Scene Menu

Create Geometry

You can create the following geometric standard primitives.

  • Line

    A line is the connection of two points. Every point has X, Y, and Z coordinates for its positioning in 3D space. The representation of a line object in render view depends on the active render engine. In OpenGL mode, a line is represented as a line. In Raytracing mode, it is represented as a tube capped with half spheres on both ends. The Line Tube Radius material setting controls the radius of the representation.

  • Plane

    A plane is a flat quadratic face often used to place object shadows onto the ground below. It has X and Y dimensions and it requires input for the number of sub-divisions for both axes.

  • Box

    A box describes a quadratic, three-dimensional room also known as a cube. It has X, Y, and Z dimensions and requires input for the amount of subdivisions for each axis.

  • Cylinder

    A cylinder is an object that has two circular ends, with the same radius, parallel to each other. A cover wrapped around the distance between, or height, builds the outer skin of the primitive. Increasing the number of sides gives a less faceted look to the object.

  • Cone

    A cone is similar to a cylinder. It has a circular base at the bottom but its top end is a single point. Faces for bottom or side are only created when related check boxes are selected upon creation.

  • Sphere

    A sphere is a three-dimensional primitive in the form of a ball. Every point on the surface has the same distance to the center point. This distance can be adjusted within the dialog box using the radius value. The values for latitude and longitude resolution result in the number of horizontal and vertical subdivisions.

  • Torus

    A torus is an object shaped like a donut. It has a circular profile limited by the inner and outer radius. The surface is created by rotating the profile around the perpendicular axis in the center of the object. The rings value controls the number of subdivisions along the axis of rotation. The sides value controls the quantity of horizontal subdivisions.

  • Dome

    A dome, or hemisphere, has a flat circular surface at the bottom and a half sphere on the top. The border edge to the bottom surface is chamfered. The Base Radius value controls the dimension of the half sphere, Ground Radius controls chamfer creation. Latres defines the number of perpendicular subdivisions, Longres defines the number of subdivisions around the perpendicular axis.

Create Light
  • Directional Light

    Light rays from directional light sources are parallel like sunlight. A Directional light represents a distant light source and has no position only a direction that affects how the scene is illuminated. Directional lights always create hard shadows.

  • Point Light

    Point light rays start at a single point and emit radially. In Raytracing mode, the point light generates a hard shadow in OpenGL a point light shows no shadow.

  • Spot Light

    Spot light rays follow a beam cone. They start at a single point and spot in a circled area on the object. It is often used to emphasize an object or surface.

  • Spherical Light

    Spherical light rays beam like from a glowing ball. Spherical light generates diffuse light and soft shadows. It is an indirect lighting and more atmospheric than point light.

  • Disk Light and Rectangular Light

    The disk or rectangular light rays are created from a light source appearing as if from a dropped ceiling, either from a circle (disk) or from a square (rectangular).

  • Ray Light

    Ray light files contain the simulated spatial and angular distribution as well as photometric or spectral information of emitted light from a complex light source.

The shadows generated by more than one light source on an object add up where they overlap. Similar to a new geometry, the newly created light source is at (0,0,0) by default, whether an object is selected. Location, size, angle, and so on, can be modified by using the Transform Manipulator.

Create Camera

Select from the following:

  • Perspective Camera

    Setting this node creates a camera with a perspective view. Perspective View: A view similar to the view of human eyes: Objects further away seem smaller than objects right in front. Original parallel lines appear centric to a single point a long distance off. This view is the default for file output (see Render Settings).

  • Orthographic Camera

    Setting this node creates a camera with an orthographic view. Orthographic View: A view where all objects have the same size irrespective of distance. Each object’s actual height and width is shown and parallel lines remain parallel.

  • Viewpoint

    This function creates a new fixed point of view from the actual distance and angle to a scene or object.

Scenegraph

Hides/shows the scene graph.

Ambient Occlusion

Ambient occlusion is also known as soft global illumination. It generates shadows on gaps and corners; making scene illustration more realistic within the OpenGL render mode. The ambient occlusion module is used to generate these kinds of shadows. These settings are storable and adoptable.

The scene is illuminated on calculation by the HDR file from the environment node; it works without any other light source within the scene. All objects that are hidden in the moment of calculation are darkened.

The Ambient Occlusion calculation is a preprocess and takes place during data preparation. Calculated Ambient Occlusion results are baked on the geometry’s vertices, stored within texture coordinates #7 and #8.

The smoothness of the calculated shadow depends on the polygon mesh resolution. VRED offers several ways to increase the quality on low quality models, like subdividing, and predefined quality presets.

Asset Manager

Opens the Asset Manager module where you can manage items like geometry, environments, and materials beyond a single project.

Camera Editor

The Camera Editor makes all camera-related property settings accessible to the user. In addition to the simple UI camera settings, more advanced attributes are made available (for example, exact camera lens characteristics, custom projections, and camera properties).

Geometry Editor

The geometry editor contains various functions to modify the scene geometry. It helps for example in cases where the normals need to be adjusted/flipped or when NURBS surfaces need to be retesselated.

Light Editor

The Light editor provides functions for creating and manipulating light sources in VRED and contains a listing of all light sources within the scene. For an empty scene, the headlight is the default light source and is disabled automatically when a new light source is added to the scene. The headlight can be re-enabled by activating it within the Light Editor or with the Toggle Headlight button in the main toolbar.

Material Editor

The Material Editor allows you to create, modify, and group materials within VRED. More details on specific materials can be found in the Truelight Materials and Opengl Materials sections.

Node Editor

The Node Editor provides all information about any node type in a scene. It offers the possibility to view detailed information about selected nodes, changing values and attach custom attributes to nodes.

Optimize

Provides tools to restructure and optimize scene data.

Opens the module that provides further operations, for example, geometrical optimizations, sharing, and so on. Default activates a recommended selection that could increase render performance; Clear unselects all selected modules; Optimize executes selected optimization commands. All operations are applied recursively. Multiselection is supported on execution. Undo is not available.

Texture Editor

Allows you to interactively place textures on objects in a scene.

The Texture Editor can help to position textures on objects within the scene. Textures and assigned attributes of a selected material are listed in the texture list at the top of the window. VRED, by default, uses the UV coordinates of any imported object, if they are available.

Variants

Different states of switch nodes and materials can be accessed here quickly. Variants are a powerful tool to aid in the creation of multiple scene variations. Switching between variants can be easily accomplished by using the GUI, VSets, hot-keys, or by python scripting.

The window is split into two sections with the left side containing the list of variants and the right side having the variant actions and options. The variant module allows the creation of different configurations for one of three types of objects: Geometry, materials, and lights. Tabs at the top of the Variants window are available for each type of variant.

In general, dragging a node or switch node onto the variant list area can create variants. The default state is highlighted while the current state is shown in bold. Double-clicking on a state changes the variant to that state. The states are shown on the right side and more states can be added by dragging the correct node type to the states box.

Variant Sets

Here, complex variation setups are definable. Then, they are executable by a single initiator. Variant Sets, or Vsets for short, define multiple states for different properties at same time. In many cases, the functionality provided by the Variant module is not enough for managing complex models (for example, where many different switch nodes are needed to represent a specific version of the model loaded). Here the variant set module provides more functionality allowing you to create sets of variants for activating them simultaneously. For configurators logical connections can be generated.

Switching between variant sets can be accomplished in one of three ways. The selected variant set can be set to a hotkey in the General tab. It can be set programmatically using the VRED python scripting interface with the function selectVariantSet(name) where name is the name of the variant set. Variant sets can also be manually switched through the GUI interface in VRED.

The procedure for creating Vsets is similar for all properties. First create a variant set. (Use the context menu on the left section or use the shortcut button at the bottom of the window.) Then drag either a node or switch node into the right side of the variant set window. If the dragged node matches the correct property tab, it is added to the variant set. Once a node is added, the state or state change can be modified in the usual way.