backward and render the final scene. 48 Chapter 2 The flowers are hardly visible in the reflection, so there is no point including them in it.

37 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene 33. From the Property Editor, click on Area 4 to select it, and select Shadows & Reflections from the Property Tree., the area with the trees, and select Show. 34. Uncheck the Draw in reflections check box so that the flowers will not be calculated in the reflection. This will speed up the rendering. Finally we can tweak the parameters for the water to make it as natural looking as possible. Tweaking the water can be time comsuming. To help in this process, we can use the Incremental Design. 35. From the Property Editor, right-click on Water0 and select Hide. 36. Render the scene without the water and click on the Incremental Design Step Forward to freeze the current rendering. Now that we have our z-buffer image without the water, we can use it as a base to tweak the water quickly. 37. From the Property Editor, right-click on Water0 and select Show Since we already have our reflection map calculated, we will turn that option OFF. 35. From the Property Editor, select Area 1 (full) under Water0, and select Fresnel Water from the Property Tree. 36. Set the Generate Map check box to Never and save the scene. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 49

38 C2 Basic Concepts CREATE A NEW SCENE PART IV In this tutorial, we will learn how to create atmospheric effects. Many of the atmospheric effects in WorldBuilder are implemented as postprocess filters. While designing the scene, you can apply them to a z-buffer without re-rendering the entire image. Very much like we did when adding new object with the Incremental Design cycle. To do this, we need to save the z- buffered image from the camera viewport to experiment with the filters. 1. Render the scene and click on Incremental Design Step Forward to freeze the rendered image. 2. Click on the Scene object in the Property Tree to select it. 3. Right-click on filters node and select Add. The Select type(s) of object dialog appears. 4. Select Haze and click OK to accept the selection and render the scene. Fog Filter and Two Color Fog Layer could also be used but they are mostly present for compatibility with WorldBuilder 2.0. The node Haze now appears in the Property Tree. The fog is too dense so the scene appears washed out. We need to adjust the Haze parameters so the scene still look as if sunny. The Haze filter simulates the light scattered in the atmosphere. Since the blue component of light scatter more, the color of the sky is blue, and the color of the objects in the distance has a blue tint in a clear atmosphere. We can simulate how the air scatters the light by specifying the distance at which the light intensity will decrease by half. With an independant halftransparency distance for each of the color components, we can set scattering of the blue component to a higher value (shorter half-transparency distance) to have more realistic results. Additionaly, you can add an artificial tint to the atmosphere, but for a clear atmosphere a light gray or white color is better. We have to make the haze less dense in the foreground. 5. Set the Half Transparency Distance to 1000 for the red, 800 for the green and 600 for the blue. Knowing the size of the landscape (1000 units) helps to set these parameters. 6. Increase the upper boundary from 70 to 120 for the Altitude range. This will set the haze more dense on the tree tops. 50 Chapter 2

39 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene Although we are getting closer to a light haze on a sunny day, we lost some contrast and color saturation of the original image. This can be fixed by a RGB levels filter. It works in a similar way to Photoshop s Autolevel filter. 7. Select the Scene object from the Property Editor. Right-click on the filter node and select Add. 8. From the Select type(s) of object dialog box, select RGB levels and click Ok to accept the selection. Usually the RGB levels filter should be added at the very end of the filter s queue. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 51

40 C2 Basic Concepts Now the colors are over-saturated and the contrast is too high. So we will change the Target range so that it will have closer values to our original image. 9. Set the red value to 24, the green value to 35 and the blue value to Click on the Incremental Design Step Backward and render the scene with the aa rendering button. While Haze works fine in many situations, it is not sensitive to the direction of the light. For that purpose, Volumetric light can be used when a more dramatic lighting effect is needed. We will discard the previous haze and start the new atmospheric effect. Although filters can be used with each other, it is better to keep a scene simple. 1. Render the scene and click on Incremental Design Step Forward to freeze the rendered image. 11. Click Haze: ON from the Property Tree and click on the Delete Property button to delete the Haze filter, or hit the delete key on your keyboard. The scene returns to its previous state Render the scene and click the Incremental Design Step Forward to save Chapter 2

41 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene the image as a z-buffer. 13. Click on the Scene object in the Property Tree to select it. 14. Right-click on filters node and select Add. The Select type(s) of object dialog appears. 15. Select Volumetric Light and click OK to accept the selection and render the scene. This image, rendered with the defult settings for the Volumetric Light, is not very different from the one that we obtained with the Haze filter. This result suggests that for a simpler effect, like the one above, we can use a simpler filter, the Haze filter. But Volumetric Light is capable of much more complex effects, like creating beams of light. 16. Click on Incremental Design Step Backward to clear the z-buffer as we will need to generate new shadow maps.. We will now move the light and new shadows to simulate sunset. 19. Select Parallel_Light_01 from the Property Editor and move it almost directly facing the camera. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 53

42 C2 Basic Concepts You can move the light from the camera view and doing so is more convenient for precise positioning. Place the light source so that the sun disk appears a little under the tree tops line. Now that we moved the light, we need to adjust the shadow view. 20. Click on Parralel_Light_0 in the Property Editor to select it. 54 Chapter 2

43 Tutorial 2- Creating a New Scene 21. Select Shadow View from the Property Tree and click on the Look at Scene button to frame the scene in the shadow view. Clicking on the Look at Scene button will center the scene in the Shadow View. 22. With the Zoom tool, zoom on the pine tree and frame it as tigtly as possible. Fallow the same steps again to adjust the second shadow and frame the entire forest as tightly as possible. Our next step is to render the scene without the Volumetric Light to create a base image for the z-buffer. 23, From the Property Tree, right-click on Volumetric Light and select Disable. 24. Render the scene and click on the Incremental Design Step Forward to freeze the current rendering into the z-buffer. 25. From the Property Tree, right-click on Volumetric Light and select Disable to uncheck it and enable the effect. 26. Render the scene. With the default settings the effect of the light beams is barely visible, so we need to change some parameter to enhance this effect Basic Concepts - Tutorial 2 55

44 C2 Basic Concepts 27. Set the Direct and Scattered brightness from 1.5 to 2.5 and render the scene. A simple increase in brightness is a brute force approach that allows you to see more of the light beams but is also bleaches out the sky. A more efficient approach is to adjust the volume, where the volumetric effect is calculated. Knowing the relative dimensions and location helps to adjust the Volumetric Light. The clipping distance at 400 units is approximately twice as far as the distance from the tree to the camera. Also we need the effect in a rather thin layer closer to the ground to prevent the sky from getting washed out. 28. Set the Volume clipping distance to 400, the maximun altitude to -190 and the maximum altitude to Change the ambient color and the direct color as illustrated in the figure. Here we added a RGB levels filter to give more contrast. We will now need to render a final image and calculate the reflection again to have an accurate render. 30. From the Property Editor, select Area 1 (full) under Water0. From the Property Tree, select Frensel Water and set the Generate Map to first frame. 56 Chapter 2

45 Tutorial 3- Landscape Surface Generation To get even more subtle details in the light beams, you can reduce the foliage shadow density of the tree. This will add more holes in the map, hence more variations in the light intensity. 31. From the Property Editor, select WindSweptPine_1. From the Property Tree select Foliage Density. 32. Set the foliage shadow to Render the final scene and save it. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 3 57

46 C2 Basic Concepts TUTORIAL 3 -LANDSCAPE SURFACE GENERATION Creation of reliefs of various types is easy in WorldBuilder. The main idea of a surface generation is based on the so-called "skeleton lines approach". You outline the character features of your landscape (like ridges of mountains) using linear splines (skeleton lines, or skeletons) and evoke the skin generation procedure (Skin). The latter builds the landscape's surface. Landscapes in WorldBuilder are regular meshes so that the precision of the surface generator depends on the number of points in the mesh. The WorldBuilder interface allows you to set landscapes of the following dimensions 32*32, 64*64 (very crude meshes), 128*128, 256*256 (meshes of moderate dimensions), 512*512, 1024*1024 up to 4096*4096 (very detailed meshes). It is clear that the more points there are in the landscape's mesh, and the more details you can achieve on it. On the other hand, meshes of very high resolution are extremely memory-consuming. In practice, landscapes of 512*512 points are quite sufficient for many applications. More details are obtained using the Polygons_Subdivision. 1. Start WB and in the main menu line choose Create / Landscape: A square landscape appears in the scene. Its default dimensions are 64*64 and it is absolutely flat. To obtain a better resolution increase the number of points in the landscape's mesh. 2. Select Settings from the Property Tree and set points to 128. The landscape is now 128*128 in dimension. In order to see our landscape, we need to add a light source. 3. Choose Create / Light Source / Parallel Light, and click on the Front viewport to define the light position, and right-click to exit. If you click in the Top view, the light will have no elevation and you will need to move it after. We will also adjust the ambient light. 4. Select Scene from the Property Editor and select Ambient Light from the Property Tree. Set the RGB value to 50 for each of the R, G and B. 5. Choose Create / Camera, and click-drag in the Front view to add a new camera. The camera is drawn first and the camera target is drawn last. You can move your camera or its target with the Move tool. 58 Chapter 2 We will now deform the landscape with skeleton lines.

47 Tutorial 3- Landscape Surface Generation 6. In the main menu choose Create / Skeleton Line: The arrow cursor changes to a specific sign indicating that WorldBuilder is ready to add a skeleton to the scene. 7. In Front, Left, or Camera viewport, drag the mouse to create the skeleton line. When your editing is completed, right-click and choose Select to exit the editing process. We could use the Top view to draw the skeleton line, but the resulting skeleton line would be flat at ground level. Drawing it from the Front or Left view let us add some elevation. The top view is best suited for drawing areas. When you are dragging the mouse WB is permanently adding points to the line (approximately 10 points a second). To finish with the line release the left button. Here we added a RGB levels filter to give more contrast. To see how the skeleton line affects the landscape, you have to render the scene in wireframe or OpenGL mode. Here we added a RGB levels filter to give more contrast. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 3 59

48 C2 Basic Concepts Note: You can generate the Skin manually by clicking on the "Make Skin" button in the Landscape's toolbar. Adding more and more skeleton lines to the scene you can get landscapes of any desirable shape. However all landscapes are z-projectable. By other words, the landscape's mesh contains no pendent parts. A wide variety of skeleton lines is contained in the Skelet20.odb library, which is supplied with the program. 8. Choose Library / Skeletons. The library opens in the library window. Here we added a RGB levels filter to give more contrast. You can drag and drop any of these presets into the Top view. There are many folders with different shapes of pre-defined mountains, hills and terrain. For the purpose of our tutorial, we will use Hills 03 from the Hills folder. Although the skeleton lines allow you to get surfaces of any complexity, manual construction of all pecularities of the relief is sometimes a long process. If your goal is not in an exact reproduction of a real part of the earth, you can use the so-called skin modifiers. These modifiers include: Footprints_in_Areas. Object Foot_Prints Landscape_Erosion_Model. Landscape_Gray_Scale_Profile Skin_In_Areas Terrace_Maker 60 Chapter 2 Smoothing_in_Areas

49 Tutorial 3- Landscape Surface Generation The common feature of these modifiers is their procedural type. That means that in each case some procedural modification controlled by a number of parameters is generated, so that you do not have a direct control over every landscape vertex. FOOTPRINTS IN AREAS. The Footprints in Area modifier creates footprints (these can be craters, little hills, or more complicated structures depending on the Footprints Profile Editor) on the landscape's mesh just under each object scattered in an area. Polygons_Subdivision mechanism allows to achieve high resolution in the area selected even on a crude initial mesh. The Footprints in Area modifier is designed to make illusion of interaction of landscape and objects lying on it. It can be used to simulate drifts of sand or snow around stones in deserts, or sites of plowed dirt around trees in parks. In contrast to Object Foot Prints, which "feel" only meshes in the scene, this modifier makes footprints from any kind of objects (meshes, trees, flipboards) provided that they have a bounding box. As any other landscape modifier, Footprints in Area is added by right clicking at Skin property for the Landscape object, then clicking "add" in the pop-up menu appeared and choosing "Footprints in Area" among the list of possible modifiers. Here is a landscape with some rocks, but without the Footprints. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 3 61

50 C2 Basic Concepts And Here is the same landscape with some rocks, but with the Footprints. Here is the andscape rendered with the rocks hidden. 11. From the Property Tree, right-click on Skins and select Add. The Select type(s) of object dialog appears. 12. Select Footprints in Area and click OK to accept the selection. Here we added a RGB levels filter to give more contrast. 62 Chapter 2

51 Tutorial 3- Landscape Surface Generation We will now create a park area where we will add vegetation later. 13. Select the landscape. A new set of tools are displayed in the top menu bar. Note: The menu bar is context sensitive, so if a skeleton line is selected it will display tools for editing skeleton lines. In order to see the tools for editing the landscape and creating new areas, you must first select the landscape. 14. Click Create new area and draw the park area in the top view. Make it of about 1/4 the size of the landscape. When your area is completed, right-click to close it and exit the editing process. Area 2 now appears in the Property Editor. Your scene should look approximately as this. Move your camera to about the same positions as in the figure above. This illustrates the scene with Hills_03, but for speeding up the process delete Hills_03 from the scene. Next, we will add some trees. 15. Choose Library / Basic Plants to open that library and click on the Trees folder to expand it, and then on the Leafy Trees folder Click and drag-drop TC_3_1 into the Area 2 in the Property Tree. If you drag a TC_1 tree directly into the viewport, it will create only one independant tree, whereas draging it into the Area 2 in the property Tree will bring up the dialog box for the distribution mode. 17. Click on Scattered Vegetation from the Select type(s) of object and click OK to accept the selection. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 3 63

52 C2 Basic Concepts 18. From the Property Tree, click on CT_3_1 to expand its nodes and select Distribution. 19. Set the maximum and minimum height to -3 so that the trees will recess a little inside the ground. Now that our scene is complete, we can adjust the parameters for the Footprints in Area. Here are the description for each parameter: Width Coefficient - changes the crater's horizontal dimensions and thus make the best fit to the object. If this value is set to unity, crater's dimensions are defined by a polygon resulted from intersection of object's bounding box and landscape. Eccentricity Coefficient - corrects the elongation of the elliptical crater. If this value is set to unity, crater's semi-axes are defined by a polygon resulted from intersection of object's bounding box and landscape. Angular Variation - defines variations of crater's width and "breastwork" height with polar angle. Zero value results in elliptical shape of the crater in the top view. Vertical Scale - defines vertical dimensions of a crater. Real heights are obtained by multiplication of this value by ordinates of dimensionless Footprint Profile curve (see Footprints_Profile_Editor dialog). Azimuth - defines direction (in World Coordinate System) of crater's bias. It is out of use if bias is set to zero. Bias - affects the vertical scale of each footprint depending on azimuthal direction. Non-zero values result in unperturbed vertical scale (i.e. what the Vertical Scale edit line reads) in the direction set by Azimuth and minimal scale in the opposite direction. If bias is equal to 1, minimal scale is zero. Figures 2c, e demonstrate influence of this parameter on the craterlike footprints. Random Heights Variation - imposes the noisy height variations inside craters making their view more natural. Random Seed - controls random numbers generation. Note: Polygons_Subdivision is very useful for this modifier. Remember that it is invoked by setting Mesh Multiplier in Select_Area dialog to any number from 2 to Select the landscape and click on Footprints in Area. Set the vertical scale to one. 64 Chapter 2

53 Tutorial 3- Landscape Surface Generation 21. Click on Select Area and from the pull-down menu select Area 2 and set the Mesh Multiplier to 8. Render the scene. Here we added a RGB levels filter to give more contrast. To make this landscape more realistic, we need to add a texture. 22. From the Property Editor under Landscape, select Area 1 (full), and from the Property Tree below, right-click on Area 1 (full) and select Add. 23. When the Select type(s) of objects dialog appears, select Material in Area and click OK to accept the selection. 24. Right-click on Material In Area from the Property Tree and select Add. 25. When the Select type(s) of objects dialog appears, select Texture and click OK to accept the selection. 26. From the Property Tree, click on Texture to select it and click on the File button below to load a texture. Load any ground or dirth texture. We loaded Ground03.bmp. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 3 65

54 C2 Basic Concepts 27. From the Property Tree, click on Placement and set the X and Y tiling to 20. Set the Soft Edge to Here we added a RGB levels filter to give more contrast. To finish the scene, we will add a sky. 28. Choose Create / Sky / Compound Sky. Keep the defaul parameters and render the scene. 66 Chapter 2

55 Tutorial 3- Landscape Surface Generation The current version of Footprints in Area allows you to control vertical profile of footprints. This can be done in the Footprints Profile dialog. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 3 67

56 C2 Basic Concepts Vertical Scale - defines vertical dimensions of a crater. The curve shows the footprint's height versus radial distance dependence. Disregarding angular variations and bias, the 3-dimensional shape of the footprint is obtained by rotating this curve around Y-axis (shown by vertical green line on the left hand side of the plot). Profile editing is easy. The profile is implemented as a spline drawn through some base points (little squares in Figure 3). You can either move existing points or create a new point on the spline. It is also possible to delete points from the spline. To move a point, locate the mouse pointer near it and press the left button of the mouse. Move the point to desirable position on the plot and release the button. To create a new point, locate the mouse pointer near the spline curve and make a double click by the left button. To delete a point, locate the mouse pointer near it and press the right button of the mouse. Tension - allows you to control spline shape between base points. To make spline curve nearly a straight line connecting the points, set this parameter to some big number, say, 10. Lower values result in more smooth line. LANDSCAPE EROSION MODEL. This Property uses a particle system to simulate the patterns of erosion.. When applied to a Landscape, Erosion Model will create river bed-like channels which resemble the action of water erosion on mountains and hills. It should be noted that this model makes secondary changes to the Landscape, so it is by no means a Landscape creation tool. It is designed to be applied on top of the more basic Landscape modeling methods such as Skeleton Lines. To speed up rendering, we will delete the Footprints in Area and the texture, and hide the Area 2 which contains the trees. 1. Load the previous scene if it is not already in opened. 2. From the Property Tree, right-click on Footprints in Area and select Delete. 3. From the Property Editor, select Area 1(full) and from the Property Tree, right-click on Material in Area and select Delete. 68 Chapter 2

57 Tutorial 3- Landscape Surface Generation 4. From the Property Editor, under Landscape0, right-click on Area 2 and select Hide. 5. From the Skeletons Library, click-drag Hills_03 in the Top view, in the middle of the landscape. 6. Select Landscape0 from the Property Editor, right-click on Skin from the Property Tree and select Add. 7. From the Select type(s) of objects dialog, select Landscape Erosion Model and click OK to accept the selection. 8. From the Property Tree,souble-click on Landscape Erosion model to expand the nodes. Click on Select Area and from the pulldown menu select Area1 (full). to assign the effect to that area. To see the effect better, you can move the camera closer to the mountain with the Move tool. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 3 69

58 C2 Basic Concepts Particles Number - Sets the number of particles used to generate erosion. More particles produce a more detailed erosion pattern (provided the Landscape detail is set high enough). Random Seed - Generates a unique random starting point for each particle. Different numbers produce different patterns. There is no way to predict the pattern that a particular seed number will produce, but the same number will always generate the same pattern. Soil Properties Soil Removing Coefficient - The depth of the channels left by the particles as they move across the Landscape. Soil Roughness - Sets the amplitude of noise imposed on the Landscape surface along the path of an erosion particle. Channel Width - The starting width of a channel. The channel gradually increases its width as the particle moves across the Landscape. Additional Controls Dry Friction Coefficient - Sets the friction effect which tends to slow down erosion particle motion. The range is 0.0 to 1.0. Larger values will slow the particles more and create shorter channels. Bottom Level of Erosion Channels - Restricts the minimal bottom level of the erosion channels (in landscape's local c.s.). The default value 0 prohibits negative z after this modifier application. Old Method - Check this box to achieve the compatibility with the previous versions of AWB. 70 Chapter 2

59 Tutorial 3- Landscape Surface Generation LANDSCAPE GRAY SCALE PROFILE. This is a displacement map applied to the Skin. It uses the luminance values of an image file to shift the vertices of the Skin up or down. You can use this to produce a terrain form from a bitmap image instead of Skeleton Lines or you can use it as a modifier for a Landscape produced by Skeleton Lines. It differs from the Picture Profile shader in that it is applied at the landscape vertices but not at every pixel. To better see the effect of the gray scale map, we will make the landscape completely flat by deleting the Hills_03 from the scene. 1. From the Property Editor, right-click on Hills_03 and select Delete. We sill also delete the Landscape Erosion Model effect. 2. From the Property Tree, select Landscape Erosion Model under skin, rightclick on it and select Delete. Now the scene is clear of any effect. 3. From the Property Tree of the Landscape0, right-click on Skin and select Add. 4. From the Select type(s) of objects, select Landscape Gray Scale Profile and click OK to accept the selection. Now we need to adjust the settings in order to see any effect. 5. Set the Max Height to 10 and the Min Height to Double-click on Landscape Gray Scale Profile to expand its nodes and click on Select Area. From the pulldown menu select Area 1(full). 7. Click on Picture and cick on the File button. Load the texture Abot_3n1.bmp or any other image. The image does not have to be in gray scale for the effect to work. 8. Render the scene. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 3 71

60 C2 Basic Concepts 5. Set the Max Height to 20 and the Min Height to -10. Now the bumps are more pronounced. You can use any custom map created in any image editing software and apply it to the landscape that way. You can use.jpg image format or any other image type recognized by WorldBuilder. You can build skeleton lines on top of this if you wish, to even further refine the landscape profile. 72 Chapter 2

61 Tutorial 3- Landscape Surface Generation LANDSCAPE EROSION TYPE II This is a new, improved model of the landscape erosion appeared since version 3.0. It works very similar to the old Landscape_Erosion_Model but creates more natural effects. The pictures below show the effect of the erosion on the landscape. Landscape 256 x 256 created by a single skeleton line. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 3 73

62 C2 Basic Concepts The same landscape eroded. Default erosion parameters. The new model parameters are described below. Particles Number - The total number of particles eroding the surface. It is the same that was in the old Landscape_Erosion_Model. Iterations number - New parameter. Now the erosion procedure works by iterations. The total number of particles is divided into a number of groups (just equal to iterations number). Every particle from a group modifies the landscape but it doesn't feel modifications of the other particles of this group. When all particles from the n-th group are over, modifications are applied to the landscape, so that the particles of the next groups will feel them. Excavation depth - defines the height change in metric WorldBuilder units made by each particle on the landscape when it passes through it. Channel width - The minimal width of a channel made by a single particle at the highest point of its trajectory. In fact, the channel gets a little wider when the particle falls down the hill. Channel twisting - Defines the shift perpendicular to the direction of the initial particle velocity. The particle's trajectory is defined by the landscape's height field (the maximum slope direction). However, to create more natural view of the channels system, the particle path is deflected on every step in the direction perpendicular to the maximum slope direction. Soil roughness - Makes the resultant surface rough. This parameter has just the same meaninng as in the old Landscape_Erosion_Model. Random seed - Generates a unique random starting point for each particle. The same as in the old Landscape_Erosion_Model. 74 Chapter 2

63 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape Media Player controls. The interface may be different depending on your version of the Media Player. TUTORIAL 5 - ANIMATED LANDSCAPE WorldBuilder enables you to not only create intricate 3 dimensional worlds complete with detailed topology, vegetation, water, and skies; you can animate rippling water, sunsets, clouds, waving grasses or even entire land formations as well. The following tutorial is designed to give you a quick guided tour of some of WorldBuilder s advanced tools and techniques. You will begin the tutorial by loading WorldBuilder and viewing GROW.AVI, an animation that was created using WorldBuilder. This animation fades in with rippling water shown against a pale orange sky with white clouds drifting slowly from right to left. Next a rocky landscape emerges from the water and several gnarly trees and wind blown grass grows out of the landscape. As the animation closes, the camera dollies into the scene, and the sky slowly fades into a deep purple. View the Animation You will open and examine the WorldBuilder Scene that was used to create the GROW animation. You will experiment with editing textures, lighting, and the camera. You will also explore how vegetation, water, sky and plants are animated in WorldBuilder. View an Animation tutorial 1. Start WorldBuilder and select File/Open Image from the WorldBuilder Toolbar. 2. From the Look-in Pull Down, select the disk drive and folder where your WorldBuilder example animations (AVI files) are located. NOTE: You can download this animation, along with the scenes for this tutorial on our web site, in the tutorials section. 3. Select GROW.AVI from the list. The Windows Media Player appears and the animation is displayed. 4. Click drag the Media Player Time Slider and scrub back and forth along the timeline from frame 0 to approximately frame 15. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 75

64 C2 Basic Concepts The animation begins with a dark magenta sky with faint white clouds and quickly changes to a bright pale orange sky. As you will see, this is accomplished by keyframing a color gradient for the sky. The clouds are animated simply be turning a procedural animation property ON. The water ripples and reflects both the clouds and the sky s changing color. Rippling water is the default for any WorldBuilder water object. Frames 0 to Scrub from approximately frame 20 to frame 45. A rocky landscape begins to emerge from the water at frame 15 and reaches its full height at approximately frame 45. You will see that the landscape is animated by grouping all the skeleton lines under the group All Skeletons and then creating scale keys in the Z axis at frames 15 and 45. The landscape is textured using an AWB texture and bump map. Frames 20 to Scrub from frame 40 to frame 75. Several gnarly trees sprout and grow at various elevations on the emerging landscape. The trees were animated by creating Height Range keys at frames 35 and 75. There are six variations on a tree that are scattered over the landscape within a specific altitude range. Wind-blown grass also covers a portion of the landscape. Like the trees, the grass is placed based on an elevation range, slope angle and slope exposure. It appears to grow along the landscape because of Average Height keyframes at frames 35 and 60. The wind blown animation is produced by switching the animation option on via a check box. 76 Chapter 2

65 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape Frames 40 to Scrub from frame 75 to frame 120. The camera begins to dolly into the scene past the trees and toward what has become a river at frame 75. It comes to a stop at frame 105. The sky and overall scene begins to darken at frame 105. Frames 75 to 120 Open a WorldBuilder Scene tutorial The GROW animation was created by rendering a corresponding 3D WorldBuilder scene. WorldBuilder scenes can consist of any combination of objects including one or more Landscapes, Water Objects, lights, a cameras, and Sky Objects for instance. These are displayed is various viewports such as orthogonal Top, Right, or Front along with the camera views. In the next steps you will open the GROW.AWB scene, view it using several viewports and render a wireframe, Gouraud, Phong shaded view of the scene. 1. Select File/Open from the Toolbar. The Open dialog appears. 2. Select CH2_GROW.AWB from the list. The scene is opened and three orthogonal views Top, Left, and Front appear along with the Library View which is used to manage WorldBuilder s numerous object, texture and vegetation libraries. Notice the Menu Bar and Tool bar which run horizontally above the viewports, the Object Tree, Property Tree and Property Page which run vertically to the right of the viewports, the Creation toolbar which run vertically to the left of the viewports, and the Track Editor, and Time Slider located under the viewports. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 5 77

66 C2 Basic Concepts Also notice the Animation Controls the Auto Key button, frame navigation buttons and current frame entry field and the View controls Rotate, Pan, Undo, Zoom, and View Scene, buttons which are located at the lower right of the user interface. The scene CH2_Grow.AWB is displayed in Top, Left & Camera(User) viewports. 3. Right click the Front viewport title bar and select Camera01 from the list. The Front View is replaced by a User Viewport. This is a viewport from the camera s perspective and point of view which is used for shaded views only. 4. Click Phong Shading from the Toolbar. The Status line located at the lower left of the user interface, reports each step in the rendering process. After a few moments, the User Viewport displays a Phong shaded scene consisting of a reflective ocean with a partly cloudy, deep violet sky. 5. Click drag the time slider to another frame and click Bounding Box, Skeleton Lines, Wireframe, Flat Shading, Phong Shading and note the differences between each shading method. 78 Chapter 2 You can select from a range of shaded view types and, if the WorldBuilder scene is animated, you can move to any frame along the timeline and quickly produce a shaded view from any WorldBuilder viewport.

67 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape Object Editor consists of the Object Tree (upper section), Property Tree(middle section) and Property Page (lower section). Object Tree, Property Tree & Property Page WorldBuilder scenes and their associated objects are managed using the Property Editor which consists of the Object Tree, Property Tree and Property Pages. The Object Tree is a scrollable window which is located at the upper right of the WorldBuilder user interface. The Object Tree enables you to select, hide, display, group, rename or delete any WorldBuilder object. The Object Tree is also used to access the object properties which range from an object s size, or position, to its color or texture. WorldBuilder object properties are displayed in the Property Tree which is located directly below the Object Tree. As you click each object in the Object Tree, its associated properties are displayed in the Property Tree. Furthermore, as you click each property in the Property Tree its associated parameters are displayed on the Property Page. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 79

68 C2 Basic Concepts The Property Page is where you edit the attributes of any object. For instance, to change the color of the sky in a scene, you would first select the Sky object in the Object tree, and then the Sky Property in the Property Tree. This would enable you to edit the Sky Gradient Color. This makes it easy to create sky s ranging from gray and overcast to brilliant sunsets. Edit the Sky tutorial In the following steps you will edit the color and cloud pattern in the scene s sky. You will begin by selecting the camera and producing a rendered view of the scene. You will then select the sky and change both its color gradient and cloud pattern. 1. Examine the scene in the Top, Left, and User viewports. The water object, Water0 is shown as a cyan square, the landscape object, Landscape0 is shown as a red box, the scene light, LightSource0 is shown as a yellow line. Also note that the sky object is not shown in the viewports. This is because WorldBuilder skies are procedural background elements which are not affected by standard transformations and therefore need not be selected or shown in the viewports. 2. Click to select Water0, Camera01, LightSource0, Landscape0 and Sky from the Object Tree. As each object is selected, its associated Properties appear in the Property tree and its name appears in the blue Property Tree Title Bar. The Property Page also appears for the last property you selected from the Property Tree. 3. Click Landscape0. The object is selected and is highlighted in the viewports. 4. Shift click or Ctrl-click on multiple objects to enable multiple selection. The objects are highlighted in gray in the Object Window. 80 Chapter 2

69 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape 5. Right click anywhere in the Object Window and click Hide. The Context Menu appears and the object Landscape0 is hidden in all viewports. 6. Repeat steps 2 through 4 for the group All Skeletons. The Group All Skeletons is hidden. NOTE: You can identify a WorldBuilder Group by the square expand (+) or collapse (-) icon displayed at the left of each group. If you wish to expand the group and view its members, click the expand icon (+). If you wish to collapse the group and hide its members, click collapse (-). 7. Scroll down to the bottom of the Object Tree and click Sky. Sky is framed in a gray outline and Object: Sky appears in the Property Tree Title Bar. 8. Click Sky from the Property Tree. The Sky Gradient Editor appears and displays a color gradient extending from the Horizon Color to the Zenith Color. Sky Gradient Editor Property Page 9. Click Color and select any color from the Color Picker dialog. The Color button changes to the selected color. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 81

70 C2 Basic Concepts 10. Move the mouse over the color gradient and click anywhere. The pointer changes to a pencil icon and the selected color is blended into the gradient. 11. Click the User viewport Title Bar to select this viewport and click Phong Shading from the top toolbar. The User Viewport is highlighted blue and the viewport is shaded. Both the sky s color gradient and the water s reflection displays the selected color. 12. Select Noise 2D, the child of Clouds, from the Property Tree. Noise 2D is highlighted gray and the Cloud s Noise Parameters Property Page is displayed. 13. Click Turbulent, set the Density to 45, and click Preview from the Property Tools. After a brief interval, a small Phong shaded preview or thumbnail of the sky is displayed. 14. Click the User viewport Title Bar and Phong Shading from the Toolbar. After a brief interval, a Phong Shaded Camera view is displayed. TIP: You can also render a camera view by clicking Camera01, Viewport and Render from the Toolbar. 15. Experiment further with Sky Properties. For instance, darken the sky, turn Stars on and render the scene. TIP: You can turn any Property On or Off by right clicking the property and clicking Disable. Animated Sky Many WorldBuilder objects and properties may be animated. In fact, any object Property parameter which displays an Animation Status Indicator may be animated. Animation Status Indicators consist of a horizontal and vertical color bar which frames the upper left corner of an Entry Field. Status Indicators may also consist of a color bar that runs horizontally along the top of a gradient. For instance, looking at the Sky Property Page from the previous example, the Sky Gradient Editor displays a blue Animation Status Indicator (blue horizontal line), and both the Gradient Depth and Horizontal Angle Entry Fields display yellow Animation Status Indicators. 82 Chapter 2

71 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape Animation Status Indicators change colors to indicate one of four states: Cyan (default) The Property may be animated. Blue - The animatable Property has been selected, and is current. The property s Track is also displayed in the Track Editor and any keyframes are displayed and may be edited. Red - The Auro Key Button is ON and the animatable Property may be keyframed. As you create new keyframes they will appear in the property s Track in the Track Editor. Yellow The animatable Property has been keyframed. You playback animation in WorldBuilder by clicking the Play Forward or Play Reverse buttons. You can stop playback at any time by clicking Stop. As the animation plays, you can watch the Property Page parameters update for the selected Property Page. Furthermore, you can scrub along the Timeline or use the Next and Previous Keyframe buttons to study and to navigate selected animation segments. Each keyframed WorldBuilder object property has its own animation track. Any keyframe which you create for any animatable object Property has a corresponding keyframe or keyframes, which are shown in the Track Editor. The Track Editor and its associated tool group, is located below the viewports and above the Time Slider. To view an animation track, click either the parameter s Entry Field or the Animation Status Indicator in the case of a gradient. In the following steps you will examine a variation of the sky animation used CH2_GROW1.AWB. You will see how the animation s sunrise and cloud movement were accomplished. You will also experiment with selected WorldBuilder Animation Tools including the Track Editor, Time Slider, Current Frame Entry Field, and Playback buttons. This is accomplished by keyframing the Sky s color gradient, gradient depth and by setting the Cloud Drift to ON. Animate the Sky tutorial 1. Select File/Open and open CH2_SKY.AWB. A simple scene consisting of Water and Sky objects along with a camera and light source appears. 3. Click Sky from the Object Tree and from the Property Tree. The Sky Gradient Editor appears. 4. Click First Frame and click Play Forward from the Animation Controls. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 83

72 C2 Basic Concepts The Time Slider is returned to frame 0 and the color gradient in the Property Page changes color and brightness as it cycles through the sunrise/sunset sequence. The Gradient Depth parameter also changes as the animation plays. As this value increases, the sky s gradient transition becomes smoother. 5. Click Stop and click the Yellow Animation Status Indicator at the top of the color gradient. The Status Indicator changes from yellow to blue indicating that Sky Gradient is the current track and the Sky Gradient keyframes appear at frames 0, and 60, in the Track Editor. NOTE: If you click the color gradient instead of the Status Indicator and mistakenly change the color gradient, click Undo. 6. Click First Frame and click the Next keyframe button. Each click sets the current frame and red current frame indicator, to the next keyframe in the Track Editor. All animatable parameters which have been keyframed change to reflect the current keyframe. Since there are only two keyframes, each click alternates between frame 0 and frame 60. Track Editor with keys at 0 & Double click the current frame number in the Current Frame Entry Field, type 30 and press return. The current frame is set to frame 30, the time slider displays 30, and the red current frame indicator is located at frame Click the Preview button, click the camera viewport and click Phong Shading.. A shaded preview appears showing the sky at frame 30 and the camera viewport shows both the sky and water.. 9. Click the Auto Key button. The Auto Key button changes from blue to red and the blue Status indicator changes to red indicating that any subsequent edits that you make will either edit existing keyframes or create new keyframes for the selected property Click the Color button from the Sky Gradient Editor and select a vibrant orange, such as 250, 130, 0 RGB. Chapter 2

73 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape 11. Click the color gradient, just above the Horizon Color pointer, and click the Preview button. The existing Color is replaced by the new color. The orange is smoothly blended into the gradient and the sky more closely resembles the coloration of a sunrise. 12. When you are satisfied with the new Sky Gradient at frame 30, click the Set Keyframe button. A new Sky Gradient key is created and a keyframe appears at frame 30 in the Track Editor. Key is added at frame Set the current frame to frame 0 and click Play Forward. The Sky Gradient opens as before however the gradient fades into a brilliant orange horizon at frame Click Go to Last Frame. The current frame is set to frame Repeat steps 10-13, replace the Horizon Color with a pale blue such as 226, 226, 252 RGB and preview. 16. Replace the Azimuth color with a deep blue such as 26, RGB. and click Preview. The vibrant orange fades into the pale blue at the horizon and the sky turns deep blue. Animated Clouds WorldBuilder enables you to create clouds which display endless variations of pattern, texture, and motion. You can select from either Fractal or Turbulent noise, as well as adjust cloud detail, color gradient, scale and position. Furthermore, you can specify animation properties including drift velocity and deformation amplitude. This makes it easy to create animated skies ranging from calm to stormy. Animate the Clouds tutorial In the next steps you will edit the quality of texture and motion of the scene s clouds. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 85

74 C2 Basic Concepts 1. Click Sky in the Object Tree, and Noise 2D from the Property Tree. The Noise Parameters Property Page appears. Noise Parameters Property Page 2. Click Turbulent, increase Details to 6, and render the scene at frames 0, 30 and 60. The cloud texture is more pronounced. 3. Click Go to Last Frame, click Auto Key, and click the Density Entry Field. The Timeline is returned to frame 0 and the Density Track is displayed, however there are currently no keyframes in this Track. Density s Status Indicator changes from cyan to red indicating that the edits you are about to make will add new keyframes in the Density Track. 4. Increase the Density to 30, and click Create Key. 5. Move the mouse pointer to frame 0 on the Track Editor, and click Add Key. A keyframe with a Density of 30 is added to the Density Track at frame Go to frame 30 and decrease Density to Click Go to Last Frame, increase the Density to 45, and click Apply. 8. Render the scene at frames 0, 30, and 60. The cloud pattern changes from moderate to light to heavy. 86 Chapter 2

75 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape 9. Click Clouds Drift from the Property Tree, click Region Zoom and zoom in on the scene in the Top viewport. The Clouds Animation Parameters appear and an arrow indicating the Azimuth or direction of drift appears. Cloud Animation Property Page 10. Go to frame 60, click Azimuth from the Clouds Animation Parameters, decrease the value to 110 and press return. The cloud s drift direction will now animate. 10. Go to frames 0 and 60 and create Velocity keys of 15 and 50 respectively. The Drift Velocity increases along with the cloud cover. 11. Click Preview.. An animated thumbnail preview of the cloud animation is created. TIP: You can enhance the sunrise effect by animating the position, color, and brightness of LightSource0. Landscapes & Skeleton Lines Landscapes are used to define the dimensions of the current scene or world. The topology or form of all WorldBuilder Landscapes is provided by one or more Skeleton Lines. Skeleton Lines are splines which consist of two or more points which you can place anywhere in 3 dimensional space within the volume of the Landscape object. You can use various combinations of Skeleton Lines to define the elevation and contour of each WorldBuilder terrain. WorldBuilder s Skeleton based approach makes it easy to predict exactly how your landscape topology will look. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 87

76 C2 Basic Concepts WorldBuilder automatically produces a mesh surface for each Landscape, by draping a flexible skin over the skeleton lines. Imagine each Landscape as a large tent with an underlying support structure of intricate 3D splines. However, where a tent is supported by fixed inflexible poles, WorldBuilder terrains are supported by splines which may be easily manipulated for position, scale, or rotation as well as their level of fractal detail. This makes WorldBuilder Landscapes extremely flexible and easy to shape and reshape into the exact desired landscape from smooth and rolling to craggy or jagged. You can animate landscapes by keyframing Landscapes or Skeleton Lines either singly or in groups, or you can apply animated textures based on elevation or inclination. This makes it possible to simulate evolving landscapes, worlds, and natural phenomena such as erosion or earthquakes. WorldBuilder also enables you to create complex landscapes simply by applying any bitmap image using Picture Profile This shader enables you to optionally create either a bump map or displacement map. Edit Scene Objects tutorial Next you will look at a landscape and see how to change the shape, size, position and texture. 1. Open CH2_REEF.AWB, and click Camera01 from the Properties Editor. 2. Click Open Camera View, and click Draft Preview Shading from the Toolbar.. A camera view appears and is rendered using Phong Shading. The scene resembles the previous sky scene with the addition of a rocky island which is reflected in the water. 3. Examine the scene in the Top and Front Viewports. Water0 is shown as a large cyan colored square or plane, and Landscape0 is shown as a red box. The multicolored lines which lie inside the Landscape0 volume, are the skeleton lines which are used to shape and to edit the landscape topology. 4. Click Landscape0 from the Properties Editor. The landscape object is highlighted white in the viewports. The Landscape object is the 3 dimensional region in a WorldBuilder scene, which may be shaped by Skeleton Lines. 88 Chapter 2

77 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape Landscape0, shown as a white box, is shaped by the multicolored Skeleton Lines. NOTE: Any Skeleton Line which lies outside the Landscape volume, has little or no effect on the shape of the Landscape. 5. Click Reef_01 and click expand to show the children of Reef_01. The group Reef_01 is selected and expanded. All of its associated Skeleton Lines are shown in the Object Tree. 6. Click SkeletonLine2 and click Zoom Extend All Selected. Reef_01 Skeleton Lines are centered in the viewports. 7. Click Move Nodes from the Toolbar SkeletonLine2 points or nodes are displayed and Point Editing Mode is active. Landscapes are sculpted by moving points along one or more Skeleton Lines. NOTE: Each Skeleton line consists of two or more points (nodes) which are used to edit the Skeleton Line and therefore the landscape s skin. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 89

78 C2 Basic Concepts To move single or multiple nodes, use the Move Nodes tool. To move the full skeleton line, use the Move tool instead. 8. Click the Move tool from the top toobar. The Move manipulator appears with a green and a red arrow for the x, y and z axis. This indicates that you may move the selected object anywhere in X, Y, or Z depending on which viewport is current. 9. Click at the square base of the manipulator tool in the Top viewport and move the mouse. The skeleton line moves without restriction. Click on the red of blue arrow to restrain the displacement in one direction. TIP: You can click on the Undo button to cancel the move operation. 10. From the properties Editor, click Reef_01 to select it and move it anywhere outside the red landscape area. Reef_01 is shown in its new position outside the volume of Landscape Click Camera01 from the Object Tree, click Open Camera View and Draft Preview Shading from the Toolbar. The camera view become active and a Phong shaded view is displayed. The island has disappeared because the Skeleton Lines lie outside the Landscape. 12. Select and move the Reef_01 group back inside the Landscape or open CH2_REEF.AWB once again to restore the original scene. Animated Landscape In addition to manually editing individual Skeleton Lines or groups of Skeleton Lines to reshape a landscape, you can also keyframe them thus making your landscapes appear to evolve. You can accomplish this in numerous ways including keyframing individual Points, Skeleton Lines or groups of Skeleton Lines. You can keyframe the position, rotation and scale of any Skeleton Line as well as the Skin Properties which control how smooth or rough the landscape appears. Animate the Landscape tutorial In the next steps you will add a simple animation to the landscape by creating two position keyframes for the group Reef_01. This will make the landscape appear to emerge from the water. This is how the animation was done in the GROW.AVI that you viewed previously. 90 Chapter 2

79 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape 1. Click Last Frame, Reef_01, and Move from the Property Tree. The Time Slider is set at frame 60, and the Location Property Page appears. Location Property Page 2. Click the Z axis Location entry field, click Auto Key and click Add Key from the Track Editor. The Location Track is current and the Location Property Page Animation Status Indicators changes from blue to red. The Create Key button sticks indicating that each time you click on the Track Editor, you will create a new key. 3. Click at frames 0, 30,and 60 in the Track Editor. Two new keys appear in the Location Track at frames 0, 30, and 60. Track Editor 4. Go to frame 0, reduce the Z Location of Reef_01 to -75 and hit the Enter key. 5. Right click the Top and Left viewport Labels and Minimize them. 6. Click Play Forward from the Animation Controls. The animation plays and the Skeleton Lines move upward from -75 at frame 0 to 0 at frame 30. As the Skeleton Lines move, the landscape s skin is gradually changed to reflect their contour which makes the land mass appear to rise from the water. 7. Save the scene as CH2_REE2.AWB. Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 91

80 C2 Basic Concepts REEF.AVI Areas, Materials, & Vegetation No mountain, canyon or desert would be complete without a range of textures and indigenous vegetation to give it a convincing look. WorldBuilder provides multiple libraries of materials, plants, skies, grasses and trees to name a few. These combine to enable you to create landscapes with remarkable character and complexity. The key to successfully applying WorldBuilder textures, vegetation and objects begins with an understanding of the Area. An Area enables you to specify exactly where and how each WorldBuilder material is applied in your scene. This is accomplished using a combination of spline based Areas along with editable material attributes including placing conditions which enable you to scatter materials, and plants for instance, anywhere within a specific area by an altitude range, slope angle and slope exposure. For instance, you could have grass grow only on slopes with a maximum angle of 30 degrees and pine trees grow only within an altitude range of between 1200 to 2500 feet. Amazingly, not only can you apply any number of object types or materials to a single area, but each object from trees and rocks to blades of grass are placed exactly on the underlying terrain no matter how irregular. This relationship is maintained even after editing the landscape topology. Material Properties tutorial In the next section you will examine the Landscape used in the GROW.AVI animation. You will use the WorldBuilder Properties Editor to edit various materials and objects including grass and trees. 1. Open CH2_GROW.AWB and click Landscape0 from the Object Tree. TIP: You can also select Landscape0 from any viewport by clicking on the red box. Remember to verify your selection by checking the Property Tree title bar for the name of the current object. 92 Chapter 2 You can hide an Area make it non-rendering which is great for speeding up preview renders when you are tweaking a single area or material. The Material Queue manages all the materials and objects which are applied to the current Area.

81 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape 2. Using the Time Slider or current frame entry field, move to frame 56 and click Draft Preview Shading. After a few moments, a rendered view with trees and grass appears. Frame Select Area Vegetation from the Properties Tree, under Landscape0. The Vegetation Area is highlighted in the viewport and a tree material labeled Vegetation is displayed in the Material Queue. 4. From the Properties Editor, right-click and select Hide. Any materials or vegetation applied to the Vegetation Area will not be visible when rendered. 5. Click Phong Shading. The scene renders again, however this time the trees are hidden. Each Material such as a texture, plant or rock, has its own unique set of properties which control numerous characteristics including color, bumpiness, distribution, size and density. Each set of properties is accessed via the Property Tree or by double clicking the material or object in the Material Queue. For instance from Vegetation Area, you can control the number and type of trees, the density of leaf or needle foliage and the degree of roughness of the tree bark. In the next steps you will examine several textures and see how the trees and grass were created and grown. In order to speed the process of working with just the scene s vegetation, you will use a WorldBuilder technique called Incremental Design. This process enables you to temporarily suspend rendering for selected scene objects or materials. This is great when you want to work with just a single object or material without having to wait for the entire Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 93

82 C2 Basic Concepts scene to render. You will use this technique to first render the scene without the trees in the Vegetation Area. You will then suspend rendering for these objects and render only the trees. 6. Click Step Forward. The scene s Skeleton Lines are superimposed over the rendered scene. All scene objects including the Water and Sky are Hidden as all the Areas associated with Landscape0. These objects and areas will not render in the subsequent steps. Currently nothing in the scene will render so that if you click Phong Shading nothing happens. 7. Select the Vegetation Area, right-click and select Show to unhide the trees material. The trees are the only element that will render. 5. Click the Camera01 Title Bar and Phong Shading. The trees are immediately rendered on top of the background image. 6. Under Landscape0, click the Vegetation Material in the Editor to select it. The vegetation properties and the material properties appear in the Property Tree. 7. Expand Scattered Vegetation, scroll down the Property Tree, and click Foliage Density. 94 Chapter 2 The Foliage Density Property Page appears.

83 Tutorial 4- Animated Landscape Foliage Density Property Page Foliage Density of 0 produces trees without leaves or needles 8. Decrease the Foliage to 0, click the Camera01 Title Bar and Phong Shading. The trees are rendered without needles. TIP: You can keyframe the foliage density to simulate leaf growth. 9. Click Size and Density the child of Vegetation from the Property Tree. The corresponding Property Page appears. These properties are used to control the size range and density of the trees. Size & Density Property Page Basic Concepts - Tutorial 4 95

84 C2 Basic Concepts 10. Increase Average Distance to 40, click the Camera01 title bar and Phong Shading. There are fewer trees in the scene and the distribution of trees has changed. 11. Edit the Random Seed number to any number and click Phong Shading. Only the distribution of trees is changed. 12. Click Placing Conditions The Placing Conditions Property Pages appears. This enables you to specify the altitude range, slope angle and slope exposure within which the trees will appear.. For instance, the trees will only be rendered within an altitude range extending from to 1000 meters. Placing Conditions Property Page TIP: Whenever you have Placing Conditions selected you can click Preview to see exactly where the current Area s Material, Grass, or Scattered Objects will appear on the landscape. 13. Click Objects List and click to expand the Library Window. A list of each of the objects that are associated with the Vegetation material is shown. WorldBuilder cycles through the Object s List during rendering each time a tree is required. These tree objects were loaded from the WorldBuilder Plants Library. You can add to the list from any WorldBuilder library by click dragging the desired plant or object from a library and dropping it into the Objects List. 96 Chapter 2